Ideal Garment

What to wear to a wedding

2011-05-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

Well, it really depends what you are doing at that wedding, doesn't it? If you are the bride, you should probably look "bridal" but that can mean many things. It definitely means "look amazing", but for the most part a bride can wear a paper-sack and look amazing. Of course the unhappy bride who knows she is doing the wrong thing might look sickly in even the most lovely gown. Brides can be counted on to know what they want to wear and to wear it. But what of the rest of us? And particularly what of me, when I am the one performing the ceremony, and i am not ecclesiastical in the least, and so have no tell-tale garment as a must-wear sort of thing.

Generally, at a wedding, I tend toward the slutty. Maybe because I get hot-flashes, and need to cool off. Maybe because I have a husband, and husbands always vote for less rather than more clothing, and since I do not do "bare" on my lower half, the bareness is on the upper half. Then a girl gets used to the air on her skin and never being restricted by the cut and seam of a garment, and things get barer and barer until one day someone is going to tell me to put on some clothes. I know it. But Jeff will punch them, and I will cackle my crone cackle, and we will strip whatever is left on off and jump into a hottub with glasses of wine in our paws.

Obviously slutty wasn't going to work while officiating at a wedding where the bride is beautiful in a strapless dress and the attendants are each in a strappy silvery cocktail dress, one more beautiful than the other, a mash-up of old friends and lesbian lovers through the years. Did I want to allow them to be as beautiful and bare as they are and not draw away from them, or was I afraid to compete? Oh for heaven's sake! I am old, and tall, and scarred, and have a clipped head and a young husband. There is no competition. I have won and so has everyone else. No, I really did want to look wonderful, so I didn't ruin pictures, but didn't want to look distracting in any way, since I would be right there, visibly between the bride and the groom for however many minutes and however many hundreds of camera clicks a wedding takes these days. Just about 600 seconds, the way I did it.

So for the officiant, in this case, not so much skin. I thought to go with one of my belted coats, long as a robe maybe. The bride had liked the idea of an antique kimono I had mentioned, but then I couldn't find it. And a coat seemed severe. I can look very mannish when dressed like that. And it occurred to me that this particular bride, having had her share of female lovers and relationships, and being as woman-centric as she is, I should maybe give a nod in the direction of the feminine. But again, not through the showing of skin, since my sexuality was not interesting in this tableau, just my femininity and humanity. Hmmmm. I might have worn my usual close to the body sort of dress, but it seemed hot, and I am kind of fat and didn't want to think about my belly during the event. At all. Even though I think bellies are lovely on everyone but me. Oh man. This is going nowhere. I just want to be dressed, lovely and fairly inconspicuous, since it is odd that i have to be there at all. Or so I thought. I am having new thoughts about the role and importance of the officiant at weddings after having done a few.

At the fabric store, which I haunt aimlessly, I find a tulle with spirals applied. Black on black, but see-though enough. So I buy as much as i can afford, because it is mesmerizing. and I am thinking the slight transparence might be the solution to not showing skin, but not being severe, and the circular spirals are so feminine and remind me of primitive sculptures just a tiny bit. I love it so much, that I do not want to cut it. So I make a very plain tube of a dress, with rectangular arms and finish all the edges and put it on and now I look like something. I look like a cross between a mythical priestess and Mrs Thurston Howell the Third. Mrs. Howell! Lovey!!! I do. It is perfect. Silly and ceremonial at the same time. Just lovely. I am nothing, the dress is respectful of the occasion, and the set-piece that will be the wedding will not be ruined by my being too much of a black hole nor eye-catching in any sort of color or shape. I am a monk, or a pampered lady, or both. I am a priestess, and my acolyte is getting me a glass of wine and giving me kisses and walking around like a peacock in his beautiful new pale suit in Italian wool. One of the gorgeous lesbians puts some finishing touches on my make-up, which I really shouldn't wear at all, and several ladies (who are using the same rustic table where i have set my things to change the diaper of the flower girl) help me choose earrings. I wrap the reduced obi belt around my waist and I am done. My body is sheathed underneath in a silk-satin stretch gown that holds my breasts in a light embrace, and slinks imperceptibly along my body all the way to the ground, a murky undercolor for the tulle that the acolyte chose as most dull but not oppressive. The dress over that eliminates all thought of my own body as on display. It is not. I feel wonderful, and I look plain, but not at all. Glamorous, without exposing myself at all, which is so odd for a woman. Very bare and completely flat sandals, and I'm done.

