Tell me why… (2)

Because I ran out of steam a little halfway through my blog yesterday, thus cutting it a little shorter than I usually would’ve, I decided to cheat and name some things that happened today as a reason to hate yesterday.
I’d not advise anyone to do temporal displaced hating, as it can get quite tricky, but for the connoisseur it is one of the three most preferred types of hating.

First off, the guy who wears my shoes (GwwmS, or Gwooms) works in my office, and was wearing them today AGAIN. As I am slowly but surely turning into a male Imelda Marcos, I have started to dislike wearing the same pair twice in a row, depending off course on circumstances. (I am sporting a new pair of Adidas again today; man it is nice to be sample-sized) But Gwooms was not only wearing my shoes again, he was wearing exactly the same outfit, AGAIN. And he hardly looks like he guy who’d be able to get a one-night stand if he’d tried well disguised, oozing rohypnol and sporting several different strengths of chloroform on his shawl.
Gwooms’ shawl, by the way, is one of those checkered frilly tea-towel type things one associates with the lesser washed class of terrorist, if Boyfriend were to reply to this blog as well he’d probably have something to say about it.
Anyways, I know I am a great promoter of the “outfit” style of dressing, where a particular piece would most likely be joined with very definite other pieces, so that at least he’s doing correct. You just shouldn’t do it twice in a row. Especially not when wearing my shoes.

Gwooms still far in the future, I was on the bus this morning. As I get the bus about a stop after the central bus-stop in my little town, there is usually the option of nabbing a seat, which I usually do, as it makes reading that much easier. So as well this morning, no worries. Then, a small, slightly fattish (dimension wise she was a tad bit more spherical than the Willendorf-statue) woman cam on the bus, and stood next to me, then proceeding to take of clothes and dislodge bags, and putting them all, along with her dripping wet umbrella, in the luggage netting above my waterproof head and not at all waterproof book.
Now, this is very wrong for two (2) reasons. First (1st), one should never put anything dripping above a reading Kevin, lest one is willing to carry ones ears back home in ones hat. I did not deliver the smack down of whoopass on this woman because, well, we were on a bus, and I was wearing light colored clothes, and fat people stain like all hell. I should know, I am one.

Second (2nd), even though I know that the luggage shelves are there for our convenience, it is not really common to actually use them. It was even downright odd to see them used at all, especially the way this woman used them. After stationing herself next to my left elbow she proceeded to take of layer after layer after layer of clothing, one more horrendously colored than the last, and piling them onto their less recently discarded counterparts. She was doing this from about 50cm away, though, meaning she had to lean across me, the person next to her, and the person behind me to get her preferred amount of color coded annoyance out among the masses.
Twenty seconds after having stripped down to a simply revolting piece of material that could have been a shift, a tent, or a muumuu, she noticed her stop coming up, and started to do the whole thing in reverse, donning clothing left right and center so as to be fully dressed when she arrived at her bus stop just 3 stops later. All in all, she could have easily walked it, mine is a small town, and the bus curves around it so that the space between where she got on to the bus and where she got of was about half the traveled distance, and would’ve taken all of three minutes to walk, and three and a half to roll.

Strange, strange fat woman.

Grtz,
K.

Tell me why…

First off, I really do hate myself now. It’s Monday, and this blog is about this Monday and the few little reasons why I am not the happiest of Kevins on this particular Monday. Well, I am saying that wrong, actually, I am a reasonably happy Kevin, but also a cranky one. Because it is Monday and assorted other reasons yet to be touched upon in this blog.
So my title today, obviously, is an allusion to the well known song asking why certain people don’t like Mondays. And I hate that. Not because I don’t like the song, because I do actually like the song, but because it is a song often hummed/sung/tapped out on tables by people who simply don’t like Mondays. And, since very few of those people would open fire on a grade school, most of those people have no business doing whatever it is they are doing to this song.
And since I don’t actually intend to open fire on a grade school myself, I really shouldn’t either. But I did. Hypocrisy, thy name is Kevin.
That said, I would’ve gladly opened fire on a number of people, not least the fuckwad that set my alarm for 6.45 this morning (me), so I do have some right to the allusion.

