Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Confused

I am terribly judgmental about other people's sense in fashion. Truly I have no right to be this way: 1) I am not the most fashionable person by far, 2) I don't actually wear clothes very well, 3) I'm a very safe dresser...really taking no risks with fashion. And I'm not judgmental in a mean point and laugh kind of way (well not outside of my head), but it's a sort of game for me...spot the one in need of a What Not to Wear makeover.

One of my favorite categories is those suffering from Versace Syndrome. I first diagnosed this syndrome while walking around Hong Kong, and have since noticed it just about everwhere I go. Winners department store is particularly guilty of spreading this disease. People don't seem to understand that ugly clothes are ugly clothes regardless of designer. It doesn't matter if the label Versace is stenciled across your ass - if it's ugly, you don't have a license to wear it. (Versace just seemed to be the most prolific of offenders in Hong Kong, thus the name).

Why am I talking about this? Because the other day I ran into a woman and she completely stumped me. Was her outfit brilliant or hideous? Here it is, a week later and I woke up thinking about it. She was dressed head to toe in shades of gray (which is sort of poetic in itself): gauzy floating skirt, layered v-neck t-shirts, wrist bands and ballet flats. Her hair was blonde and that kind of long crazy curly that just might spontaneously dreadlock if you give it some time. So at this point I'm ready to pass her off as a typical hippy...nothing particularly noticable. Except, there were holes all over her clothes. At first I thought that she'd just let a moth at them and was about due for another trip to Value Village. But the more I think about it now, the more Ithink that the holes might have been their purposefully - they seemed very strategic and well placed and allowed one to see the layers underneath.

I don't know...now I look back on what I've written and I realize that it has occupied far too much of my mind space for far too long. Oh well...

Oh yeah...and I've owned Sam Roberts We Were Born In A Flame for years...at least five. And I knew that people would rave about him and he's Canadian and therefore throw up your arms and love him, and I just never got it. But for some reason it has been in my play list a lot lately, and now I get it. I love him...he's lovely. It kind of reminds me of Smashing Pumpkins Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness which I was kind of ambivalent about when I first heard it, but the more you listen the more wonderful it is and there was a time I considered it one of my favorite albums ever. (Hey, that was back in the nineties...there have been a lot of albums since, and only so much room at the top of my favorites list).

4 comments:

Indiana James said...

Man, I really have to clear my eyes and carefully process what I read at 4 in the morning. Your second reason, I thought for a moment said that you don't actually wear clothes... Man.

Holey layered greyness. Sounds like a tagline that Batman would get from Robin in the old days. She could be maniacal if you spent more time around her to find out. BTW, was she an older or a younger lady?

Amy said...

i'll shamelessly admit, melancholy is one of my top 5 favourite albums of all times.

holes in clothes? here's my taste:

holes that naturally appear = cool. no matter what.

holes that are strategically placed in new clothing = can be cool/ can be really dorky. it depends what the clothes are paired with.

and in defense of thinking about clothing: it's an art like any other art. if we think about music, or paintings, or writing, why not the way we decorate ourselves? aint no shame in it.

what would be shameful would be judging people based on their tastes.

Lin-Zed said...

Younger lady...maybe 22 or so

Indiana James said...

Hmmm in which case perhaps trying too hard. I'd have to see it, but I'm with Amy, natural holes are cool as they usually have stories to them, like the holes in the jeans I got from sliding along the highway after I got hit on my motorcycle and left for dead on the highway last year.