Tagged: opinion

Coming Into The Closet.

The following are all things that have been said to me at, or regarding my presence at, fashion events:

  • ‘Oh yeah, you and room full of women, bet I know why you like that so much!’
  • ‘Doesn’t your girlfriend ever get jealous of you hanging around with all these fashion girls? If she does, give me a call.’
  • ‘I hope the boys who are coming know this is about blogging, not picking up chicks.’
  • ‘Here you go mate, have a few extra free drinks tokens if you’re going to be stuck up there all night.’ (Ok, admittedly this was actually pretty nice of this guy to offer, even if it was misguided)
  • ‘Sorry, tonight’s girls only!’
  • ‘So what’s actually your story? We all know there are no straight men in fashion.’

It’s an ongoing joke that there are ‘no straight men in fashion’, one that isn’t completely unfounded – aside from a few biggies like Oscar de la Renta, Christian Lacroix, Paul Smith and Tommy Hilfiger, I struggle to think of many straight male fashion designers. However, I’m not here to talk about straight fashion creators, rather straight male fashion enthusiasts and the discrimination they face.

I’ve been interested in fashion for as long as I can remember. Even as a boy (once I outgrew my penchant for oversized American sports jerseys and Big Dog t-shirts), fashion fascinated me because of the extent to which it pervades popular culture. In my teenage years, I devoured magazines like Vogue, Cosmo and InStyle, always making sure that I had an alibi for doing so – I would read them in the hairdresser’s because there was ‘nothing else to read’, or because I was ‘THAT bored’ in the sixth form common room. By the time I went to University, I had given up on quipping to cashiers that I was buying fashion magazines ‘for the girlfriend’ and gathered them with impunity. The common thread in all of this is that I knew (or at least, felt) that fashion wasn’t something I was supposed to be interested in. When male interest in fashion went mainstream, the term metrosexual was born. Of course, it’s worth noting that this term is still shrouded with a sense of ‘otherness’ – the implication is that men who like fashion, even if they aren’t gay, are still somehow different from their hetero brethren.

Since I started blogging more regularly about fashion, I’ve made some incredible friends who have welcomed me into the scene with open arms. However, they have been the exception, not the rule. The sad fact is that I feel alienated from much of the fashion community on a daily basis. I see new bloggers quickly becoming chummy with fashion PRs, being invited to events that I haven’t even heard about and being sent freebies, despite the fact that they’ve been on the scene for a matter of days. I’ve been pretty down about it recently and have found myself wondering if I’m just a really unlikeable person – I can be pretty self-centred and come across as fairly obnoxious, so before I made any generalisations I decided to see if this is just my problem. Thankfully, I quickly found out that it isn’t.

I spoke to a lot of male fashion bloggers, some straight and some gay, and most of them told me that they’ve all had similar experiences. Arash Mazinani told me that he believes that ‘in my limited experience, I’ve found that gay men are welcomed more warmly by bloggers’ and that despite having previously worked at a big high fashion department store ‘I’ve never been invited to their local fashion events when other female bloggers in my city have, which I was a bit disappointed by.’ Joseph Kent, of Unlimited by JK (which I love, by the way), told me that he’s “found it difficult as a male fashion blogger in gaining followers and being noticed by brands/PR companies etc.” He describes it as “rather a blow, because more than just having fun at these events, I’m trying to further my career into fashion journalism by networking and building relationships.” Even after a year of knowing Joseph, a lot of people on his journalism course thought he was gay (he isn’t), with one remarking that “I know you’re straight, but I find it hard to believe, because you have such a good fashion blog.”

Speaking with one gay male fashion blogger, who asked not to be identified, was a particularly interesting experience. He told me that women, particularly fashion bloggers, almost immediately start cooing when they meet him because they’re desperate for a gay best friend. However, he told me that “they soon lose interest, as I act quite differently depending on the people I’m mingling with. It’s like as soon as we’re not at an event, I’m not gay enough for them anymore.” He poignantly described this experience as being similar to his coming out – “Sure, it was tough at school when everyone found out I was gay. Everyone seemed to forget about it after a while, then when I didn’t expect it someone would make a joke or generalisation and it would come right back to the surface. It’s the same with some of these girls – we might not have talked in ages, but when they need the token homo opinion on something that’s when they pick up the phone.” He also told me about the way in which he feels he has become a parody of himself – “I do sometimes think about whether the things I’m saying are ‘gay enough’. It gets to me sometimes, and I end up questioning my whole identity.”

