My city is my tailor

[imomus]

I'm interested, at the moment, in the idea that things we think of as acts of individual expression are actually produced by collectivities and contexts. It's not that creativity doesn't exist, but that it's much more collective than we give it credit for (largely because of our lingeringly Romantic conceptions of the unique self, the artistic genius, the outsider "in the margins", and so on). As I'm making this argument, look at these street fashion pictures and try to guess which cities they were taken in. (Answers later on.)



I trace this line of thought back to my stay in Malmo last month, when I mused on whether "you couldn't be both collectivist and self-expressive; after all, Japanese street fashion is both the most flamboyantly expressive in the world and the most collectivist-conformist. We tend to assume that only notionally-separate, unique individuals can be "expressive", but why not entire groups (the 3T 3K types milling around Möllevången), classes ([Richard Florida's] "creative class"), nations (Sweden, Japan) and areas (Scandinavia)? After all, expression is communication, and that takes two. Or do I mean three?"



I planned to trick you today. I planned to show some Asian people snapped in other countries and tell you they were new Japanese street fashion. But it just wouldn't have worked. You wouldn't have bought it for a moment. For instance, let me now reveal that the first double picture in this entry was shot in Moscow. They're people of Asian origin, and they both seem to be at the same art school, and sure, they're very different from other Muscovites. But they couldn't be mistaken for anyone in today's Japan -- not if you have an eye for these things. The colours, shapes, textures and combinations of the clothes just aren't Japanese.

The second picture strip shows people in Jakarta, Java, and again, they couldn't really be in Japan (although it's less of a stretch -- it could be some small town in Japan somewhere, or Japan in the 90s). Here are some people actually shot in today's Japan:



Now, that's just two men, chosen (because I liked what they were wearing) from hundreds and thousands of Japanese street fashion pictures out there on the web. But somehow I feel that Japan is like rock candy -- you could cut it anywhere and get the same flavour, the same legend written through the core, the same cultural DNA. Sure, there's enormous variation between different sectors of Japanese society, different magazine readers, different cities, different parts of town, different street snap websites, and (last but not least!) different individuals. But it's rarely such a big difference that you could split off a sector of Japanese society and ship them off to Moscow or Jakarta and see them fit in more happily there. What's more, if you did do that (and Japan does; lots of people travel, and begin to blend into the places they settle in, and the longer they stay, the more they blend in) you'd see the looks of those "exported" people begin to change, to merge with their destination cities' looks.



One thing that amazes me is how differences persist even when people are moving around the world more, and even when the pictures are taken at art schools with transitory, international populations, and even when the subjects are dressed in international brands like Converse, Top Shop, American Apparel and H&M. Despite all this, there is a look that London produces. (The two kids above are Camberwell College of Art students.) It's not deterministic; you could never specify in advance what two randomly-selected Camberwell students looked like. Nevertheless, you can look at them and see something in their style which reflects London -- which has been "produced" by London.



I notice this happening very quickly in myself when I travel. Within days of arriving in a new city I'm borrowing clothes from my hosts, noticing what people are wearing, thrifting and buying new items, blending in, yet "expressing myself" within (and slightly outside) the available dress codes. I looked a certain way when I lived in Paris, different in New York, and different again in Tokyo. The local codes changed, and so did the times, and so did the available clothes. I was "expressed" by the city while expressing myself in it; the semantics of the city's style articulated and produced changes in my own. And surprisingly quickly at that.



There are some surprising anomalies in the picture I'm painting here -- a picture of people exercising their individual creativity only within the available semantics of a given place and a given social group. One is the example of the city of Helsinki, which -- according to the Hel-Looks website, anyway -- has a significant micro-population currently copying 90s Tokyo style. Look at all the Decora and Gothic Lolita girls on the first page! Or the FRUiTS girl! They're Tokyo looks which have pretty much vanished from today's Tokyo. Has one city ever copied another quite so slavishly, and with quite such an odd time delay? Has one city ever become, in this way, another's museum?



Then there are the anomalies who are just so individual that they stand out wherever they are. Here's Hanayo, the Japanese pomo-geisha-superstar singer-slash-photographer. She's been living in Berlin for almost a decade, and although she does overlap with Japanese style (the poncho she's wearing in the StreetPeeper snap could fit quite nicely into Web-Across' poncho Zoom Up feature, although the colour would have to be muted down a bit), she's really her own person; not so much an amalgam of styles articulated by different cities as a group of one. Check out her video interview on Flasher.com.