Speaking of shoes, ladies, please stop wearing heels, if only so that little girls will stop thinking they need to wear heels in order to be an adult woman. Such a terrible message. One of the mini-bridesmaids, a nine year old girl, had sore feet from wearing the pretty heeled shoes she had begged for at the rehearsal dinner. She had on tights and her mom had bandaids and the shoes were on, adding nothing to her beautiful dress. We talked about it, and of course I was wearing flat sandals, and I told her to not to worry about it, to just take off her shoes as soon as she felt like it. Half-way through the evening, a barefoot child in a silver silk dress dashes across the room sparkling with lights, leaping in the air like a sprite. Just saying. It would be terrific if women would find some other way to feel sexy than high heels. It is a very bad example.

Anyway. I got many compliments and comments on the dress. I haven't seen it. No photos have come my way yet. But it was in any case a successful get-up for a wedding. The beautiful attendants were stunning, and some even managed to keep on their shoes well into the party. The bride changed into something more comfortable, but still bridal, towards the end. I changed out of the ceremonial over-dress into a barer paler over-dress, and became the sluttier wedding guest I love to be. But no reveal of the body. I am almost done with that. The waistline of the priestess is not, it turns out, interesting. What a relief.

Stop wearing skirts.

2008-11-13T07:45:00.000-08:00

Seriously, ladies. Stop wearing skirts.

There is no reason to be showing people your legs, unless there is a reason to be showing people your legs, of which there are only two: You have a partner who loves to see your legs, or you are trolling for a partner and your charms and intellect are not enough to rope them in.

Stop revealing your legs frivolously. It is silly and keeps people from hearing what you actually have to say. Here is a link to a photo of a woman with lots to say, but how can we hear her when her legs are so prominently displayed?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3152/3022556849_6e696eea4c.jpg?v=0

There is a reason men don't reveal their legs all day long, even if they have really nice legs. It is distracting. And possibly chilly. In any case inappropriate. Too much information. Like halter tops, which you all know I love, but which have no place in professional environments, except perhaps as the first of many layers of upper garments. Rock the halter underneath a shirt, sure. But keep the shirt on when you are around anyone who is paid money to be in the same room with you. Not in a bad way. I'm just saying. Of course, if they are paying money to be in the room with you, and not in a good way, the halter by itself is probably just perfect.

Actually, I am at this moment wearing a skirt and headed to a community meeting. But the skirt is as long as pants, and as slender of a line, so no one will even notice probably that I am in a long skirt. I often prefer skirts, as they can be very comfortable, and are pretty much always more flattering. But long to the ground, or with boots to cover up the leg. My legs are no one's business but mine and my partner's.

Until you come to understand the idea of "skirt" without the idea of "leg being revealed and all that entails, including razors, lotions, pantihose, stairmasters, etc", you should just stop wearing skirts in the workplace.

At home, or out with your love, wear the shortest, skankiest little scrap of fabric you want. Have a ball.

Natural fibers

2008-10-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

Wow. I have been mesmerized by the election season.

So.

We were in Eureka Springs this weekend, and it was great. It is a hilly, down-market version of every faux-art town on the planet, including Carmel and Mendocino, which most leapt to mind.

Crap crap and more crap, and then some gear stores with practical clothing you might find in Boulder, Colorado, spas, hotels, and bars, mostly with patios. Very nice.

Two stores though, run by individuals who were creating their own reality in the most wonderful sorts of ways, shamed me slightly, and I am not sure what to do about it.

