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5 thoughts on “No Fashion Friday

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    Well, when you do get around to it, consider letting us know what you think about this collection of photographs demonstrating that even quirky, stylish people follow a certain script when it comes to fashion. To me, it reinforced what you were saying a while ago (and catching so much flak for it! Sheesh) about fashion being a language. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be using its symbols this way, as if there’s a definite repeating pattern that’s recognizable to pretty much anybody.

  2. 5

    First, very sorry about Violet, Greta. You’ve had a tough year, and that really sucks.

    I had to put down my bird early this summer. We had tons of pets growing up, so I knew very well the right thing to do when the time came. This, however, was my first time making that call instead of my parents, since Hector was the first pet I got as an adult living on my own. I’ve had to live with the profound sadness of losing a pet many times, but this was the first time I’ve had to live with choosing death on someone else’s behalf. It was one of the most ovewhelming experiences of my life. It made me look back on your earlier post about Lydia, on the many times my parents had to make that choice, on friends who made it to that point before me…and I now empathise on a whole new level. Someone in the other thread mentioned that, as pets are short lived compared to us, we know our time with them will end, and painfully. Yet we choose to love anyway. It’s a beautiful thing.

    Second, on your posts about fashion and language, I’m going to go ahead and agree with you (and with Sally up there; thanks for the awesome link). I’m lucky enough to have one of the best jobs in the world, which is as a stitcher (pc term for seamstress) in the wardrobe departments of various local theatres. I can tell you first hand the task of a cosutme designer is not an easy one. Since a play (or film) allows at most two, maybe three hours of precious dialogue time, that dialogue can’t be used up my endless introduction/exposition of various characters. What do you do when your use of verbal language is by necessity limited? You turn to another language, of course, that being fashion/costume. Most audience don’t even think about the vast amount of information they glean almost instantly about a character before that character even opens their mouth-just based on their costume. Every outfit for every character is painstakingly chosen by the designer, in collaboration with the director’s vision. And I can tell you, I really mean painstaking-right down to the number and colour of buttons on a sweater, how many of those buttons the actor does up, the hem length on a skirt, the shade of brown on a pair of loafers. The attention paid to detail in theatre and film costume is astounding. Wardrobe deprtments have large staff and high budgets for a reason.

    On a slight ranty tangent, last year’s Best Costume Design winner at the Oscars, Sandy Powell (for “The Young Victoria”) made an excellent point in her speech, that the Academy has a tendency to offer costume awards primarily to lavish historical dramas/fantasies. These are not the only films worthy of awards. A designer’s skill is not evidenced by how beautiful and sumptuous she make a film. The bulk of the work lies in how closely she can capture a character’s essence; how iconic she can make that character regardless of era. That requires just as much hard work and skill on a modern film as on a historic one. Think Gordon Gecko, or “American Psycho”. Or the difference between Steve Martin and John Candy in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”-the bit about the watches is brilliant. Or for a more recent example, check out the costume choices in “Our Idiot Brother”. Every single film has a costume designer working tirelessly to add life to the characters, to *speak* volumes through clothing because the time for words is limited.

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