Anyways, those who know me know that I am more or less non-secretly a person who thinks happiness in life is for me and practically nobody else. Those people whose happiness is not a thorn in my side are a small and personally (by me) selected group of individuals who I deem worthy, by virtue of any number of factors, to be deserving of some happiness themselves. For all other people, happiness just seems... well, wrong.
And never as wrong as when they seem to be getting their happiness from something I get my happiness from.
This morning, walking from Tram™ to Job™ I noticed someone wearing my sneakers. Well, not really, as mine were at that point safely at home, resting in my closet, but the same model converse high-tops in black with red piping and stitching. Now, I understand that they do not wait for me to sell these things to people, nor do they take them off the shelves as soon as I have slotted my bankcard through the little machine, so I am prepared to sometimes see things I have in my closet on other people as well. But it has been happening a little bit too often lately, and the annoyance here is cumulative.
Shoes make me happy, therefore I assume shoes make this other person happy, and he is getting his happiness from MY shoes (well, sorta) Thus, he needs some shooting. But then, it was a Monday morning and my aim isn’t remarkably good with pretend rifles as it is so I decided to let it pass, and just fervently hope he’d run into something big and preferably cement-filled on his way to his Job™
Also, this time it wasn’t as bad as when I’d be actually wearing the things myself, but thanks to Boyfriend’s Adidas-employed connections, I am toting a pair of new and rather cool dark blue Adicolor sneakers, so I am a little more forgiving in my deadwishings today.

Moving on into work, I am about knee-deep in idiot-drool by now, and quite frankly, considering my spiffy new shoes, it is not a place I want to be. Idiot drool doesn’t really stain, but it does get tacky pretty swiftly.
But enough for now, just a little rant to break up the style-sections. I’ll try to keep updating reasonably often.
No longer having stripes,
Grtz,
Kevin

Style: Gender Inequality

When looking around oneself in any given high-street or shopping arcade, or even online, in magazines and on the ever-present billboards, one can’t escape noticing that men are getting rather a raw-deal, fashion wise. And we do, actually. Where women have a wide array of clothes to choose from when it comes to style, feel and intent, men can basically opt for about three or four choices, and that’s it. This has not always been the case, of course, men used to be as ranging in their attire as women, but, having been dubbed in some interminable past as the more robust and steadfast of the sexes, we have now been corralled in a very narrow realm of acceptability.
A swift comparison:

Women -Men
The little black dress -Suit (Black)
A little red dress -Suit (Black or Charcoal)
“his” shirt and jeans -Your own shirt and jeans
This wonderful silk blouse with
a simply DIVINE pencil skirt and my
new dark leather boots -Your own (nice) shirt and jeans
Efficient pant-suit in charcoal -Suit (Black or Navy)
Skirt and jacket -Suit (Black)
Cocktail-dress -Suit
Evening-gown -Suit (Maybe tails)
Wedding dress -Suit (Maybe tails or morning)
Granny pants -Boxer or brief
Thong -Boxer or brief
Baby doll -Boxer or brief
Garter belt, stockings, bodice -Boxer or brief (but nice ones)

See a pattern developing here? As a rule, women can walk into a shop and basically buy the same outfit umpteen times in slightly different colors and materials and have a number of different outfits for any mood or occasion, where men walk into a store, buy basically one outfit, and thus have one outfit. But he’ll have five copies of that one outfit.

I believe that this is the reason why men and women cannot shop together. Quite simply it is amazing for any man bred in the last half of this century to see why it is so difficult to pick the “right” items of clothing, mostly because whenever he went shopping there were only a few basic things to choose from. So he gets impatient, she gets annoyed, and it’ll be a cold night in bed tonight...
Two things need to be mentioned here;
1) New appreciation of men’s fashion and grooming has made sure that the availability of different items for the well dressed man (or the badly dressed one, as the case may be) has gone up quite a bit. Thus, the classical bored-with-shopping man will gradually die out a little, and is to an extent a stereotype that many modern men will not identify with at all.
2) Even though the above is an exaggeration it is not a terribly big one, men do have less choice and options as far as clothing is concerned as women. To a certain extent, the difference is academic, as there is still far more than enough to choose from for us, off course, but just less than there is for them. Also, categorizing for men is a dangerous thing to draw conclusions from, as one suit is not another and different cuts and materials have wildly different effects. That said, the same applies for women’s clothing, and the difference remains.

Obviously, the shape of the human body has shifted a little in the last 10000 years or so, but unless one subscribes too literally to Plato, the general number of appendages and suchlike hasn’t changed in any but the more unfortunate cases. Thus, women having the choice of pants and skirts, and men only having pants, limiting our respective options by about half.