It involved natural fibers.

The first shop situation was like my twin, in terms of a person making and selling clothing out of a studio and shop. In fact, much of the clothing was very similar to mine, except that I couldn't imagine wearing any of it. I don't think his customer is very different than my customer, but there was something very different. He was in the process of opening, had opened, a fabric store on a street not far away, and was moving towards that. So. Take from that what you will. Making clothing is a pain in the ass, and he was making things that required much more labor and attention and skill than what I make, which requires very little to none.

What was great was that he had created two terrific storefronts and managed, with an assistant, to keep their doors open all the time. Good shopkeeper, and I am going to try harder.

But the thing that troubles me is the commitment to natural fibers. I appreciate it and wish that I could follow that path, and it all made me wonder why I can't. But I can't. Not now anyway. And then I wondered about the damage I might be inflicting on the world by working in toxic, synthetic fabrics. (In an unrelated conversation with someone else, I learned that synthetic fabrics are not subject to tariffs, because no one in the country makes them because it is tooooo toxic of a process. So that is why it is all done in Asia. Rats. I hate the way this world has developed.)

So, those familiar with me, know that I am not at all troubled by synthetic fibers, that I use them all the time.

The second shop we stumbled across at the vey end of our visit. A woman who makes, has made, things out of silk in the hills of Thailand. Very sustainable (if you are not a silk worm), and local. It is a beautiful story from a beautiful woman. She and her helpers were all wearing silk jackets, very comfortable, very flattering. More complicated, based on a kimono jacket sort of thing. And I understand that they are washable, although I will guess that most people do dry clean them. So that ruins the environmental plus.

It is all so complicated, and I have not sorted it out in my own head, hence the confusion here. As I think about this more, I will write more, and correct this post. But meanwhile, if anyone reads this and has thoughts, please please please send them along. I am wondering.

The clothing of people who work

2008-09-08T08:21:00.001-07:00

Much mockery was made of Hillary Clinton's pantsuits. Which was so odd since men in her field exclusively wear pantsuits. Never worn one other thing. Just pantsuits. But somehow Mrs. Clinton was skewered for doing so.

Well. Pantsuits are comfortable, practical, and allow a person to do what they need to do without having to give further thought to their clothing. Which is the right thing to wear when you are fighting very important and complicated fights in your effort to improve the world, which is the role of politicians, last I heard. I would have been even happier if she had gone all the way and worn suits in colors that do not show dirt, as men do, and if she had worn sensible shoes and socks rather than pumps and panty hose. Women's pantsuits still suck, but they don't know it. The only way to know how much women's clothing, and even pantsuits which are supposed to be so great, suck, is to actually put on and wear for a few hours or a day the clothing of men.

Here's what you do, and don't act like I am telling you something you know. I know you don't. I talk to everyone, and I have never, in 16 years since I did this, found even one other woman who has actually dressed like a man. EXACTLY as a man would dress for professional life.

It helps that I am the size of an average man, and my feet are a small man's size, so I can wear men's shoes without being clownish and tripping on them.

Anyway. Assemble your pieces. You will need a cotton t-shirt and boxer shorts that fit you. Buh-bye bra. Buh-bye panty lines and constricting girdly things like spanx. You will need socks and shoes. Men's socks and a good pair of men's tie up shoes. Men do not wear pantihose under their pants, and neither will you when you dress like one. Then you will need a shirt that fits you pretty well. There is alot of leeway, but it must be an ironed shirt with which you can wear a tie. You need a tie. Then you need a well made suit in a wool suiting fabric. Jacket and pants. A pant suit.

Put all that stuff on, and nothing else. If your breasts absolutely require a little something for you to feel comfortable, put on your most favorite and most comfortable bra. I am not sure that there aren't men who wear some kind of bra, what with all the man-boobs going around these days, so don't feel bad about that little variance.

