I Love Fashion!

fashion

I love fashion a lot more than most heterosexual men my age.  It’s one of those things that happened early on in life (as a teenager, I was seduced by Coco Chanel’s “little black dress”) and it has continued ever since.  You see, to me, fashion is more than adornment.  It’s the vision and ability to turn a two dimensional material into a three-dimensional piece of art, using only colour and texture — while simultaneously being handcuffed to the standard contours of the human body.  Plus, it’s all about sex!

Anyway, yesterday was the end of Haute Couture Week in Paris.  This is when designers from all over the world gather in the City of Light to eat, drink, pontificate and play silly buggers with the female form.  (There is a Homme Week, but nobody cares.  After all, after Armani, what can you do with a suit?)  The thing is Haute Couture isn’t about clothes.  It’s walking avant-garde: the fringe of fashion that sets the tone for the middle.  It’s the stuff that women don’t actually wear, because it’s outrageously expensive, 90% of it is hideous and you can’t sit down.  Yet the catwalks are full, the streets are alive with fashionistas, the media is having multiple orgasms, and everybody from Marks and Spencer to Emmanuel Macron is taking notice.  This is because (despite what virtuous sophomore millennials will tell you) fashion is a serious component of human society – and always will be.  (Even the hillbilly Neanderthals wore baubles and beads.)

The truth is fashion is our most basic form of communication.  Check it out!  When you walk into a room and someone is standing there, you have no idea who or what they are – zoologist to axe murderer.  You can’t hear, smell, touch or taste them, so you rely on your eyes for social cues, and a suit and tie send a different message from dirty jeans and a torn t-shirt. (FYI We can yip all day about being non-judgemental, but the fact is we all do first impressions — it’s instinctual — and it’s one of the reasons our species dominates this planet.)

Fashion is the shorthand we use to tell the world where we fit.  Whether we shop at Dollarama or Dolce & Gabbana, we choose our clothes to reflect our personality, our status, our mood and, in some cases, our occupation, our sexuality and even our level of self-esteem.  Fashion is our opinion of ourselves and our world without ever saying a word.  That’s why puritanical societies that fear opinion restrict fashion.

There was nothing spectacular about this year’s Haute Couture: a lot of beads and sleeves and Karl Lagerfeld didn’t wave to the crowd (the guy’s 85.)  However, like every year, it set the stage for February, a month of pret a porter (ready to wear) in New York, London, Milan (Berlin and Tokyo are in there somewhere) and finally back to Paris.  This is where the big girls come to play– and I can hardly wait.

Gillette: Ya Screwed Up!

gillette

Gillette has just made a massive mistake that’s going to have consequences all over the world.  This is serious, folks — so you’re going to need a little background.  Gillette recently released an advertising video that, in no uncertain terms, calls their customers (men) a bunch of knuckle-dragging assholes who spend their leisure time teaching their male children to bully each other and harass women.  And then they take the virtuous stance that this has got to stop.  Applause!  Another multi-national corporation has found its soul.

Maybe.

Personally, I don’t think Gillette suddenly developed a social conscience last Tuesday and felt a moral obligation to join the #MeToo conversation.  I think their advertising department took one look at the gigantic numbers generated by the controversial Nike/Kaepernick collaboration last September and said, “Wow!  We need to get in on some of this social justice action!”  So, at a time when traditional advertising is dying, they decided to hitch their corporate brandwagon to the rising star of “toxic masculinity.”  Fair enough.  Unfortunately, there are a bunch of cynics in this world who believe Gillette is just newsjacking.  They think that the reality is Gillette doesn’t much care if its customers punch each other in the face or have pan-fried puppies for breakfast — as long as they buy razorblades.  Here’s the deal: if Gillette were actually serious about social justice, they’d be funding a string of Gillette Centres for Battered Women.  After all, the designated smoking areas in some German airports are sponsored by Camel.  Honestly, if a multi-billion dollar corporation is going to talk the talk, they should walk the walk — every once in a while.

But the real problem is there’s going to be an unintended consequence from Gillette’s global hypocrisy.  Millions of Gillette customers don’t like being told they’re the problem and then being asked to pay for the privilege.  They’re dumping their Gillette products in the trash and finding alternatives – alternatives that have a different chemical composition.  Thus, in the very near future, people all over the world are going to subconsciously discover that their sons, fathers, brothers, husbands, boyfriends and lovers all smell different.  Humans, like all animals, rely on their olfactory sense for any number of social and sexual cues, and when the people closest to us don’t “smell right,” that’s a major problem.

So, now we’re left with a bunch of pissed-off men, a lot of suspicious babies, wary relatives, cautious friends and an army of confused and slightly frustrated women — all because the folks down at Gillette wanted to cash in on the 24-hour Twitter news cycle.  Thanks, Gillette!  If that’s “the best men can be,” don’t do me any more favours.

Writer’s Block — A Cure

writing a blog

I realize that talking to a bunch of bloggers about writing is like trying to teach a dolphin how to swim.  (It isn’t really necessary and annoys the hell out of the dolphin.)  However, here I am because I know that anyone who’s ever touched pen to paper has suffered from writer’s block, writer’s cramp and — that worst of all literary maladies — writer’s fatigue.  I’m sure even the great Billy Shakespeare sat around, on more than one occasion, twiddling his quill and thinking, “I’m going to quit this bullshit and sign on with Drake.”  (Sir Francis, not the other guy.)  So, in the interest of keeping literature alive in these troubled times, here are a few tips to get the ink flowing again, when, for some reason, it gets stuck in the pen.  (I know, I know!  Nobody writes with a pen anymore – but I like the metaphor.)

Walk Away – It took Margaret Mitchell 10 years to write Gone with the Wind.  Turning your computer off for a couple of hours isn’t going to kill anyone.

Make a Cup of Tea – The Brits, who are the most literary people in the world, use tea as a cure-all for everything from a broken leg to a totally botched Brexit.  And they’ve been doing it since John Milton versed out Paradise Lost in the 17th century.  (That’s a lot of words under Tower Bridge, my friend!)  What tea does is slow you down.  It separates you from the real world.  It gives you a wall or a window to stare at.  It’s warm, it’s cozy and it forces you to think.  Which leads us to Item #3

It’s About You – Instead of trying to forge a Brave New World out of thin air, you need to get back to basics.  Start with you, because even though you might be the most kale salad, whole wheat, Friday night Netflix, middle-class-dull person in the history of ordinary … life has happened to you.  You have memories.  A red house.  A stupid Tweet.  A grocery clerk.  Morgan Freeman’s smile.  Grab one (it doesn’t matter which one) and write it down.

Ask The Questions – Every story from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower is merely who, what, where, when and why.  It’s not brain science or rocket surgery – that’s all there is.  Answer those questions and you have a story but …

Don’t Paint A Picture – Insisting on the exact right word ad infinitum eats up creative energy, so keep it simple.  Lose the adverbs; lose the adjectives.  This isn’t War and Peace, for God sake!  Call it a sleigh not a seasonal horse-drawn transportation device.  Less is more.  Tell the tale.

Some Things Don’t Matter – I don’t know how long it took Herman Melville to come up with “Call me Ismael” but he could have written “Call me Brenda.” and Moby Dick would still be unreadable.  So, don’t waste time sweating the details.  Your job is to get words on paper.

And finally:

Remember – If you have the audacity to string words together, you have a responsibility to your audience.  Because, as Galadriel said to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, “This task was appointed to you, and if you do not find a way, no one will.”

And that’s a sin.