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The Conformity is Killing Me

Sat, 28 Sep 2013 22:36:51 GMT

Here's a great and succinct piece about fast fashion ... and its anti-dote, slow fashion.

So much is important, yet one aspect that grips me these days is the homogenizing of design.

Street style is starting to look like high-school: people are adhering more and more to proscriptive ways of dress - everyone's starting to look the same. (And I'm referring to grown-ups, those, hopefully, self-possessed and independent, unlike teens subjected to the angst-ridden and cruel pressures of high school.)

With the net jettisoning messages worldwide in an instant, the street here is becoming the street there, stretching into one continuous uniform strip; Brisbane, Stockholm, Austin, Bangkok, London, Florence, Amsterdam, Brooklyn (yes, that leveller of aesthetic), Kyoto, you name it, it's all starting to resemble what I see in my own neighbourhood of Vancouver.

Glance at a copy of Monocle or Dwell, scroll through The Sartorialist, style is synchronizing into a few narrowing parameters, an undifferentiating template subordinating language, culture and place. Clothing, its merchandizing, cafés, apothecaries (!), even bicycles, all seem to be falling into, or out of, one curatorial gaze.

So, my question: whose gaze is it?

Sometimes rules are made to be broken

Fri, 19 Jul 2013 14:55:36 GMT

So, I broke more rules last night, and was even better at it 2nd time 'round.

I saw Frances Ha, in a bone fide movie theatre, and treated myself to a coke and popcorn. I then meandered home along the seawall on South False Creek.

At Spyglass ferry dock, I came across one of the public pianos, and a young man was playing the entire soundtrack from Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, barefoot, so I sat on a bench and listened for a while, watching a few skiffs skim along in the creek dodging sailboat squats.

Further on, I bought a cup of coconut ice cream and continued meandering. Close to home I jumped in a car2go because I was tired, and was then completely enchanted by a song on CBC's The Signal, so much so that I sat in the parked car to hear the song finish.

Le Fabuleux Hier Soir de Zoe

Here's that Signal song, inexplicably called Obvious Bicycle, which is a great title. The band is Vampire Weekend.

PS:
France Ha, by the way, is great. I think it's the most accomplished film by Noah Baumbach so far. Co-written with Greta Gerwig, the dialogue resonates and elucidates, even for those of us past our 20s. And Gerwig's Frances finely conveys the complexity of drifting when it gets away from us, and how a returning to self can be as light and gradual as the initial cutting loose. Sometimes without any one particular, discernible moment, or gesture, or decision to do so, we come back, very much like the way we drifted off - an accumulation, through time, composed of circumstances and gestures and decisions, none of which mounts to enough on its own. It calls to mind a poem I wrote about a boyfriend I once had, D:
to drift is not to flow
to rock is not to roll
to want is not to will

PSS:
What rules were broken?
Not so much rules as my practice of living on a very modest budget. So I splurged, intentionally. I took myself out, with a promise to do so free of worry and regret.
Frances Ha went to Paris for a weekend. I went to the movies.

My pencil is under construction. Please check back for the 1st entry of what will become my blog. Merci.

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:24:04 GMT

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