Tailored Seduction

I had a bit of an epiphany this weekend. Not about the meaning of life or how to enjoy a recession or why we are all but grains of sand, etc., etc. This epiphany was more important than any of that, and much more life-changing. I had a sudden realization about the worth of tailoring.

A friend and I went to the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology to see a show called “Gothic: Dark Glamour.” (Now closed, not very good, you didn’t miss much). The real eye-opener was the other show, “Seduction.” It’s pretty straightforward: seduction in fashion, 250 years of it.

My friend and I were looking at an amazing evening gown, a strapless, straight-skirted number from the 1950s. Steps away were the 1960s. I looked back at the 1950s. Then to the 60s. It occurred to me that, although I had always thought that 1950s fashion was completely revisionist and a step backwards in terms of women’s apparel and, by extension, feminism, these clothes were in a way more liberating than the fashions in the following decades.

Because the onus used to be on the clothes. But we’ve gone from wearing structured clothing to treating our bodies as if they are capable of the same tailoring. Plastic surgery, Botox, peels, treatments, exercise ad nauseum–our bodies cannot be taken in, darted, pleated and tucked so they become “perfect”, whatever that means. The perfect dress, however, can, and that is one of the reasons it’s perfect. The well-cut suit, or custom-made shirt, or tailored dress is perfect because it’s properly fitted which means it ought to both look good and be comfortable. It’s not a trade-off.

The fifties were the twilight of the girdle and accompanying restrictive undergarments. The fifties were also the twilight of a type of tailoring (the dresses in the show were, of course, couture–we should all be so lucky) that worked with the wearer’s body. Cut and tailoring should complement and focus on the good aspects of the wearer’s figure, and hide the not-so-good. That’s what a talented designer should have in mind when designing clothes. The sixties and later were more about body-consciousness in the name of freedom and feminism, and tailoring went out the window. But when a dress is a simple shift–beautiful in its own right–there’s not enough there to hide anything. Or with hot pants or mini-skirts or long gowns slit down the front and up the side. Besides, true seduction is subtle, it's a hint, a whisper...not an anvil used to crush a peanut.

I think it would be a relief for many women to wear a properly made suit and not worry about how their arms or their thighs or their derrière look. To be comfortable wearing a smashing dress and feel the accompanying lift in self-confidence. To know that summer wouldn’t mean another liposuction surgery, but instead a trip to the dressmaker’s, which is quicker, easier, cheaper, and healthier.

(btw, Charm was a mag later folded in Glamour.)

The Boom's Bombed

In the fall of 2007, I finished a magazine article about the art market for the finance trade magazine I’ve written for on a regular basis. I’d been working in it for months. I spoke with auction house people, gallery people, art consultant people, money people, collector people and even some people people. My final effort was attending Christie’s modern and contemporary evening sale in mid-November. (The image at left is Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God", which was not at Christie's). The party was, in many ways, over after that night, although the truth wasn’t acknowledge until the following year and the November 2008 auctions only served to nail the point home.

As an artist of sorts myself, and not one who will likely earn as much in my lifetime as the amount for a single painting offered at Christie’s that night, I’ve long been struggling with the challenge of balancing what I distinguish as a job versus work. A job pays money which pays my rent. Work is my real work–writing fiction–and it ain’t paying for nothing right now and might not ever. That’s the reality I’ve accepted, as have many people I know who are in the same boat. Yep, there’s a boat and we’re sitting in it together looking for land, drifting in a sea that dislikes experimentation, play, and eccentricity. Doesn’t sell! it tells us. No money in it! it insists.

This article in The New York Times by Holland Cotter corresponds nicely to my thoughts about art and the recession, particularly this bit:

It’s day-job time again in America, and that’s O.K. Artists have always had them — van Gogh the preacher, Pollock the busboy, Henry Darger the janitor — and will again. The trick is to try to make them an energy source, not a chore.

I’m not convinced that van Gogh ever made a real living as a preacher, or at anything, but that small point aside, the trick, as Cotter says, is to have a job that’s not a chore, that doesn’t sap all the energy and imagination that it takes to create, while paying enough for rent and food on a regular basis. Those jobs are getting rarer. I’ve first-hand experience of this. Twenty years of it.

But Cotter offers some land:

At the same time, if the example of past crises holds true, artists can also take over the factory, make the art industry their own.

Which is what needs to happen. Aux armes! Seize the factories, comrades! Artists unite! If recessions are good for nothing else, they’re often good for art. The shackles of making a living drop away, through shear unlikeliness, as do conventions. Yes, a sigh of relief. We can be weird again. As Cotter puts it: “a condition of abnormality can be sustained.” The condition of abnormality that is imperative for true creativity to happen. I’m glad we all agree now that we can redirect our boat, maybe break off into little boats, or flotillas, or a kind of new boat, just invented, and be eccentric, strange, do what we like without concern for “the marketplace” because the marketplace is gone, gone, gone. Do what you gots to do to keep a roof over your head, but don’t forget what the real work is. The work that doesn’t always pay in dollars but does is so many other ways that a market cannot appreciate or understand.