In recent years the mainstream media has done little to help break stereotypes of gay and straight men – while shows like Sex and the City and Will and Grace romanticise the idea of the GBF, as if they’re a chihuahua in a handbag or some other bang on trend accessory, columns that ‘ask the straight bloke’s opinion’ feature footnotes by an (almost exclusively female) industry expert who rips their ideas to shreds and laughs at how wrong they are. Men are placed on a two point scale, with the lager swilling, football loving, boob honking caveman at one end and the immaculately groomed, purple suit wearing, flaming homosexual at the other. There seems to be a need to round off anyone who falls somewhere in the middle to one side or the other, which might explain why people seem shocked when they discover that, while I might use three different kinds of moisturiser and like to watch ballet, I’d give my left pinkie for a night with Kate Middleton. The fact that I don’t ‘fit’ with the traditional idea of the gay male fashion enthusiast immediately calls my motives into question, and tends to make girls think that I’m only there to get into their trousers. Whereas, actually, I’m probably just interested in looking at their trousers.

So, my point? Well, people say there are no straight men in fashion. Maybe they need to work a little bit harder at letting them in.

A Tale of Loose Women and Man-Haters

Note: This post originally appeared as a guest post on Caitlin Moran’s website.

bill bailey feminism

‘Don’t much like the look of this,’ says a woman at work, reading the back cover of How to be a Woman. ‘Really? Why not?’ I inquire innocently. ‘She sounds like one of those man-haters. Mind you, I never find women funny. All that lot on Loose Women? I’d shoot them.’ ‘Oh,’ I say. And that’s pretty much all I say, because truthfully? This woman scares me a little bit. She almost always wears pantsuits, used to be in the military (no-one dares ask doing what exactly) and would definitely look at you cock-eyed if you used the phrase ‘mumpreneur’ within a five mile radius of her.

The incident got me thinking about how much stock we, as a species, place in stereotypes and conventions. Although we’ve moved a long way towards unpicking the ideology of racism (except for the odd grandparent remarking that ‘there are a lot of coloured people on the telly’ at Christmas dinner), we don’t seem to be doing anywhere near as well when it comes to gender – the fact that I used to know someone at University whose two favourite tops were his ‘kick racism out of football’ jersey and a t-shirt that bore some humourless slogan about women needing to make him a sandwich attests to this. Trust me, he didn’t need anyone else making him sandwiches.

When I tell people about my interest in women’s issues the responses I get tend to vary from ‘lol, good one’ to ‘you a puff then?’ I’ve even had one person think it was all a Barney Stinson-esque scheme to get into women’s pants. As if I’m wily enough to uphold such a pretence. There are those who insist that the way to put an end to racism and sexism is to stop talking about it, but I simply can’t agree. I’ve been reading and talking a lot about street harassment recently, and discovered the sobering statistic that over 80% of women worldwide face it at some point. Having suffered street harassment from both men and women (clearly my good looks have appeal to those of every sexuality…*ahem*) in the past, I know that it’s not fun or flattering. Which leads me to the next problem…

On several of the occasions I’ve tried to speak about these instances, I’ve had people (both male and female) try to brush it off with remarks like ‘oh, you bloody loved it!’ Clearly they haven’t had anything similar happen to them. For me, the issue of treating the sexes as fundamentally different is the crux of the problem – we don’t need a women’s rights movement and a men’s rights movement pitching frantically to everyone in the middle. We need a unified, reasonable and strong equal rights movement that recognises that both Andy Gray and Richard Key’s sexist comments about female linesmen (err, lineswomen) AND Sharon Osbourne giggling on national TV about a woman drugging her husband, chopping off his penis and putting it in a garbage disposal are not only unacceptable, but utterly abhorrent.

Do I see that happening any time soon? Probably not. Because we’re back to stereotypes again – minorities in both the men’s rights (the ‘women are just going too far now’ crew) and women’s rights (the ‘man-haters’) movements give the majority a bad name, so a team-up in the near future is probably unlikely. I’ll be first to sign up if it happens, but until then I’ll just continue to sigh loudly when people think I’m gay, self hating or crazy just because I’m a ‘feminist’.

