Fashion notes from Oslo

[imomus]

Visiting-lecturing at Oslo's art school last week I had a chance to check out the city's fashion memes. It seemed to me that the garment language in the vicinity of art school buildings was fairly close to what you'd see in creative areas of cities like Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, London: skinny jeans, Converse All Star plimsolls, a checked shirt or witty tee, a brightly-coloured keffiyeh scarf folded at the neck to make a point at the front, some chunky, brightly-coloured 80s-retro sunglasses or Rayban Wayfarer-type specs, hair rather neatly-trimmed at the sides and side-parted (in men) to evoke the 80s, neat beards.

Oslo -- you can peep the city yourself via Streetpeeper -- did seem slightly more formulaic than Berlin, though, slightly more "correct" in its approximation of this standard hipster outfit, as if the kids there were working a bit harder or more self-consciously to get the look "right", and perhaps spending more money than Berliners would. In that sense, Oslo felt a teensy bit more conformist and provincial than Berlin; a city with a small and intense creative scene where everyone is "on the same page", rather than Berlin's interlocking multitudes, its different looks on different tribes: deliberately-sinister suedeheaded gays, Terries on the music scene rocking Terry moustaches and Terry frames, students without enough cash to shop at Adidas or American Apparel, fashion people in fashion person sempiternal black, eccentric artists doing eccentric things.

I suppose I'd have to fit that last category; I've never invested in a pair of skinny jeans or a keffiyeh; I like the way they bring colour to an outfit, but I suppose I feel they're like old school ties or something -- they signal membership of a club I'm not really part of, a twentysomething tribe whose language I'm too old to speak. Here are some keffiyeh kids spotted at a recent Peres Projects opening in Berlin, for instance:



In Oslo I sported, instead, my usual homeless eccentric look, buying a cheap purple blanket and draping it over my shoulders. It was warm enough for me to leave the house without a jacket or a coat, just my little Tibetan monk's bag slung over a shoulder, holding the "cape" on. A pair of Chinese drawstring trousers blurred the shape of too-tight tights beneath -- tights which could almost look like the skinniest pair of Levis ever, if you wore them with Converse and a keffiyeh. Which I don't, and won't.

I think my look is probably closer to the eccentricities of the Gay Kids we looked at the other day. I seem to want to be a middle-aged trapper-pirate version of the goofy kids in the Start-Rite poster. Oh, you don't remember the Start-Rite poster? Of course. You weren't around in the sixties.



Out of all the students I spent time with over the past week, the two coolest, in terms of their visual self-presentation, were men. Rickard was a bearded Swede with the most amazingly big pale blue eyes, Mauro a Colombian with straggly Jesus hair, clear caramel skin and an elegantly-hooked nose. I asked Mauro where he got his spectacles (Ray Bans with a clear section at the bottom of the frame), and he told me he'd bought them for 100 yen (about a dollar) off a street vendor in Shinjuku just two weeks ago. It was sort of ironic, because we'd been talking about whether Colombian artists get their ideas from art magazines in London and New York -- whether, in other words, Bogota is culturally "provincial". But not only does Mauro do his fashion shopping in Tokyo, when we got down to art specifics -- discussing, for instance, a Colombian artist whose work reminded me of Jake and Dinos Chapman's Chapman Family Collection, or a Colombian rap video that made me think of Buraka Som Sistema -- it turned out that the Colombian versions had been done before their Western equivalents. It may be New York and London which are "provincial".

Comments

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Early 90s is what, skinny jeans and flannel shirts with side parted hair and beat up Vans? It's the same shit people are wearing now... late 80s / early 90s. When I was a kid in 1991 I wore ... skinny jeans, button down flannels, and "plimsoles". Just watch Pump Up the Volume; that's what I see around Brooklyn. There's an almost 50/early 60sish vibe, too.

