You Can Tell I'm A Poet By My Hat
For 'poet' substitute author or painter or potter or any other type of 'Creative' - how much is that indicated by the style of dress? (Spin-off from remarks on @Lamb Chopped 's conservatism thread).
One the one hand, you have T S Eliot who dressed as a bank clerk (as indeed he was), and on the other Frida Kahlo who went about like a one-woman Cinco de Mayo.
What assumptions, however specious, can we make from clothing - our own or others?
One the one hand, you have T S Eliot who dressed as a bank clerk (as indeed he was), and on the other Frida Kahlo who went about like a one-woman Cinco de Mayo.
What assumptions, however specious, can we make from clothing - our own or others?
Comments
I think clothing is less and less of an indicator of anything but class/wealth, at least in the United States. Two-piece suits are the common business attire for male office jockeys, whether they work in banking or insurance or law or accounting or whatever. Better-fitting suits indicate higher socioeconomic status. But bankers no longer wear green eyeshades (can't speak to card sharks), few real estate agents still wear jewel-tone sportcoats, and so on.
Which I am
[*A reader of the Brit newspaper The Guardian.]
Mrs Weber style, @Galilit ? http://theslingsandarrows.com/mrs-webers-diary/
Freaking GLOVES--Men's extra large is too small much of the time. I don't wear socks (wanna guess the problem there!) as I've given up. Shoulders way too broad to fit most women's coats or jackets, including suit jackets--which is why it's damned good I'm pigeonholed as a creative, otherwise I'd be having suits made from scratch, and who has the money?
Thanks be to God bras and underwear fit--though I loathe the strap that insists on falling down my right shoulder and always has done--along with the shirt itself, which routinely winds up showing four inches of my shoulder on that side only, and riding up my neck on the other.
I feel like Quasimodo.
The disparity between my sense of appropriate dress and that of other people was really brought into focus at my mother's funeral where all the men except me turned up in grey suits, white shirts, black shoes and black ties. I wasn't aware of any choreographing going on but even the greyness of their suits looked identical. I don't own a suit because I haven't had a job that required a suit for nearly forty years. Nor do I have a white shirt and my only tie is bright blue and I've probably never even worn it. At the time I didn't even own a pair of black shoes.
So I arrived in clothes that were casual but smart and appropriate for the weather (it was March and I had to catch a bus at 6.55 AM) and looked completely different from everyone else.
That said, now that I am for the most part housebound I tend to be in comfortable cozy what ever is clean, unless making the rare trip into town. Now I find earrings, glasses, hearing aids, and mask to much, so I have given up the dangles for now. My one bone of contention is shoes. Neuropathy means I can only wear a few shoes without pain so my closet sets with pairs that cause pain and I tend to wear just 2 pairs with open toes and flat heels. Heaven help me when they wear out and the search for new ones, that I can stand to wear starts again.
I mean, PhilipLarkin didn't even try.
I love to wear bright, rainbow colours. My family and friends often say “you’re not wearing that are you?” They like to blend in to their backgrounds like chameleons.
My answer, every time? “Of course I am, I love it!”
I have neuropathy in my toes and the balls of my feet. My saving shoes have been these Skechers: https://www.skechers.com/women/shoes/be-light---floral-light/100022.html?dwvar_100022_color=BLK If you can find them, you might try them. Unfortunately they seem to be on their way out. I could only find this version online. I own at least five variations bought over the years. As to clothes, I go bright and budget in plus sizes from online stores. Lamb Chopped, you might take a look at Woman Within. They carry a fair number of long, plus-sized trousers. I personally I go for their petites(short)
e e cummings didn't do so bad.
There is Murray Lachlan-Young and Benjamin Zephaniah.
(I think I told the story of meeting a (very) old acquaintance on the street, and him being half-way through telling me to f*ck off (he thought I was a vagrant approaching him for money) before he realised it was me
Considers... have i just confessed to hiding cloven hooves on the Ship?
A horse's hoof is not cloven so you're safe.
Back to Lord Byron then. There are people who dress to project a desired image, there are people whose dress is an extension of their creative activities in other areas.
I'm not sure attention-getting pure and simple is enough of a driver. You have to have an idea of yourself which you are trying to express. I suppose you could apply your criticism to those who dress a part, but don't have the talent to back it up.
Um, what about an ass's ?
Not cloven either. You can have goat, cow, sheep, pig, antelope, gazelle, or deer.
After nearly two years in Glastonbury I no longer bat an eyelid when I pass a shirtless and shoeless chap walking down the High Street, or a woman dressed entirely in turquoise satin and gauze with a pair of fairy wings stitched to her back, or even a middle-aged bearded man dressed entirely in Lincoln Green and carrying a longbow. It's just Glastonbury. This woman was a bit of an exception but it was Beltane. Not visible in the photo are her ten-foot furry leggings and stilts.
"Showing off" means trying to attract attention. How can flamboyant dress not be included under that rubric? Flamboyant means "strikingly bold or brilliant; showy". If that's not designed to attract attention, I challenge you to say what is and how they differ.