Is this mean? No, not really. Is it by times unfair? Yes, absolutely. Is it avoidable? No, not unless the man-skirt gains a little more acceptance, and apart from certain subcultures I am not really seeing that happen anytime soon.

But men do have their options.
I prefer to think of clothing as a sort of blank canvas. Everybody wears clothing and everybody dos it differently, and an individual choice of material, style and color can make a lot form a very basic set. One can think of clothing as a uniform with the option to customize, and nothing shows off individualities as well as a uniform.
There is a tendency among writers to tackle “classic” subjects. The Ghost story, the Vampire story, the Romantic Comedy. Because these are almost archetypical styles, and roughly follow a set of rules and lines within the story, it is a very familiar place to be for the reader. But writers use these typical subjects to show of their own styles and turns, and the devil as well as the divine is really in the details here. And so could, and should, clothing be used.

Boyfriend, lovely man as he is, has a certain personal style in his clothing. He likes cufflinks over buttons, prefers a well cut suit over a flashy one, and has an apparent lifelong desire to own a few well tailored bankers’ shirts. The one with the colored body but white collars and cuffs. A commendable desire, I say, not only because I think he looks good in a suit, but also because a well-cut, classical suit with a well chosen shirt really is a point where it is almost impossible to go wrong.
That said, I do think he is a little too conservative in his attire, and most of our shopping expeditions can be scripted as a good half hour of me badgering him to get out of the mold a little bit, until he gets angry, and we get something about 10% away from his initial idea and onto my preferred result. As a rule, a pleasant exercise in clashing taste with an almost 100% success rate in general goodlookingness of Boyfriend.
As can be seen from the above, I have a completely different idea about formal wear, and have a tendency to be a little less traditional. I go for the bolder ties, contrasting colors and patterns, and have a tendency to be a little more ostentatiously dressed. I think it looks good, and I have been told thus enough times to have a confirmed opinion here.

What I am trying to say here is that we are both wearing a suit, might even both be wearing a suit of the same cut and color, but the way it’s been worn, and what it’s been worn with, can differ dramatically. A bright shirt or tie is a marked difference from a demure one, and different shoes or belts can do a lot as well.
Providing one remains reasonable, but with a personal flourish, it is very easy to adapt the uniform of a suit to an expression of individuality.

But it is, regretfully, easy to go wrong here as well. As a rule, patterns should either match all over, or clash all over. So a striped suit with a striped shirt and a striped tie is ok, if a little staid, but a striped-striped-dotted look will make you look like the tie you wanted to wear was eaten by the dog. Then again, striped-dotted-tartan is a choice, and with the right colors can look very well put together.

Style: Happenings, too much or not enough

Another slightly more general message from the more stylistically inclined parts of my personality, this time of an oft made mistake in dressing and adorning ones’ self: stuff.
Yes, stuff, that’s the technical term for all the things that are happening on or in your outfit. Accessories, colors, prints, they all add up to a busy or sedate look, depending on choices. They also add up to a look that suits you to a tee, or a look that you should not consider even if you know everybody around you is or will shortly be blind.

So how does one explain succinctly when or how something in or on an outfit is something that “happens” instead of just a part of the base outfit? Good question, and not easy to answer. Well, actually, it is. Anything that is NOT the base color or cut of your outfit, hair or skin is “something happening”. Yes, skin and hair as well, no outfit is an outfit without someone in it, and just because it works on someone else does not mean it works on you, so you should always consider what you look like yourself before considering what you look like in a particular piece or set of clothes.
But as far as happenings go, consider this to include, but not exclusively mean, earrings, prints, tassels, streaks, belts, shoes, socks, bracelets, necklaces, glitter, feathers and so on ad infinitum.

As a swift illustration, a few outfits, one with almost nothing happening, one with a lot happening: In these two outfits it is easy to see which of the two has more happening to it than the other. The first outfit has simple lines, few decorations, and few distractions from the base of the outfit. I counted on first sight the three points highlighted, the sleeves, the beadwork on the bodice, and the beads and feathers on the train.
The second outfit immediately strikes as a lot busier, and not for nothing either, six items of distraction noted on the first look, to wit: the grey blazer to offset the black and green, the bow on that blazer, the long stole, the green shirt, the bag, and the pattern on the skirt in contrasting colors.
Which is better? Neither, depending on what you want to achieve. More stylish? Again, neither. There is no hard and fast rule what to wear where, after all. These two outfits are both very stylish, if in completely different ways.

