August 17, 2006
Downbeat Never Looked So Good
Mark Veltman for The New York Times at Jimmy's No. 43;
Everett Collection, left Acne Jeans navy wool sweater dress, $399 at Barneys New York and Opening Ceremony; striped cotton T-shirt, $14.90 at H&M; silk scarf, $190 at Chanel. “Lunch Poems” by Frank O’Hara from Bauman Rare Books. Left, "Funny Face," 1957.
By
RUTH LA FERLA
LOOKING lithe if slightly owlish, Audrey Hepburn made a fetching bookstore-clerk-turned-model in “Funny Face,” the action of that 1957 film whisking her from grotty Greenwich Village to the Left Bank of Paris. Much of the time she was turned out in black turtlenecks and pants — the ultimate beatnik, at least in the minds of moviegoers, most of whom were as little acquainted with dank espresso houses as they might have been with a gated community in Beverly Hills.
All the same, they responded to Ms. Hepburn’s Gallic-flavored look and peppery insolence, a poke at the uptight culture of the day.
Beat style, adopted in the late 1950’s and early 60’s as the renegade uniform of genuine and would-be hipsters alike, is being revisited, if unwittingly, by a new generation of thong-sandaled chicks and weed-sucking Daddy-O’s. The look, lean as a cat burglar’s, has slipped back into vogue, a subtle influence insinuating itself into the popular consciousness via books, plays and runway presentations.
Beat’s outer trappings — black turtlenecks, cigarette pants, neckerchiefs, berets — is indebted less to
Jack Kerouac and his wayward cohort, who slouched about in frayed flannel shirts, than to stylized interpretations in movies like “Funny Face” or the less well-known “Subterraneans,’’ a 1960 film based on a Kerouac novel about the kinky denizens of North Beach in San Francisco.
But beat style owes at least as much to the French model, which to some minds is more studied and, well, more chic. “The beatniks were basically a media creation that revolved around the existentialists of the Paris Left Bank,’’ said Andrew Bolton, the associate curator of the
Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum. “Its dark, streamlined aesthetic became the visual interpretation of a basically nihilistic philosophy.’’
The Franco-American model was embodied by Jean Seberg, who flaunted a blond gamine chop and a T-shirt in “Breathless’’; Juliette Gréco, the raven-haired songstress; and Anna Karina, the doe-eyed seductress of the French New Wave cinema. Variations on the style, with its overlapping references to the street urchin and the sultry chanteuse, resurfaced on the streets this summer, where elongated sweaters and striped nautical T-shirts were worn with leggings or tights, long bangs punctuating the look.
On the runways a beat theme was explored last year by
John Galliano, who introduced a long striped sweater over skinny pants in his fall collection for Dior, in homage, he said, to Edie Sedgwick,
Andy Warhol’s ill-fated muse.
This year Left Bank references turned up at Daryl K, who showed a short slender coat over drainpipe pants, topping the look with a tilted beret; and at L.A.M.B., where berets complemented old-fashioned scoop-neck dresses that might have been worn by the young Diane Arbus. And beat style was a touchstone at Thakoon, a collection with lots of black and white, graphic elements and stripes, fused with touches of the 50’s.
To an onlooker these looks serve as a darkly moody antidote to flouncy boho chic, which dominated fashion as late as last winter. Some of them “are perhaps stylized expressions of an essentially pessimistic worldview,’’ Mr. Bolton said. “Certainly fashion is going though a darker period than in the last five years.’’
A return of the beat fashion aesthetic coincides with a resurgent interest in beat culture. Publishers have capitalized on that keenness, issuing books like “When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School,’’ a memoir by Sam Kashner (HarperCollins); Allen Ginsberg aficionados can download recordings of “Howl’’; and come fall, more than three decades after Kerouac’s death, his play “Beat Generation’’ will be revived in a production with Ethan Hawke.
“The young are really fascinated,’’ said Walter R. Holland, a professor of American literature and poetry at the New School in Manhattan. His course in beat poetry has drawn an avid following. After reading “Bomb,’’ a 1958 poem in which Gregory Corso raises the specter of a nuclear doomsday, “students were surprised at how much beat literature resonates today,’’ he said.
In fashion, as is often the case, beat references are not always literal or even apparent to those they inspire. “I wasn’t thinking of beatniks,’’ Thakoon Panichgul insisted. His predominant look was gamine, he said, allowing, though, that it was in part an homage to Seberg and her “Breathless” boho-boy drag.
His show, he said, represented “a natural progression from minimalism.” “To me that’s what feels modern, quirky and rebellious.’’
Mark Veltman for The New York Times at Jimmy's No. 43
Phillip Lim checked box jacket, $552 at Barneys; Vince cotton jersey turtleneck, $75 at Bergdorf Goodman; Cheap Monday stretch jeans, $65 at Barneys; Lola wool beret with leather finial, $75 at Saks Fifth Avenue.
Mark Veltman for The New York Times at Jimmy's No. 43
Ribbed wool jumper, $970 at Sonia Rykiel; Acne Jeans wool turtleneck, $275 at Barneys and Opening Ceremony; Marc by Marc Jacobs leopard-print flats, $295 at Barneys Co-Op. “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac from Bauman Rare Books.
Film Forum
“Breathless,” 1960.
Mark Veltman for The New York Times at Jimmy's No. 43
Thakoon wool herringbone coat, $1,600, and striped jersey dress, $725, at Kirna Zabête; cotton jersey leggings, $26 at American Apparel; hand-crafted glasses with etched butterfly motif, $395 at Morgenthal Frederics.
Mark Veltman for The New York Times at Jimmy’s No. 43; styling by Susan Joy
Wool dress with cowl-neck scarf, $1,300 at Marc Jacobs; wool-cashmere turtleneck, $860 at Sonia Rykiel; wool tights, $55 at Wolford. “Vision of Cody” by Jack Kerouac from Bauman Rare Books.
