According to a blogger at MyItThings, Manolo Blahnik is going to be coming out with a line of shoes for men. Izzy was very excited by the news, until he realized that from the looks of the designs, Blahnik is apparently trying to appeal to the pimp-clown demographic. The Manolo, not to be confused with the Manolo, is equally devastated.
The Smoking Gun is featuring a slideshow of some of the all-too-appropriate t-shirts worn in mugshots. It leads Izzy to believe that anti-social attire does in fact correlate with anti-social behavior.
Ain’t nothin’ like a blousey “sateen” shirt with narrow-waisted pleated trousers. If this is how the Heartland of America dresses, Izzy is sticking to the Brainland.
Francesca has drawn Izzy’s attention to a series of mind-boggling pages from J. C. Penny’s 1977 catalog. He doesn’t quite know whether she deserves to be thanked or cursed. Either way, it helped to confirm Izzy’s speculation that the seventies ruined the color yellow forever. Also, why the heck is it ambiguous as to whose hand in the gentleman’s pocket? It’s not as if J. C. Penny has ever aimed for the Bert and Ernie demographic.
Just in time for Halloween, a horror-show of a documentary about Karl Lagerfeld has opened in New York. According to one review:
Mr. Lagerfeld claims to be “a complete improvisation.”
“I don’t want to be real in other people’s minds,” he declares. “I want to be an apparition.”
[…]
As a child, he admits, he was “unbearable and spoiled” and compares himself to Shirley Temple. Even now, he cannot go to sleep without a pillow clutched to his stomach.
His mother, he says, was “the polar opposite of a typical German mother.” She “exuded frivolity” and “made slaves of everyone.” Mr. Lagerfeld displays a similar mixture of eccentricity and severity. With his white ponytail, high white collars, sunglasses, fingerless gloves (his hands are festooned with rings) and preference for black, he resembles a man of the cloth, “a defrocked one,” he says matter-of-factly.
[…]
His most unsettling remarks concern friendship. Hanging over every close relationship, he asserts, is a sword of Damocles. And he implies that many have been permanently exiled from his court. “Forgiveness isn’t something I’m preoccupied with,” he says. “Turning the other cheek is not my trip. The curtain falls: an iron curtain.”
Izzy thinks that Lagerfeld needs a hug.
Izzy suspects that this oil wildcatter likes pouring on the heavy crude a bit too much.
If plagiarism is a fashion crime, then the fashion detectives has better investigate this suspicious case. Because really, is it likely that two different designers independently created shiny Mr. Peanut?
Bow, mortal, to Nipplelopochtli, Aztec god of pectorals and, uh, acid-washed jeans.
Behold this page from the 1975 J.C. Penny catalog, which deserves to be seen fully blown up to get the full effect. While it’s easy to knock disco-pimp fashion, whether it’s the butch decolletage or the high-waisted polyester trousers with crotches cut too close to home, at least the clogs benefitted the shorter manimal (like the model on the right). As bad as these outfits are, truly beyond the pale are those cuffed bell-bottoms, something Izzy had never seen even in his worst disco nightmare. The only way this advertisement could have been any worse were if it had been scratch-and-sniff.
Pulitzer-prize-winning poet James Merrill was raised in a highly privileged setting (his father was a co-founder of Merrill Lynch), which should be kept in mind when reading his “Self-Portrait in Tyvek™ Windbreaker,” a meditation on the effects of dressing down. Here’s an excerpt, but Izzy encourages you to read the whole thing:
The windbreaker is white with a world map.
DuPont contributed the seeming-frail,
Unrippable stuff first used for Priority Mail.
Weightless as shoes reflected in deep water,
The countries are violet, orange, yellow, green;
Names of the principal towns and rivers, black.
A zipper’s hiss, and the Atlantic Ocean closes
Over my blood-red T-shirt from the Gap.I found it in one of those vaguely imbecile
Emporia catering to the collective unconscious
Of our time and place. This one featured crystals,
Cassettes of whalesong and rain-forest whistles,
Barometers, herbal cosmetics, pillows like puffins,
Recycled notebooks, mechanized lucite coffins
For sapphire waves that creast, break, and recede,
As they presumably do in nature still.Sweat-panted and Reeboked, I wear it to the gym.
My terry-cloth headband is green as laurel.
A yellow plastic Walkman at my hip
Sends shiny yellow tendrils to either ear.[…]
Americans, blithe as the last straw,
Shrug off accountability by dressing
Younger than their kids—jeans, ski-pants, sneakers,
A baseball cap, a happy-face T-shirt . . .
Like first-graders we “love” our mother Earth,
Know she’s been sick, and mean to care for her
When we grown up. Seeing my windbreaker,
People hail me with nostalgic awe.“Great jacket!” strangers on streetcorners impart.
The Albanian doorman pats it: “Where you buy?”
Over his ear-splitting drill a hunky guy
Yells, “Hey, you’ll always know where you are, right?”
“Ever the fashionable cosmopolite,”
Beams Ray. And “Voilà mon pays”—the carrot-haired
Girl in the bakery, touching with her finger
The little orange France above my heart.Everyman, c’est moi, the whole world’s pal!
The pity is how soon such feelings sour.
As I leave the gym a smiling-as-if-I-should-know-her
Teenager—oh but I mean, she’s wearing “our”
Windbreaker, and assumes . . . Yet I return her wave
Like an accomplice. For while all humans aren’t
Countable as equals, we must behave
As if they were, or the spirit dies (Pascal).[…]
Having deplored low-hanging pants before, Izzy was happy to see that communities are taking action to end the uncivil plague. Pushed to extreme measures, municipalities have criminalized the attire, which is all-too-appropriate given that the style originated in prison, where belts are prohibited. In attempt to get around free-expression Constitutional claims, the laws are aimed at prohibiting public indecency.
The New York Times’ story taught Izzy something new:
Not since the zoot suit has a style been greeted with such strong disapproval. The exaggerated boxy long coat and tight-cuffed pants, started in the 1930s, was the emblematic style of a subculture of young urban minorities. It was viewed as unpatriotic and flouted a fabric conservation order during World War II. The clothing was at the center of what were called Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles, racially motivated beatings of Hispanic youths by sailors. The youths were stripped of their garments, which were burned in the street.
Although Izzy would never encourage a riot, he would like to see a peaceful march that chants “Do not share / derriere / We can see your underwear!” And of course the placards would read “Up with pants!”
In theory, an umbrella for two sounds like a good idea. In practice, it looks like a freak science experiment gone awry, like some mutant cells stuck permanently in mitosis. Izzy is reaching for his scalpel…
