softgrey
flaunt the imperfection
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Dress Mode
LYNN HIRSCHBERG
Published: August 26, 2007
I don’t like pants. Or I should say, I don’t like wearing pants. The entire jeans revolution of the past decade — the special rinses; the cuts that amplify the derrière or lengthen the leg; the low rise and the boot cut — does not intrigue me. The only time I wear pants is to walk my dog, and I wear them then only when the weather is freezing. Mostly, I use pants as a kind of fatness monitor: a particular pair of very narrow A.P.C. jeans functions like a scale. Twice a week, every week, I try them on. If they’re tight, I cut out chocolate; if they’re loose, I rejoice. Either way, the jeans stay on my body for about 15 minutes, long enough to truly gauge the fit, and then I change into a dress or a skirt. Like I said, I don’t like pants.
One of the ways I retrieve the memories of my life is through the clothes I wore: if I remember my particular fashion obsessions — my uniform for that season — I can vividly recall who and what I was crazy about, the stories I was working on and, most of all, my mood. If, for instance, I wore, as I did in the summer of ’98, a lot of red dresses, then I was depressed. Pauline Trigère famously said, “If you wake up and you feel blue, wear red,” and that summer, heartsick over a soured love affair, I followed her edict, to no avail.
There was a brief time, a year or so in the mid-’90s, when I wore pants quite a lot. I’m not sure why I suddenly felt the urge to wear them. It was an insecure time, but hell, more or less, they’ve all been insecure times. But I guess I was feeling vulnerable. The appeal of pants is their coverage — even if they are tight, they enclose the body. They can, of course, be sexy, but they are intrinsically masculine in terms of structure and orientation. When a woman wears pants — particularly a pantsuit — she is overtly copying the boys. And back then, I did just that: I wore Romeo Gigli pantsuits made out of pinstriped flannels and linens, with narrow pants and three-button jackets. I wore the cuffed trousers short and I bought a pair of sturdy cordovan wingtips at Brooks Brothers. As a concession to femininity, I wore a skintight, low-cut bodysuit under all this armor. When I opened my jacket, it was a study in contrast: cleavage and tweed.
When I think about it now, those clothes seem intolerably heavy, like layers of insulation. I remember being in Los Angeles reporting a story on Leslie Moonves, who was then the head of Warner Brothers Television. I recall wearing a dark brown pantsuit to interview him in his dark brown suit, and I felt weighted down by my clothes. I think I was trying to be serious, but I felt those pants were suffocating me. Within months, I changed my entire wardrobe. The next time I interviewed Moonves, it was a decade later. He was now the king of CBS and still wearing a suit (and so were all of his female lieutenants), but I had changed into a dress. I’m not sure the interviews went better, but I wasn’t so constricted.
“For years,” said Alber Elbaz, the designer of Lanvin, “I did not put any pants in my collections. I did not see the point: I am interested in women, and I think the best uniform for a woman, young or old, is a dress.” His thinking, which echoed the design sensibility of Olivier Theyskens when he was designing for Rochas as well as young designers like Derek Lam and the sisters who call their company Rodarte, was to concentrate on what made women feel unique. “I cannot improve on a pair of jeans,” Elbaz told me. “And I don’t want to. But for women, a dress is the easiest solution: you zip it up, add a pair of shoes, grab your bag, a sweater or a coat, and you are done. What could be easier?
What could be more modern?”
I could not agree more. Designers overuse the word “modern,” but as Elbaz pointed out, there is something truly modern about stripping down layers. Historically, the wearing of pants was meant to signify freedom and equality for women, but I think trousers have just turned women into a sort of male clone. Of course, the most important thing is the freedom to choose, whether you’re choosing attire or anything else, but when women wear pantsuits, they all too often look bland and asexual.
And that may be the point. I suppose there are jobs and lives that call for that kind of gender neutrality. Certainly, the skimpy, low-cut baby-doll dresses that paraded around the streets of Manhattan this summer, teamed with the ubiquitous (and horrible) flip-flops, are too casual a look for anything but bed. And dresses should not be sleepwear. They should do what a pantsuit can’t: immediately establish your femaleness. And I would much rather try to succeed at my game than attempt theirs. After all, how else will I win?
*i don't necessarily agree completely...but it's interesting to ponder...
...