Leave your hair clean and plain, pulled back from your face if it is long, but do not do any kind of "hair-do". Whatever style you would wear to the gym or to do house work, but again, clean. Do not put on any make up at all, or jewelry.

It is vitally important that you not girl-up the outfit with pantihose and pumps, with a sexy "feminine" shirt, with make-up and a hairdo. It is vitally important that you not put on "sexy" underwear, or underwear that in anyway tries to re-shape you in its image. You must have on men's underwear, men's shirt, suit socks and shoes, and nothing else.

If you do this, and if you walk around, you might feel odd, different than usual, dpending on how completely stupid and useless your usual clothing is, but what you will mostly feel is powerful. Like you can do anything. Walk anywhere. Tell anyone what you think without thought to what that person might think about your butt. You can address issues, think clearly, do what needs to be done, safely, attractively, comfortably. You can go outside if it is cold, and you will be fine, at least for a few blocks. You can walk over cobblestones and run for the bus. You can offer your jacket to an innanely dressed woman who is shivering cold, which is what I did that Halloween night, but the woman was actually a man who had dressed as a woman, and looked just like Ellen Barkin in "Buckaroo Bonzai and the eighth dimension" in a fat-sequined, strappy little dress. He was wearing combat boots, because straight men are just not so stupid as to wear high heels if they can get away without doing so, and he surely did. Couldn't have been cuter, but even with boots on his feet he was cold and I offered my jacket, which he took.

Catch this. For my whole entire life I have been told, and believed, that I have "poor circulation" and that that is why my hands and feet are always cold. Guess what. With shoes and socks, and without pantihose that bind, with a couple of layers of cotton and a pair of light wool pants, I was just fine on that very chilly October night. Not cold at all. My feet weren't cold, even though I was standing on damp grass all night. My hands weren't cold, even though I 'm sure I was holding a drink all night.

But even before I was done dressing, when I still just had on shirt and shoes, socks and underwear and was getting the suit out of its garment bag, I was already screaming through the halls of the house, "NO WONDER THEY FUCKING RULE THE WORLD! I WOULD RULE THE WORLD IF I DRESSED LIKE THIS!!!"

So imagine my dismay, on top of all the other dismay, to see the Republican VP candidate getting off a plane in my fine state of Missouri yesterday, walking down the steep stairs practically hand in hand with John McCain, in a dress with a short, useless little cardigan, hose and heels.

Shit.

Here's the thing. If a woman is wearing heels, some of her mental energy is going into whether or not the ground is safe to navigate, and making sure that she doesn't trip and twist an ankle. Any heel almost will do this to the brain of a woman. Oh, they are fun to wear, and you almost can't help getting laid if you wear certain versions of high heels (which this chick should also lay off of), but they do, necessarily, take up a bit of your brain in a way that regular men's shoes do not. Triple that effect if the woman is wearing pantihose. Making sure that one doesn't brush up against anything that will snag them is part of the cycle of her brain pattern. Every, say, fifth second devoted to taking note of dangerous surroundings. Every fourth second devoted to staying safe in the high heels. Then you have a dress and a short sweater that reveals the butt of the woman in a way that is, necessarily, sexual. There will be a section of her thought cycle devoted to whether her ass looks good in the outfit. Only strippers, who realize that men don't care at all how the ass looks as long as they can see it clearly, are the only women who walk around with highly presented butts and don't give it a thought. Besides, for strippers any clothes at all, even very exposing, clingy clothing that would send a normal woman into fits of soul-searching as to whether she can get away with it or not, are more modest and less-exposing than their usual work attire. The equivalent of your very big brother's sweats to them. But all other women, especially the ones who do take good care of themselves and who are very aware of what kind of an ass they are showing off by wearing a dress, or skirt or pants, that closely drapes, and a jacket that stops well-above, their butt, have a part of their mind staying on top of the management of all that. Gorgeous doesn't just happen. Women spend time energy and most importantly mental energy, making sure you look at their butt, and that you are pleased with it.