Now for somewhat of a test. Two more pictures:
Which of these two has more happening?

Neither? Roughly correct. Both have a number of details and points that distract from the general outfit. The red outfit has the cap, the collar, the gloves, the wide cut of the pants, the epaulettes, the make up and the sown in crease of the lapel, where the colorful flapper has her shoes, her make-up, the hair, the fur, the coat-pattern, the hair-decoration and the large patterning on the dress to accentuate what she is wearing.

But how to decide when you have too much happening to an outfit? Well, a reasonable rule of thumb would appear gestaltlike from the above two pictures. To my mind, the red outfit has exactly the right amount of things done to the basic cut of her outfit, although she could stand to lose the hat, whereas the flapper has a riot of distractions, and it takes a good measure of woman to not be lost between all the contrasts and attention grabbers. Thus, it would almost be safe to say that contrast is the key here. If we look at the above two pictures again, and rate the distractions, according to contrast, then the red outfit suddenly has no distractions, as none contrast with the outfit itself, whereas the flapper has almost no distractions that don’t contrast at all.

One or two things that offset an outfit, like a belt or a pocket handkerchief, can look very stylish, but if it becomes impossible to see what the outfit was all about in the first place, style is often thrown right out the window. It has been said that one should create an outfit, stand in front of a mirror and remove the first thing that catches ones eye, and this is a good rule to live by, as it would nine times out of ten be the thing that contrasts most sharply with the rest of the outfit. Adding an extra piece so you have something to safely remove would be considered cheating, by the way, and cheating is rarely a recipe for style. No one really likes looking like they have just thrown something together in the morning, and nobody really has to.

Alternatively, if you stand in front of your mirror and notice that nothing catches your eye, you might be in danger of looking dull. And there is no style in dullness either. But then one has to find items that work well with an already chosen outfit, and that isn’t easy. Men, we have the positive side that almost all jewelry marketed for us will look good on most outfits; simple bracelets or necklaces will easily get you from Jeans-and-t-shirt to metrosexual. Women have it a little less easy, and are tempted to go overboard where men remain too bland.
A simple cut, easy line with little in the way of distraction can be helped by a brooch or a reasonably sparkly necklace, or even by putting a little extra time in hair and make-up, using your outfit merely as a frame for a pretty face.

To end this thing, men, everything above applies to us as well as to the women, just because examples in female fashion are easier to give does not mean we get a fee ride here. To illustrate, I am leaving you with two pictures of current men’s fashion, both with roughly the same amount of happenings, but not quite with the same effect.

Style: General Comments

Because any reasonable Style section in any reasonable magazine is going to repeat itself over and over again anyways like a hamster reading out the brand of his spinnywheelthing, mine should not be a real exception to that rule. However, to make my own life and yours as a reader a little bit more interesting and in the long run rewarding, I am going to pre-empt the whole repetition thing by going into some base values of what style is and should be, so I can just allude to the main points later on and safely assume everybody will know what I am talking about. Or wrongly assume everybody knows what I am talking about. Same difference.

Style vs. Fashion

Style is not the same as fashion, although sometimes they do overlap quite a bit. It is entirely possible to be imminently stylish but not at all fashionable, and vice versa. The first, however, is far more likely. It has been said (by me, often) that style is what stays after fashion goes away, and up to a certain level, this is true, providing one takes a very long view of fashion, say a good 1000 years or so. As a rule, style is intricately personal, and uses what is available, where fashion is group-based, and creates availability.

Common sense

Common sense is one of the mayor points in both creating and having (a) style, and both are almost impossible to achieve without it. Obviously, those completely devoid of common sense but still striving for style can hire a stylist, but that would be a sensible thing to do, thus negating the lack of common sense again.
Applying common sense to appearance and wardrobe is actually surprisingly easy to advice, but very hard to do, judging from the amount of utter crap that still lingers despondently unworn on several of the shelves in my own wardrobe.
I will not give a hard and fast line on this topic, as I hope to brush against it often in these bits and most of this column will be heavily based on what I deem common sense anyway.