But writing a novel is also done to attract attention. You want people to notice you. Same applies to the practitioners of every other form of art. But when a singer performs to a crowd of thousands or busks on a street corner we don't say they are showing off.
But I don't think anyone ever glances in my direction and says, "Ah - there goes an engineer!"
I once taught in a school where, at the commencement ceremony, faculty wore the cap and gown of their school.
The librarian told a story re how one year she was in a rush to get to the ceremony on time, and so she put her cap and gown on at home before getting in her car to drive to the school. She was stopped at a red light, and a little girl was standing on the sidewalk with her mother. "Look, Mommy!" the little girl exclaimed. "A professor!"
Time was, August in Edinburgh, you could hardly move for mime artists, kilted bagpipers, Korean dance troupes, historical guides and Eager Young Things wearing their stage costumes for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Waiting for Salome. All vying for your attention like billy-oh.
I have a friend who for many years has made beautiful and extravagant costumes and worn them to the Venice Carnivale - which is two weeks of nothing but dressing up and showing off.
I see nothing wrong with dress as an art form, either by itself or in support of another, nor any reason why it should only be allowed in certain times and places. I was once complimented by a woman in a laundrette for adding to the gaiety of nations (I wearing a mohair landscape).
For the last month, I've been wearing my invisible poet's hat and working on translations from a shairi in Swahili, the Kenyan coastal poetry deeply influenced by the Arabic ghazal form. The poet is Muyaka bin Haji who lived in Mombasa between 1770 and 1840 and who took classic poetry ‘out of the mosque into the marketplace’. He wrote traditional love poems as well as resistance songs against Arab and Portuguese slave traders in East Africa.
I did wind a striped kikoi from Mombasa around my shoulders to create a little atmosphere.
I wear bright, rainbow colours because I like them. Even if I’m meeting nobody. I wear them for me, not for them.
I find attracting attention easy - I don’t need particular clothes for that purpose. I’m a natural ‘comedian’ and love to get the whole room laughing. That’s not for attention either, I do it because I love to lift the mood. In another life I’d be on the comedy circuit.
He came home from work in fine spirits one day. A group of students had told him that they regarded him as a "style icon."
Wifely questioning on this unlikely scenario revealed a student had observed that the lime green i-phone case in his top pocket matched the lime green socks he was wearing under his brown leather sandals, and had asked him if this was deliberate styling.
The NE Man said that it was just a happy co-incidence. The student said that it demonstrated his innate sense of style. The rest of the group joined in their admiration of his "look" culminating in the "style icon" remark.
The NE Man, unused to thinking of himself as a "style icon" told me that he had decided to make more effort and to buy more i-phone cases so that he could co-ordinate with his other socks.
I felt it was my wifely duty to suggest to him that the students may not have been entirely sincere in their appreciation of the matching i-phone sock look.
Though as @Boogie says, if you're that way inclined, it's totally nerveless.
Does that mean you were lying down in it? (Standing up, it would have been a mohair portrait)?
I'm glad Stercus T. has given me a vocational excuse for looking like a scarecrow. I also once had a (postgrad) colleague who very unusually dressed in a suit, and when pressed hard admitted 'it's because my Dad's a biker'. So that's another factor - dressing in opposition to someone else's influence.
I'm sure you all know some variation on this one:
Q. What do you call a Mancunian in a suit?
A. The Accused.
It’s not been helped by a number of the shops I favour having either gone under or being under threat of closure. There seems to be little available between clothes aimed at younger age groups and those in what I call ‘Old Lady’ style.
I was swathed in it. It was the time when there was a vogue for picture knits.
Agree with your last point. It brightens up the day.
Digressing, this may strike some shipmates as boring, but I don't really 'get' why it's so important for some people that they should be free to express themselves through what they wear. Or, for that matter, why those who do feel so strongly that they should be admired for doing so. It feels morally reprehensible.
Not boring at all: merely massively offensive.
Firstly, free expression is important for some people. They can freely express themselves through art, literature, poetry, theatre, dance, music, or whatever, and no one thinks it's morally reprehensible to do so or for them to wish to be noticed and even praised for being good at what they do. And some freely express themselves through what they wear or how they look.
But I don't think any freely expressing themselves feels they should be admired for it: they know they have to earn admiration by being good at what they do.
Bear in mind that from the perspective of someone who is creative everyone who is not creative appears dull, imaginatively stunted, and hidebound by convention.
When I went to Glastonbury @Colin Smith I thought I wouldn't be keen on it as New Age isn't really my thing. Instead I loved it and the fact you can wear what you like and no-one is at all bothered.
Glastonbury is the first place I moved to solely because I wanted to live there. All previous moves (and there's been a lot) were for work or education. This place always puts a smile on my face.
Later in life, I became a re-enactor myself, and I took great pleasure in wearing my medieval kit on public transport - in the hopes that some other child would see me and be inspired as I was.
Should I have worn jeans and a hoodie and only got changed when I got to the show ground?
I shall have to use that line next time I see anyone trying to avoid me.
You don't have to 'get' it. Your job is not judging lest you be judged, if you recall.