So we have the heels, the pantihose and the revealed ass to keep the candidate occupied. This on top of the fact that she has a little baby with Down's Syndrome, which is a terrible thing and babies end up spending alot of time in the hospital and often dying. You know she is thinking about that at least once in a while. At least I hope she is, since she decided to carry the baby to term when she had other choices. And she has a pregnant teen ager who is planning to marry her teen age boyfriend, neither of whom have their high school diplomas, and I don't care how cheap it is to live in Alaska, that is not going to be an easy row for that girl and boy, and a mom has just got to be spending a little bit of mental energy worrying about those two children. And then also the mental energy cursing herself for not having more effectively communicated the idea of abstinence to that daughter. Rats. I would be compulsively wondering what I could have done better, furious at having so utterly failed at a thing I am so loudly proud of in the public realm. Ouch.

A woman with so much on her mental plate, and who is being crammed as though for preliminary exams to be able to answer the party line to pundits when, and if, she ever consents to an interview, you would think would be quick to don a pantsuit. But this chick is not the pantsuit kind. She is the kind of woman who still thinks she gets more respect by showing some leg. She, like many women, think that attention is good attention, not realizing that absolutely no one is listening to a word they say if their legs are nice and suitably exposed in hose and heels. Not one word. Which in the case of this woman will be to her benefit now, since everything she says is sooooooo terrible to the thinking person with regard for personal liberties and democracy. But still! Busy times call for clothing that supports a person rather than clothing which demands constant low grade and sometimes emergency attention.

In short, this dress and hose and heels and a short cardigan, while fetching for a date or a charity luncheon, is inappropriate for a person who is supposed to be thinking hard about and caring deeply about the answers to our very profound, national problems. Why is she choosing to think about hose and heels and how her butt looks? Is she stealing that mental energy from that due to her children? Oh, I hope not. All I can figure is that she doesn't think it is necessary to free up her mind to focus on the big issues, which Hillary Clinton clearly understood. Pantsuits are what men wear because they do not disturb a person, do not take energy or mental energy to wear. The make no demands. It is for the person to make demands on the suit, that it be supportive and comforting and protective, and allow the person inside to do all the things they might be called upon to do. Like be present, rather than running off to the restroom to change into a new pair of nylons when the first pair run.

Just more poor judgement. Wasn't sure you would notice, blinded as people tend to be by a pretty girl in a dress, hose and heels.

The Black Skirt Initiative

2008-09-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, hi there. Long time no see.

I have been consumed with The Black Skirt Initiative, the black skirt being the most perfect and reproducible in quantities, each one custom-sized, of course.

It is coming together, but it is where all my writing is right now. I hope you have missed me.

You are welcome to check out the in-progress site:

theblackskirtinitiative.com

See you on the flip side.

I miss the Speedo.

2008-08-14T10:42:00.001-07:00

I don't think it has much to do with blight, although in my life Speedos on men have been mocked and disdained so thoroughly, if they were a neighborhood they would be forsaken.

But my point, and I do have one, is that I was nine years old when the 72 Olympics took place, Mark Spitz to be exact, and I am beginning to think my entire sexuality was molded by very very beautiful men in tiny little things. Their shoulders, oh my, and those muscles right near the hip bones. And let's not get started on the men's gymnastics. I watched a bunch of that last night. Wow. Shoulders. Guess what I noticed first about my husband the first time he walked toward me, conveniently wearing a tank top? You guessed it. Shoulders. He is so beautiful.

But back to Speedos. They were so simple. So nothing. So very terrible on a body that did not need to be on display, so undignified when it was not enough. But when anything at all is a little too much clothing, and you know the bodies of which I speak, the Speedo was divine. Phelps schmelps. He is not going to be a pin-up at my house in that wetsuit thing they all wear now. And it's not going to help if he does a beefcake photo shoot in some sliver of lycra. It won't be the same. They have to win the race, be their excellent selves, while wearing the Speedo. It doesn't count if they just put it on for show.