Size, or “the fact that it fits you does not mean it’s your size”

This particular subject is going to get its own blog, obviously, but bears saying something now. There really is very little more detrimental to looking good than picking a wrong size for your body. This goes both ways; as dressing in things that are too small can be as detracting from your looks as dressing in too over-sized a fabrication. Depressingly enough, a great deal of people have no idea what size they should be wearing, and thus wear things they really should not even have looked at in the first place. As a hint, anything that pushes your body into a shape it does not usually have is probably too small for you, and anything that does not show the shape your body usually has stands a good change of being too big. Neither is flattering in theory, and most certainly neither is stylish. One is almost always best of with things that skim one’s contours but leave some room to move comfortably.

Comfort

As style is dependent not only on you and your body, but also on your environment and personal situation, giving advice concerning comfort is difficult. Slack pants and a big t-shirt certainly are comfortable, but not in a large social gathering, and they certainly won’t make you feel more comfortable in the wrong company. That said; well-cut boot-cuts, good shoes and a fitted shirt can be less easy to move around in, but make you feel a lot more on top of the situation mostly.
All things being equal, however, you will look good in what feels good, and what feels good will show itself when you think for a little bit about the situations you are likely to encounter.

Vibe

A conversation with Boyfriend a little while ago about the way people dress actually prompted this series of solipsistic extravaganza, and most importantly, the fact that a lot of people miss the plank completely when it concerns what they want to show with the way they dress and what it actually shows.
A good example here is the classic comb-over, which generations of men think as shown a full head of hear where it more correctly points out the fact that there actually is no full head of hair. A woman dressing a little too brightly and too small thinking it shows she has a youthful outlook on life stands a better chance of showing not just her real age but going several years over when viewed from outside her own head.
To a certain extent, it is unavoidable that even the most careful planning and attention to detail might sometimes miss its objective, but the likelihood of this situation decreases massively when one puts some effort into staying within the lines of ones ability.


All in all, I have started this Style-section of my blog to put into words my own thoughts on the subject, but also because I have been asked in the past to get some ideas on paper about this. It is in no way meant as a style guide or some such, although I personally think it could become one over time. For now, it is just a showcase for me of mistakes I have seen made and can illustrate, and the wonderful things one sees and can share. And it is all about sharing, off course.

Fashion!

Well… fashion… fashion… style, maybe. And even if that, MY ideas of style, which might not always match with other’s ideas of same. Having had some small schooling in the field of fashion, and a long abiding interest in the field of style, and having made my own good measure of momentous fuck-ups, I believe I have acquired at my young age a good eye for “what looks good” and what doesn’t, and a reasonable ability to match things from that first category to the people around me and myself.

I think my greatest fabfashionmoment was when M, a friend who shall remain an initial for this scriptorial, asked me to join her on a shopping trip, for shits and giggles. We arrived at a large clothing store where we swiftly dived into the stacks, pulling out a lot of things we thought looked ok, among which a pair of dusty green linen pants and a brightly printed purple top. Well, I thought it looked nice, she didn’t. Didn’t, until she came out of the changing rooms (some pressure was applied) and completely loved the outfit. She was actually commented upon it several times, and called me very excitedly when she saw a tv-presenter dressed in exactly the same outfit. I was very happy then, and am so still.

So I think I have a reasonable eye for the gross lines of style, and as such am going to create a number of blogs on that and directly related topics, starting of with the one directly after this one, which should be published later today. As a title and category for these, I will try to create an easy to reach label. Most likely: Style:[topic]

Feedback will be, as always, greatly appreciated.

Back is I

Hello Possums.

It’s been a while since my last blog, and I have to apologise. As idle hands are the devil’s playground, these particular hands have been a small swing and a bouncy chicken for the last six or so weeks, both with regards to the actual day-job and the blogging addendum to said day-job.

Basically, I have been looking for work, and because boredom leads to inactivity for me, I have also not been blogging. Not been doing an enormous amount of anything, actually. Well, Boyfriend has purchased quite a large storage devise, and the paperwork concerning mortgages and suchlike has kept us both busy translating and then fighting over the translations for a few days, and Housemates return from the US and the thus added social options of seemingly endless picture viewing-parties have accounted for about 600 years of my time as well, but really, there is no excuse, I have been a bad blogger.

But now I have a job again, and thus I need my belletristic reprieve from the hazards of a customer-facing profession. Also, in my time of idleness I have been able to watch a number of movies and suchlike, and I might have something to say about things.

Those things, however, will have to wait for now, as this is simply a message to let every single one of my readers (5 people, still) know that I am both back and in good enough mental and physical help to start blogging again.

Stripes at 00010 “we apologise for the gap in delivery”

Kevin.