Street fashion sites used in this report: Look at Me (Moscow), StreetPeeper (international), Dropsnap (Japan), Facehunter (London), Hel-Looks (Helsinki). Cities shown in photos: Moscow, Jakarta, Tokyo, London, Warsaw, Helsinki, Berlin.

Comments

Before I even humor this topic with discussion...

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

...put your money where your mouth is:

Girl A:


Girl B:


Girl C


Girl D:



3 of these girls are examples of Chinese street fashion. One is an example of Japanese street fashion. Which girl is Japanese? Ive even thrown in a girl who looks like shes just walked straight out of the 90's, so you know shes Chinese (sorry Chinese readers... it's true.)

I dont want excuses. :o) Put your theory to the test.

Re: Before I even humor this topic with discussion...

[(Anonymous)]

It's a trick question. They're all Nigerians in disguise.

Re: Before I even humor this topic with discussion...

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

YOU OMG SPOILEDED IT!!!1!

Re: Before I even humor this topic with discussion...

[(Anonymous)]

Girl A has Japanese features

Re: Before I even humor this topic with discussion...

[ex-newironsh15.livejournal.com]

is girl C the 90's girl ?? this is hard

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

blending in

Look, imomus just said "blending in".

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Helsinki needs imomus to give it a jolt. Our conception of dress is currently more or less "anything that protects from the cold".

[imomus.livejournal.com]

...and/or looks like Hanoi Rocks (http://hel-looks.com/?p=image/archives/7/20070915_05/) or FRUiTS circa 1998 (http://hel-looks.com/?p=image/archives/1/20071209_01/), if Hel-Looks (http://hel-looks.com/) is to be trusted!

New Year in Berlin?

[(Anonymous)]

my friend and i are planning to spend the christmas/new year hollidays in Berlin - which area of the city would be interesting to stay in? we are trying to avoid big name hotel chains etc.

any advice from the users of this brilliant site?

Re: New Year in Berlin?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You should probably just stay in Mitte at The Circus Hostel (http://www.circus-berlin.de/).

Re: New Year in Berlin?

[(Anonymous)]

Some creative googling will sort you out, I probably spend about five hours per day in my dwellings when I visit Berlin so cheap 'n' cosy does just fine.
I too try to avoid hotel chains but if I can get a good deal online I don't discriminate.
Mitte is a good base camp for the unacquainted visitor and I would second Momus' recommendation, public transport in Berlin is a paradigm of excellence however so even if you are staying a little further out it is easy to get around.
Thomas S.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

> Cities shown in photos: Moscow, Jakarta, Tokyo, London, Warsaw, Helsinki, Berlin.

No Liverpool, eh? Tsk.
I only bring it up cos I was listening to this last night:
"two-tone stretch nylon
yellow stripes on navy blue
I got a brand new track suit
I got the old one too"

[(Anonymous)]

Before I finish reading your post, please stop citing Richard Florida. He's as conservative as Reagan and Thatcher (Democrats have shifted that far to the right), and he supports the whole idea of the "creative class" working for no benefits, no pay raises, etc. etc. because ... they're creative and that's the invisible hand of the market. His ideas also make next to no sense.

All right, done. I don't think NYC has much of a street fashion scene anymore. Actually, nevermind ... Brooklyn did/does, but it was the style that became the template for a big chunk of this decade's international style (that whole indie/hipster thing), so I guess you don't notice it that much anymore.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

But America has also shifted further right than it even was in Reagan's time, so I think Florida is making very salient points when he talks about the economic importance of talent, technology and tolerance. His thing about visible gay populations being an important indicator of a city's ability to revive its economy in post-industrial directions, for instance, is an important message for red-state America to hear. I also like how Florida has a collectivist take on creativity. He doesn't fall back on tired old cliches about timeless individual genius. There are creative classes, subgroups which function like the intelligentsia in Marxism.

You know, some analyses of the US paint a dismal picture of the Democrats seeing their influence eroded steadily. What's important about Florida is that he shows that liberal values and economic growth accompany each other. If the US rejects Swedish-style liberal values, it will slip very rapidly down from its current economic pole position to something closer to the South Pole.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Although to be fair, it's a mixed package. There's a whole lot in those Swedish liberal values that America in general will not be able to embrace because of it being a different place with a different history and culture. There's also a whole lot in those Swedish liberal values which don't, in fact, particularly work in Sweden either and should probably be chucked out the window. (Or have been chucked out the window already as unfeasible - I'm looking at you, 87 per cent top income tax rate.)