LYNN HIRSCHBERG
Published: August 26, 2007
I don’t like pants. Or I should say, I don’t like wearing pants. The entire jeans revolution of the past decade — the special rinses; the cuts that amplify the derrière or lengthen the leg; the low rise and the boot cut — does not intrigue me. The only time I wear pants is to walk my dog, and I wear them then only when the weather is freezing. Mostly, I use pants as a kind of fatness monitor: a particular pair of very narrow A.P.C. jeans functions like a scale. Twice a week, every week, I try them on. If they’re tight, I cut out chocolate; if they’re loose, I rejoice. Either way, the jeans stay on my body for about 15 minutes, long enough to truly gauge the fit, and then I change into a dress or a skirt. Like I said, I don’t like pants.
One of the ways I retrieve the memories of my life is through the clothes I wore: if I remember my particular fashion obsessions — my uniform for that season — I can vividly recall who and what I was crazy about, the stories I was working on and, most of all, my mood. If, for instance, I wore, as I did in the summer of ’98, a lot of red dresses, then I was depressed. Pauline Trigère famously said, “If you wake up and you feel blue, wear red,” and that summer, heartsick over a soured love affair, I followed her edict, to no avail.
There was a brief time, a year or so in the mid-’90s, when I wore pants quite a lot. I’m not sure why I suddenly felt the urge to wear them. It was an insecure time, but hell, more or less, they’ve all been insecure times. But I guess I was feeling vulnerable. The appeal of pants is their coverage — even if they are tight, they enclose the body. They can, of course, be sexy, but they are intrinsically masculine in terms of structure and orientation. When a woman wears pants — particularly a pantsuit — she is overtly copying the boys. And back then, I did just that: I wore Romeo Gigli pantsuits made out of pinstriped flannels and linens, with narrow pants and three-button jackets. I wore the cuffed trousers short and I bought a pair of sturdy cordovan wingtips at Brooks Brothers. As a concession to femininity, I wore a skintight, low-cut bodysuit under all this armor. When I opened my jacket, it was a study in contrast: cleavage and tweed.
When I think about it now, those clothes seem intolerably heavy, like layers of insulation. I remember being in Los Angeles reporting a story on Leslie Moonves, who was then the head of Warner Brothers Television. I recall wearing a dark brown pantsuit to interview him in his dark brown suit, and I felt weighted down by my clothes. I think I was trying to be serious, but I felt those pants were suffocating me. Within months, I changed my entire wardrobe. The next time I interviewed Moonves, it was a decade later. He was now the king of CBS and still wearing a suit (and so were all of his female lieutenants), but I had changed into a dress. I’m not sure the interviews went better, but I wasn’t so constricted.
“For years,” said Alber Elbaz, the designer of Lanvin, “I did not put any pants in my collections. I did not see the point: I am interested in women, and I think the best uniform for a woman, young or old, is a dress.” His thinking, which echoed the design sensibility of Olivier Theyskens when he was designing for Rochas as well as young designers like Derek Lam and the sisters who call their company Rodarte, was to concentrate on what made women feel unique. “I cannot improve on a pair of jeans,” Elbaz told me. “And I don’t want to. But for women, a dress is the easiest solution: you zip it up, add a pair of shoes, grab your bag, a sweater or a coat, and you are done. What could be easier?
What could be more modern?”
I could not agree more. Designers overuse the word “modern,” but as Elbaz pointed out, there is something truly modern about stripping down layers. Historically, the wearing of pants was meant to signify freedom and equality for women, but I think trousers have just turned women into a sort of male clone. Of course, the most important thing is the freedom to choose, whether you’re choosing attire or anything else, but when women wear pantsuits, they all too often look bland and asexual.
And that may be the point. I suppose there are jobs and lives that call for that kind of gender neutrality. Certainly, the skimpy, low-cut baby-doll dresses that paraded around the streets of Manhattan this summer, teamed with the ubiquitous (and horrible) flip-flops, are too casual a look for anything but bed. And dresses should not be sleepwear. They should do what a pantsuit can’t: immediately establish your femaleness. And I would much rather try to succeed at my game than attempt theirs. After all, how else will I win?
*i don't necessarily agree completely...but it's interesting to ponder...
...
i don't see guys' clothes doing that (and i'm uncomfortable with tank tops)
I just wear what feels comfortable and hope it looks decent.