REVIEW: The Hunger Games

It’s my own fault really. About five days before I went to see The Hunger Games, I watched Battle Royale for the first time. Now I’m not going to be one of these people who’s like ‘ohh, Hunger Games ripped off Battle Royale!!!’ because by this logic Battle Royale also ripped off everything from Highlander to gladiators in Ancient Rome. But what I will say is that Battle Royale is complex, tense and utterly blood soaked. By comparison, it makes The Hunger Games look like Sweet Valley High with a couple of murders.

stars of hunger games
Battle Royale? Banned in a bunch of countries. Hunger Games? Photoshoot in Vanity Fair.

That said, The Hunger Games isn’t a bad film. Yes, I may have seen it for free, but that’s not the point. But since everyone and their dog is going on about how incredible it is, I thought I’d list some of the problems I had with the movie.

The biggest is that the film completely loses the sense of isolation that Katniss and the other competitors are meant to feel in the arena – from the artificial grid of the sky to cameras whirring away in tree trunks, the fabricated environment feels more like a paintball arena than anything else. And nobody dies in paintball. Well, except for these guys. Constantly flicking between the gamemakers and the contestants offers an interesting insight into the process of the games, but I would have preferred being totally immersed in Katniss’ experiences.

This guy's new nickname is Shakin' Stevens.

A quick note on a technical aspect of the movie – having done film studies through to A-level, maybe I should know what the team was trying to accomplish with the shaky camerawork. But I don’t. And, at times, it makes The Blair Witch Project looks overproduced.

Another huge problem is the complete loss of subtlety. In the books, Katniss and Haymitch’s relationship develops through his withholding of food and medicine from sponsors. This forces her to consider how he wants her to act and who she should ally herself with. No danger of such psychological torment in the movies though, since they tuck little notes in the packages from sponsors. Seriously. Also, the mockingjay pin becomes something Katniss gets in the market for free rather than a gift obtained through a friendship borne out of terrible circumstances. Why not, I mean it’s only one of the most important symbols in the book…

Character development is also, to put it mildly, shallow. We only see Gale’s (Abercrombie model) face a few times, Foxface isn’t even referred to by name until the final third of the movie and Rue only speaks to Katniss a few times before…well, you know. The casting of Rue is utterly perfect (though a bunch of idiotic tweeters weren’t happy about her being played by a black actress), with Amandla Stenberg offering up a wonderful blend of mischief and innocence. Oh, and the riot scene that follows Rue’s death is genuinely one of the most powerful and touching pieces of film I’ve ever encountered.

A Quest Called Tribes.

Note: Google spiders would probably prefer I called this article ‘tribes in fashion’ or ‘post tribalist style’ (apparently they don’t ‘get’ puns), so I hope you ’80s kids appreciate the reference.

fixie hipster tribe

We all know someone who looks like this, right? Yes, they might not have the beard, or the chest piece, but you know someone who is just like this person. And if the site I drew it from is correct (which it almost always is), they’re probably a fan of acts like Girl Talk, Ratatat, Animal Collective, Freelance Whales and Grizzly Bear. Two of which a female friend (and manifestation of the fixed gear hipster) literally recommended on her Twitter the other day.

This week I stumbled across an article in Shortlist’s fashion magazine for men, MODE, about tribes in fashion. The article sets the scene well (recounting Hooligans, mods, Teddy Boys etc), which is nice as I don’t have the energy to rehash all of that here. However, its slightly weak conclusion (namely that hipsters sampling various styles from different eras is just another form of tribalism) left me feeling that Robinson ended the piece where it should have just been beginning.

The MODE article neatly references Ted Polhemus, an anthropologist specialising in street style, who claims that ‘most of us are now both post-tribal and post-fashion. The name of the game is to do your own thing.’ I call bullshit. As Tyler Durden uttered in Fight Club, ’you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.’

uniqlo brian kanagaki
Brian Kanagaki

Although we are definitely not post-tribal, we do seem to have developed the ability to inhabit more than one tribe at once. Take me, for example – by day, I’m a preppy, fashion blogger type. By night, you’ll usually find me watching underground bands like Loma Prieta or Touche Amore screaming their way a set in some grim bar’s basement. You’d think that’s a combination that wouldn’t be too common, right? Well, it’s one I share with Brian Kanagaki, the bassist of Loma Prieta. And about twenty other guys at any one of their shows.

Brian Kanagaki Loma Prieta
Brian Kanagaki

So how, all of a sudden, are we able to switch between tribes so easily? I blame the internet. In ‘the old days’ if you wanted to become (or at least look like) a punk, you’d have to spend years buying Doc Martens, a denim jacket to safety pin patches to and all the vinyl The Misfits and The Ramones had put out. Everyone in your town would know you were a punk, and that was that.