(None of this counts behind closed doors, when people might want to see their beloved clothed many which ways, and all that is very grand, but not my point.)

All this is why I am so thrilled to discover that I have found, again, an ideal outfit. I have been secretly going to the gym, so I have to wear something to accomodate that. And it turns out that the very outfit I put on to go to church last Sunday (oh, yes I did, and it was crap), minus the coat and hat, is just perfect for my visit to the gym. All I do is walk on the treadmill for about an hour, lift some weights and do some stretching and abdominals. Abomidables, if you ask me. Anyway, the ideal drawstring pants, scientific panties, silver lame scientific breast embracer, and the sleeveless top that goes with a long skirt and which has taken me to funerals and fancy dinners, that is the perfect outfit. Going to the gym has revealed the limit, finally, to the ideal usefulness of the long slender skirt. Not that I wouldn't wear one to the gym anyway, since it is easy to transform it to a mini skirt, which some girls are wearing to the gym, I noticed. Cute. And modest enough with a fine pair of Scientific Panties, I suppose.

So, what are you wearing that allows you to be your most marvelous, powerful self, and also look divine? You can't wear crap while you do excellent things, and then just put something on for show when you think it is a good idea to look nice. No. Your clothing needs to support you in every way.

OK then. Those 23 year old olympians should wear Speedos, and I hope they do in their normal training and swimming, if only because I think swimmers probably really like the feel of water against their skin, but also to improve the visual quality of the universe. Meanwhile, I am kind to my fellow gym travelers by not wearing stretch capri-legging like the lady in front of me on the elliptical thingy yesterday. She was a beautiful woman, older than I am and in better shape, but I don't need to know that much about anyone's ass. If you wouldn't wear it to the opera, you shouldn't wear it at all. See, I wanted to say, "If you wouldn't wear it to the store", or "If you wouldn't wear it to lunch", but people do wear stretch leggings with nothing covering their butts to the store and to lunch. Oh, they sure do. And I do not like it, not one little bit. Now, there's some blight for you. I'm on topic.

Return of the Shift

2008-07-28T05:53:00.001-07:00

Back in the very early 1990's, in Los Angeles and elsewhere, anyone getting dressed by me was getting dressed in little tubular, tank-style shifts. Oh, I would go a little a-line for a pregnant woman, and there were other, longer dresses, too; but mostly drifty cylinders in rich-printed rayon challis, or cotton, or linen, simplicity itself, just enough to stay on, and pretty much fell to the floor with the slightest wriggle if the straps were pulled off the shoulders. A perfect dress. Sultry and forgiving. Generally a few inches above the knee, but in some cases quite short. We wore them alot. Around the house, and with heels to pretty much any event. They worked as night dresses, beach cover-ups, went in the wash and came out of the dryer bouncy and perfect, as though suggesting you go off and do something fun. Maybe have a cup of coffee with a friend on Venice Beach. Maybe throw a little grill-out on the patio for a few friends.

The fabrics available at the time are not in the stores now. There were prints of strange complexity, even a little ugly sometimes, but enticing, intoxicating. Not ditsy. Not what anyone would expect. There must have been a crowd of designers in some factory having a great time, and no one was saying "no" to them. No more. Now the rayon challis all looks like it came straight out of your mother's imagination of what would make a nice, oh, I don't even know what. They are uninspiring.

But I do not throw things out, especially not fabric, and this weekend in the chaos of my studio I found a small amount of one of the very very best fabrics: an insane, abstracted Frenchified filigree in shades of gold and brown against a mottled red-orange background. I'm telling you. You just don't find stuff like this anymore. There was a large stain on this short length of old fabric, like a faint pool of ink or something, the placement of which precluded making a dress. I washed it, and the stain stayed. Rats. I thought about making a small shirt, because who doesn't need a little something to get through the summertime, the way we go through tops in this midwestern heat. Or maybe one of my short little pocketed skirts that we all wear ad nauseum with our t-shirts and tank tops.

