American Culture$
New York has Baby Phat and Heatherette. Europe has Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga.
Why is it that we lose real fashion, a la Boudicca, to Europe? It's because to be in Parisian or London Fashion Week requires that you be invited by an elitist council before you are permitted to show something you will call "fashion."
It is exactly what the difference between American and French Snobbery is. In the US: If you have lots of money, you can bypass manners, etiquette, cultural knowledge, and to some extent: talent, style, and intelligence. In Europe it seems at least the rich are eating with the right forks when they are making snotty comments over dinner.
Personally, I prefer the historical snobbery of corsets and sixteen utensils. Because at least its culturally grounded in aristocracy over the ages. Here you can drive an H2 and spit out the window while smoking Newports, so long as you make sure everyone knows you are wealthy, your ass will get nice and kissed.
American culture in the 20's up until the 80's had some character. As technology increases and monopolies slowly and silently build up in the media and mass production arena, the person who can be the greediest is allowed to dictate the fashion of our day.
That's why at New York Fashion Week, it's either pure bore market friendly or Spectacle that transcends any perhaps misses any fashion market functionality, (which is neccessary for a designer to truly change anything.)
It's like we can be the local times or Star magazine with little that does not try to be some sort of conveniently digestible entertaining knowledge with spectacle in between, a la The Post's Article about both the weather and Mariah Carey's outfit, entitled "Mariah doesn't care if her knees freeze."
Come on America, we get it! You know how to make a lot of money by catering to traditional and boring people. We get it. You are capable of surprising people with your raucous, lewd, and spectacled, psuedo-punk cocaine and alcohol infested party people. But what are our cultural values aside from what is market-friendly, and what rises with its sole purpose to fight against captitalism? Who is creating their own space here and surviving in the mess? Wayne Coyne? Charlie Kauffman? The New Yorker?
You tell me.
A Wonderful Arial View if You Were an Insect.
7 comments:
Fuck America man
You don't need to try and save it
We'll all be better off after the revolution.
snobbery is just a form of laziness, or fear i guess because it doesnt require people to do the work of getting to know individuals.
i dont think europe is really more ideal than a lot of places in the us, especially if you are nonwhite.
LA is worse: a black convertible pulling up to pick up a rich old man driven by his plastic young lover. passenger seat holding a large shaggy dog. dog is waving out the window as the car pulls up. dog jumps out, stands on his hind legs, gives man a huge hug. leaps into the back seat and waits patiently for the car to pull away. what to make of this? at least NY fashion scene dogs are small. this dog is out to start his own line of organic beauty products, while simultaneously trying to fight a very specific and indiscrete substance abuse problem that is 'not a problem.' or something.
Am I "nonwhite?" Because I kind of don't think so.
This is true, but hopefully we are in the throes of the grand death of American Colonialism. Just as English Colonialism died and left a country that kinda wants to party and go crazy all the time, hopefully by the time China invades we will just be sick to death of it all and holding seances and consuming in such mass quantities that the cocoon has no choice but to burst. We'll probably die in handcuffs but who knows.
I dunno x what is europe like for u? (making fun of my own comment)
i guess i forgot about jazz
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