[desant012.livejournal.com]

That's true; I just think he can get a little misguided about the whole free market of creativity (such as, the creative class and how impossible it is to get health benefits; becauseeeee you can just take your creativity somewhere better since -you're the means of production- ... that kinda thing). It implicitly supports the kind-of shabby treatment the Creative Class(R) gets today, though maybe he's written more recent stuff.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

The Camberwell College guy has the same body shape as you!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I was actually wearing a poncho (http://imomus.livejournal.com/206326.html) when I visited his art school last year.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

I see that you borrow clothes from your hosts. If I ever was your host, would you borrow one of my dresses? Or one of my hideous sweaters?

Oh, I also forgot! I had another dream about you AGAIN (GET OUT OF MY BRAIN, MOMUS) but this time you were on the cover of the Economist looking awkward. I asked you about it here and you didn't reply to me. :(

How now brown costume drama

[(Anonymous)]

The guy in the shirt is very London, very straight acting (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/oliver_kamm/2007/12/change_the_record.html) (the lengths some people go to these days). "I don't do hysteria. I post letters."

I agree with the inevitability of collective reflection, even if a creative something never sees the light of day (as in - there is no anti-production, no writer’s block, just the production of something else, repression is expression). A regional or national flavour, swings and seesaws of deference and righteousness, can't help but code itself in.

(Time too. I used to think “Ban costume dramas! Film should follow a modernist agenda like French New Wave and reflect the here and now we’re living in.” Costume drama made in the 1960s was ‘created by’ the 1960s, sci-fi in the 1980s is about discotheques and mullets, if you look it that level).

hhm

[(Anonymous)]

Momus- As well as relating to previously mentioned ideas of, and posts about, collective identity this seems essentially to be a logical continuation of (or extrapolation from) your posts about nationalism, the continuing existence of nations, 'places' etc.

Whilst all of this may be broadly true, i feel motivated to ask if there is anything actually to be gained from pointing it out, or to put it another way, might it not be that the fiction of individual creativity serves a particular purpose and that eroding a sense of this individual creativity might tend to lead to a more fatalistic, less 'expressive' populace?

Certainly it has long been a view of mine that individual freedom and the self considered as a free agent are for the most part necessary, and/or desirable, fictions to maintain (for a variety of more or less obvious reasons).

Re: hhm

[(Anonymous)]

See also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will#Neuroscience

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/science/02free.html?ex=1325394000&en=7d7a58876163384d&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Perhaps also
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19526154.200-free-will--is-our-understanding-wrong.html

I am struck by what seems to be a growing agreement among science and neuroscience types that 'free will' is basically an illusion but also, perhaps, that the -feeling- of freedom, of surfing the waves of sensory perception, mightn't be a bad thing. At least if the alternative is a lugubrious feeling of being dragged unwittingly behind our unconscious's and directed, really controlled, by external factors such as what we see other people wearing. No choice, just contingency. To what extent are the 13 year old finnish girls being shaped unconsciously by old japanese media?

Goths, punks, post punks, alternative rockers, neo-post punks, hip-hoppers etc. Hasn't it always been the case that those who seek to differentiate themselves from the rest inevitably end up just creating a sub class of sameness?

Re: hhm

[akabe.livejournal.com]

i rather agree and was going to post something similar.
collectivism, network, sameness blah blah are hegemony ; i doubt there's anyone here harbouring any crazy romantic ideas about their unique self that need to be corrected while i do think we could only benefit from (the illusion, at least of) extreme difference or radical subjecrtivity.

( ! nick, we need your spiritual guidance and inspiration)

[crowjake.livejournal.com]

It's a bit like speaking the language of clothing, but always expressing it with the local dialect; which is somewhat faster developing than vocal dialects. That's how I see it... I've just come home from uni in a city back to my suburban commuter village, and what certain clothes mean here, is very different to what they meant at uni, so I end up automatically making different decisions. Which doesn't make for collective creativity but more of an individual creativity contextualised.

I find the Helsinki thing baffling though!

[akabe.livejournal.com]

the helsinki thing is probably the most 'japanese' of them all not because the clothes happen to (supposedly) look japanese but because of the totality of its formal approach mixed with a radical semantic twist (or void if you want).