I wear that and it's OK; I know it's not cutting edge, but it "works". I -know- it's not cutting edge because conventionally attractive people with no horse in "indie" or "alternative" are totally into it, which is a bad sign if you're really into being on the edge.

Momus fashion alert: What I've been seeing around Brooklyn that represents a shift are those undercut haircuts for guys, particularly in bowl form (way more 90s early 90s than 80s early 90s).

Sometimes I also see people wearing baggy, messy old clothes. I think they're doing it by accident, as in, they're totally unconscious to fashion, but for a moment it looks refreshingly different since -everyone- wears skinny jeans and plaid (yes, it has long officially reached the normals). I don't think it's quite time for baggy clothing, and I"ll probably be too old to care when it does _thank god_, but it seems like things are moving there.

[(Anonymous)]

or at least could. I want out by the time that happens. Memories of being 15 are not something I want to be wearing around with me every day.

1990

[imomus.livejournal.com]

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[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I don't recall skinny jeans being the thing in the late 80s/early 90s. I associate rips, patches, and acid wash with that time. But I was still pretty little, so most of my exposure to current fashion was through Clarissa Explains It All.

I will say that in 1990/1991, as one of the gay kids Momus has been mentioning, I went through a brief rainbow phase, where I was obsessed with clothing that had the full spectrum on it, especially when set against a black background.

I'm happy to report that it's only taken Kanye West (http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1604620/20090209/west_kanye.jhtml) 18 years to catch up to my gay preteen impulses: he's jealous of the gays for their "fresh-ass logo like the rainbow." It's refreshing to hear an argument for co-opting the rainbow made on aesthetic and not political grounds.

"I'm doing a blog right now where I've been collecting all of the freshest stuff that's rainbows — Denver Nuggets jerseys, BAPE shoes, Nikes with rainbows on 'em — and saying, "Man I think as straight men we need to take the rainbow back because it's fresh." It looks fresh. I just think that because stereotypically gay people got such good like style that they were smart enough to take a fresh-ass logo like the rainbow and say that it's gonna be theirs. But I was like "Man I think we need to have the rainbow" — the idea of colors , life and colors and stuff, I mean how is that a gay thing? Colors? Having a lot of colors is gay?"

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Well, skinny relative to the gangsta rap fashions that were emerging ... they were definitely on the way out. I grew up in the New York City area so there was a lot urban trickle, and I remember the "home girl" types used to make fun of us white kids for wearing "those skin tight jeans up to your waist"; gangsta sagging was already taking over.

That Candy Flip video is ridiculous. Maybe it was different in the US ... the few memories I have of that period are summed up by movies like Slacker. You definitely see people dressing like that again, and that was 1991. It'd be funny if hipster kids in the UK started dressing in their version of early 90s clothing, whatever that may be.

[(Anonymous)]

Here's the US version of that Candy Flip video for pure 1990 ridiculousness.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"It's refreshing to hear an argument for co-opting the rainbow made on aesthetic and not political grounds."

Kanye West has been "fighting the cause" ever since his cousin came out to him. I also challenge you to read this quote by Kanye West without sniggering:

"Titles are very important. I like to embody titles, y’know, or words that have negative connotations, and explain why that’s good. Take the word gay—like, in hip-hop, that’s a negative thing, right? But in the past two, three years, all the gay people I’ve encountered have been, like, really, really, extremely dope. Y’know, I haven’t, like, gone to a gay bar, nor do I ever plan to. But where I would talk to a gay person—the conversation would be mostly around, like, art or design—it’d be really dope. From a design standpoint, kids’ll say, ‘Dude, those pants are gay.’ But if it’s, like, good, good, good fashion-level, design-level stuff, where it’s on a higher level than the average commercial design stuff, it’s, like, gay people that do that. I think that should be said as a compliment. Like, ‘Dude, that’s so good it’s almost . . . gay.’"

You have nothing to fear, heterosexuals -- the gays are here to introduce your boring lives to art and fashion. No, don't thank us, that's just what we do.