Now? I could finish work and set my laptop to download The Damned’s discography, get some studded DMs from Topman, order a bunch of patches for a vintage store denim jacket from eBay and be heading out to The Black Heart by 9pm. Instapunk. In the same way that people might present themselves differently on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, they often have a collection of interchangeable images of themselves that they project in different social situations.

dress like tyler the creator
Tyler, the Creator & OFWGKTA

As well as becoming more spasmodic and interchangeable, tribes in fashion are also becoming more metatextual and cyclical. Towards the end of the 20th century, rappers began to mix brands like Cartier, D&G, Ralph Lauren (traditionally the preserve of the white upper classes) with excessive bling like grills, bejewelled canes and pimp cups. In reaction to this, the white upper classes took a u-turn and began to dress in a style that seemed consciously ‘uncool’ – thick glasses, cardigans and deck shoes were once again en vogue c.f. The O.C‘s Seth Cohen wearing Original Penguin by Munsingwear, a brand formerly associated with ageing white dudes like Richard Nixon.

It took a very long time (well, as long as we’re not counting Erkel…and we’re not) for young African Americans to take on these trends, but it finally started to happen. The picture above of Tyler, the Creator and rap collective Odd Future (Wolf Gang Kill Them All) shows the way in which many young black teenagers have started to reappropriate the image of white, middle-class, often nerdy teenagers in their own way. Yup, so in the queue waiting for the new Supreme collection to drop, there will inevitably be a bunch of white guys trying to dress like black guys who are trying to dress like white guys. For more on Supreme and its phenomenal success, check this excellent article.

Stereotypes like this, that initially seem obscure and unique, are everywhere. Fashion bloggers with that Chanel quote about only being irreplacable if you’re unique (irony.) in their Twitter bio, who look coyly at the floor to their right and act surprised in every photo…even though they’re the ones who set the self timer. Screamo kids wearing wool hats and Jansport rucksacks at gigs, arms crossed and nodding their grudging appreciation at French post-hardcore bands. Tumblr kids with dip dyed pink hair and upside down crucifixes on their t-shirts who listen to The Cure and The Smiths (who they heard about from 500 Days of Summer) and obsess over manga. Gaggles of chino-clad fourteen year olds, with the strings of their American Apparel hoodies tied in a bow over a tribal print Topman t-shirt, who all hate One Direction. Despite looking just like them.

Catch you later, snowflakes.

Sport Luxe: The S/S 2012 trend you’re going to hate soon.

sport luxe

If you haven’t opened a fashion magazine in the past couple of months, let me catch you up: ‘sport luxe, sport luxe, sport luxe‘ (yo Google, I know that looks like keyword stuffing but pinky promise it’s legit).

I was initially (actually, I think I still am) undecided on sport luxe, because it seems to fall into two distinct camps. The first is made up of crazy colours, relaxed silhouettes and a vibe that somehow manages to feel simultaneously retro and futuristic.

sport luxe accessories

The more stuff like this I saw, the closer I came to realising what it reminded me of. Then, all of a sudden, it dawned on me.

sport luxe in movies

Yup, the reason a lot of sport luxe walks the line between past and future is because we first saw it a movie set in 2015 that was made in 1989. If you don’t know that I’m talking about Back to the Future II by now, I’m not sure we can be friends anymore. The fact that I love this crazy, experimental side of sport luxe is probably skewed by the fact that I’m a massive BTTF fan. So much so that I actually bought a replica of the cap Marty McFly wears in 2015. Judge at will.

But there is another side of sport luxe…the one I hate.

Astrid Andersen AW 2012

Above is a shot of Astrid Andersen’s AW12 collection, apparently inspired by Shaolin monks and The Wu Tang Clan. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s not what I get from the items shown. I get Eastern European tourist and Lady Sovereign. In case you don’t remember Lady Sovereign (it has been like five years since she was in the charts…), here she is…

For me, this is what it comes down too – shiny fabrics, baggy cropped clothes and sportswear have a heritage of usually being 1. very cheap looking and 2. easily imitated. I can’t get too excited about sport luxe because I know places like Primark and H&M will be flooded with this sort of stuff by the end of the month, and (because of the emphasis placed on sport luxe in the mainstream fashion press) EVERYONE will buy it.

