83 lines
5.9 KiB
Plaintext
83 lines
5.9 KiB
Plaintext
Anti-fashion
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<p>Manolo the Shoeblogger writes in <a href='http://www.shoeblogs.com/wordpress/2005/10/25/the-paradox-of-not-caring/'>The<br />
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Paradox of Not Caring</a>: “claiming to not care about the clothes, to<br />
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not be concerned about what one wears, it the paradox, for the clothes<br />
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worn by one who claims not to care make as much the statement as those<br />
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worn by one who dresses with the purpose.” He’s got a point. And yet,<br />
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there is a difference between fashionistas like most of his fans and<br />
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anti-fashionistas like me, and it’s an important one.</p>
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<p><span id="more-229"></span></p>
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<p>Here’s what I wear. Rockports or hiking boots, good-quality black<br />
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jeans (usually Land’s End), chammy shirts a la L.L. Bean in the winter<br />
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and polos or four-pocket bush shirts in the summer. Unlike most<br />
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geeks, I don’t wear T-shirts very often. My color tastes run to solid<br />
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high-saturation “jewel tones” and outdoorsy plaids.</p>
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<p>I have an A-2, a classic brown-leather flight jacket, that I wear<br />
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pretty much whenever it isn’t so hot I’d stifle, and I bought a<br />
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polar-fleece vest specifically so I can keep wearing the A-2 in deep winter<br />
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weather. Occasionally I wear Aussie-style bush fedoras.</p>
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<p>The last clothing fad I actually liked was the vogue for safari<br />
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gear in the mid-1980s; I’d still wear that stuff, but I wore almost<br />
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all of mine out.</p>
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<p>I tend to buy somewhat better-quality and more expensive clothing<br />
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than my peers, but in styles that are designed for durability and ease<br />
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of maintainance rather than flash (nothing I normally wear requires<br />
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ironing or dry-cleaning). I favor simple designs in good materials, and<br />
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I don’t buy anything I don’t expect to be wearing for at least five<br />
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years (except that my shoes unavoidably wear out faster than that).</p>
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<p>To use terms that Manolo wouldn’t, my clothing choices have both<br />
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a functional level and a semiotic one. Manolo’s point is that the<br />
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semiotic level will be there whether it’s intended or not. The<br />
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functional level is obvious, I wear clothes that minimize the amount<br />
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of time I have to spend worrying about clothes.</p>
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<p>But I know what the semiotics of my clothes are, too. What I wear<br />
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is a modern spin on classic no-nonsense men’s clothing, with an<br />
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outdoorsy masculine emphasis — the sources for its design<br />
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elements are explorers, soldiers, aviators, and engineers. There’s<br />
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an implied contrast with high-maintainance indoor clothing designed<br />
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primarily to express the wearer’s position in a social hierarchy;<br />
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the implication is that I don’t care to play that game, and<br />
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don’t have to.</p>
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<p>(But there’s another level to that. When you consider durability<br />
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and how often one has to buy new clothes, the L.L. Bean/Lands’ End<br />
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version of outdoorsy clothing I wear is almost certainly less<br />
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expensive over the long haul than most of the ostensibly cheaper stuff<br />
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at your local mall. Nevertheless, it requires larger lumps of<br />
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investment, so it is in its own way a form of wealth display.)</p>
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<p>My choices also intentionally suggest that I have no use for<br />
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fashion trends — that I’m self-assured enough to wear what<br />
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<em>I</em> like, not what’s hip this season. And that’s why, at least</p>
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<p>for me, Manolo’s Paradox of Not Caring is more apparent than real.<br />
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Fashionistas are concerned with what everybody else thinks is cool, and<br />
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that changes randomly and rapidly; anti-fashionistas, like me, seek a<br />
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personal style to settle into that expresses what <em>doesn’t</em><br />
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change about them.</p>
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<p>For me, that’s adventurers’ clothing, sort of Indiana Jones lite<br />
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— except I liked that look before the movies. I can make it<br />
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work because I’m a muscular guy with a strong physical presence;<br />
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people look at the way I dress and carry myself and then aren’t very<br />
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surprised to learn that I’ve lived on three continents, visited over<br />
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fifteen countries, been fluent in three languages besides English, and<br />
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that I’m a serious martial artist who can fight hand-to-hand in any of<br />
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three styles or with sword or pistol. They aren’t supposed to be<br />
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surprised; semiotically, conveying toughness and competence and<br />
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resourcefulness is exactly what my clothes are for.</p>
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<p>There’s a subtler message in there as well. I’m an intellectual,<br />
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a thinker, a geek. I could dress to emphasize that, but why bother?<br />
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It’s going to be obvious whenever I open my mouth. It’s much more fun<br />
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to play off the fact that people don’t expect intellectuals to look<br />
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natural in adventurers’ clothing, or people who look natural in<br />
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adventurers’ clothing to be intellectuals. Yeah. I want to <em>bust</em><br />
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those categories! I want to make it clear that I don’t fit neatly in<br />
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either box, or for that matter in any box at all.</p>
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<p>So, even if I weren’t attracted to flight jackets and safari gear<br />
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and the adventurer look, I would make something of a point of not<br />
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usually dressing like a generic computer geek.</p>
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<p>But getting back to Manolo’s point…the high-level message of<br />
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fashion is “I am a herd animal, a follower, concerned primarily with<br />
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the opinion of others”. When people claim not to care what they wear,<br />
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than can be sloppiness or it can be an individualist impulse trying to<br />
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break the herd-animal pattern. OK, so he’s got it right that we<br />
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cannot avoid sending messages with our clothes — but at least<br />
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some of us try to look like ourselves, rather than like everybody else.</p>
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