In recent weeks it has been hard to avoid the bombardment of bizarre images from the big European fashion shows in London, Milan, and Florence. Bizarre is not even a strong enough word. The designers are wheeling out their latest creations and they want us all to know about them: but why? The newspapers are happy to fill their pages with ludicrous fashion images during the summer season, although, goodness knows, there’s plenty of real news to report.
It may make commercial sense, but does it make any other kind of sense? To put it plainly, are they all crazy, or am I missing something? In my naïve way I assume that a fashion show should be about clothes, the way a car show is about cars or an agricultural show is about cows. But nothing resembling clothes is on offer at these events. The scraps of material hung on the bodies of the unfortunate models are, if anything, costumes in the theatrical sense. The report from Milan showed some costumes that would be perfect for, say, a fanciful production of Shakespeare’s a Midsummer Night’s Dream, and others that would be appropriate for bondage movies, or even the circus. But there’s nothing here that would be remotely suitable for, say, a trip to the local hardware store on Long Island
I'm talking about men’s fashions of course. I would be the first to admit, and my wife would be the first to confirm that I know nothing at all about women’s fashions. What passes for haute couture these days is beyond the comprehension of any man. But I have been wearing clothes all my life, and I think I know what the word means. Clothes are intended to keep us warm and to cover up those parts of our bodies that we find embarrassing. Anything more is pure vanity.
But the men’s fashion designers show a kind of parallel fantasy world in which clothes really do make the man, and outward appearances are everything. In this year’s collections I detect a number of themes or “looks.”
The Gulag look in which models are presented like prisoners in an old Soviet labor camp; the Sulky Boy look; the Curtain Material look with lots of flowered fabrics; the Football Hooligan look with baggy shorts and ripped T-shirts; the Space Alien look and, believe it or not, this year, a Hospital Gown look. What people wear behind closed doors is their own business, but why anyone should want to appear in public in any of these surreal outfits is a complete mystery, at least to me.
Perhaps I am simply too dumb to get the joke. But the fashion reviews seem so serious. They use the same elusive, ethereal language as reviews of modern art. They speak breathlessly of "contemporary masculinity" as if it is some special state of grace, or perhaps an exotic disease.
Men’s fashion is not a big issue where we are right now, in a French village. We all follow the latest styles of the 1950s, and the typical male wardrobe consists of plain, sensible clothes picked up in the local market, in shades of brown and gray so as to merge into the background. Nothing we wear is even remotely stylish or trendy. When I look at my neighbors and myself it gives me hope that, here at least, clothes really do make the man.
Copyright: David Bouchier