Until then, I can only recommend going totally all out with it and rocking the bright, kooky side of the trend. And I can’t think of a much better kooky sport luxe icon to get tips from than Kreayshawn.

sport luxe icons
Yup, those are Minnie Mouse ears.

The Muppets and The Artist are the same film.

‘The determinant lay, he believed, in those values which the society in question was lacking, for it would love in art whatever it did not possess in sufficient supply within itself.’ – Alain De Botton, paraphrasing Wilhelm Worringer.

The Muppets The Artist

So, the title of this blog post is one of my more controversial statements, but how can it possibly be true? Well, it isn’t. Not in the sense that The Muppets and The Artist are literally the same film, more in the sense that they both draw on exactly the same narrative conventions and are prototypes for an emerging genre of film. Sorry I misled you. I’ll explain a little about  how I reached this conclusion, and you can see why The Muppets and The Artist are pretty much the same film.

Both frequently break the fourth wall – The Muppets does so explicitly, with Statler and Waldorf (the grumpy old men) talking about ‘important plot points’ and ‘the audience’. Both Gary and Mary comment on the strangeness of the fact that they’ve just broken into song. The Artist messes with the fourth wall in a slightly more subtle way – Peppy occasionally winks at the audience, and characters sometimes appear to be addressing the audience, only for the camera pan away to reveal  their true target. In itself, this is not unusual – plenty of films break the fourth wall, but it’s worth noting now that both films are highly self referential and hypertextual.

Both of the plots are nostalgic for the ‘golden age’, of Hollywood and of America. The Muppets’ Smalltown is stuck in the 1950s, resembling a polished version of the decade usually reserved for posters in diners and the memories of reminiscing pensioners. The Artist presents a similarly idealised version of the 1920s and ’30s – the women are beautiful, dog is man’s best friend and everybody smokes but nobody gets cancer. Both films stick with American dream-y ideals, and document a nobody (Walter and Peppy respectively) who manage to make it big for no reason other than some good luck, their quirky personality and their dedication to a cause.

This is where it starts to get interesting. Both movies are concerned with comebacks – of The Muppets, and silent movies. When I say they are ‘concerned’ with comebacks, I mean not only that they are about them but also that they are them. ‘They don’t make them like that anymore…well, they do now,’ quipped one bumbling spectator on a television advert for The Artist. The Artist is a film designed to generate a sense of nostalgia, ironically one for a period during which most of its viewers weren’t even alive. The same is true of The Muppets – in one scene Walter takes in the sights of Kermit’s office, including pictures of Kermit on magazine covers, with celebrities, presidents etc. The message is clear – The Muppets were a big deal. If you don’t remember them, just look at all this cool stuff they did. Through combining all of the conventions of silent movies (albeit often in a clever way), The Artist does a very similar thing.

The really strange thing? Both films are about comebacks for something that never really went away. The Muppets appeared on Weezer’s Keep Fishin’ video in 2002, had a Christmas special in 2008 and have popped up in various straight to video features. And remember a few Christmases ago when Tickle Me Elmo was THE Christmas present everybody wanted? (Mind you, he’s a Sesame Street-er rather than a true Muppet). Although it’s difficult to argue that the same is true of silent movies, any film course worth its salt has at least one silent film module. And, more generally, 1920s culture is far from forgotten – recent fashion collections have been heavily influenced by the era, electro swing has been sweeping clubs across the nation for the past couple of years and last Christmas I gave you my heart saw dancer Darcy Bussell paying homage to dance numbers from old timey movies.

Both films are based on such narrowly structured plots and tropes, that they’ve actually been beaten to the punch. By cartoon shows no less. The ‘punchline’ of The Artist (the reason George Valentin is so unwilling to speak) appeared in a Family Guy skit years ago. Enjoy this terrible quality video -

As for The Muppets? Well, it’s not exactly the same situation, but after Krusty gets kancelled (sorry.) Bart and Lisa run around town trying to recruit celebrities to appear on his comeback special. No video of the show itself, but it does feature someone getting shot out of a cannon Gonzo-style…

If the Worringer quote, alluded to way up at the top of this post, is correct then the implications are a little worrying. The fact that self referential comeback films about…comebacks are currently in vogue (like…Oscar in vogue) would suggest that not only are we out of ideas for ‘new stuff’, but also that we all now hate the society we live in. Happy Sunday.