But when I put the fabric on the table, I could not stop myself from using the whole piece for one plain shift, old school. I had to think about where I wanted the stain to be, and decided on the back, to the side, and sort of just below my arm. It's there, but you really have to be watching me walk away, which I almost never do, to see it. No. I like to stay till the bitter end, have people walk away from me.

I am being optimistic. I figured the stain would make this dress just for at home wear. I have one other shift, and my husband loves it, cheers up terribly when I put it on, which I only do to go to bed, because I didn't do a great job on it, and though he likes the fabric, picked it out himself, even, it is a little too thematic for me. Something sea-related, watery. Whatever. Blue. Anyway, I kind of messed up the armholes in several, irreparable ways, so it is not a dress I'm likely to wear off the property. And the blue makes it sort of a nightdress, in my mind.

So. Last night, after showering before bed, I put on the new shift. We were so beat from the hot weekend and projects, I am still wearing it this morning, but it was well received, don't you worry. His eyes light up, for him the new dress is a new treat. For me like a visit from an old friend I haven't seen in ages, one I used to live with and wish I still did live with. May once again live with, if truth be told. I am happy in this shift. Check this. I just went to the studio, just down the hall, and put on the unwearably high-heeled pumps I keep for testing skirts and dresses, to see how the dress handled them. Just fine, thanks very much. I am naked underneath now, of course, but I am thinking I'll just put on some undergarments to finish out the day. It promises to be a scorcher, as they say.

Welcome back, little dress. I missed you more than I knew.

Flawed things

2008-07-15T06:57:00.000-07:00

A lot of things that are not ideal can become much closer to ideal with just a little adjustment.

But you have to be willing to make an adjustment.

Most things don't take much skill and even less talent.

What could I say to convince you to fix something, make it better, rather than throwing it out and then trying to buy something to replace it?

Men's sizing

2008-07-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight we measured Jeff. We were taking in a pair of shorts that are a "32", because they were a little big, and he doesn't wear belts. It occurred to me to measure him around his waist and to measure the actual waist of the shorts we had just taken in.

Who is surprised to learn that there was no measurement of "32" on his body, except from his shoulder to his fingertips. So you know we measured everything.

His waist, where he wears his shorts, was about 36". The waist of the shorts, taken in, was 35".

So men's sizes have undergone an inflation similar to that of women's sizes.

Hmmmmmm.

What I am suggesting, again and again, is that we, women and men, at least when ordering Ideal garments from Ideal Garment, just take actual measurements, and that is the end of that.

In the course a day I might measure asses from 34" to 64", waists from 24" to 54" or even more I suppose. Busts can be anything. I do not even hazard a guess; just measure and that is that.

So it doesn't matter in the least what the measurement is, just that it be truthful.

Why should that be so strange and unlikely?

Golf and Tennis

2008-07-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

The new head of the McCain campaign walked out of a plane in full late-eighties, early nineties regalia: classic jeans belted under a well-fed and beveraged belly, worn with what was probably a long sleeve t-shirt under a well-made sportcoat.

He looked great. Not retro unless you actually remember that particular look on every thirty-something developer and technology sales prodigy back in the day.

It is a nice look, and useful, and it is a marvelous thing that a man of power, rather than actual, useful skill, can get away with dressing like that.

But wait. Indeed McCain was in a suit getting off the same plane. Because his entire worth is what he is perceived to be, which had better, being Republican, be suit-conservative.

This other man, Steve-something, naturally, is not paid to look like something. Is not paid to appear to be powerful and in command. No. This man in jeans and a sportcoat is paid for his ruthless and unrelenting approach to campaign strategy and execution. It doesn’t matter one whit what he looks like or what he wears, only that he can produce results, for which he is paid, no doubt handsomely, and because of which he can dress any way he likes; but because he is not terribly handsome and not as rich or smart or honest or as committed to women's issues as as dot com geek, who REALLY can dress any way they like until the lady they are banging takes them shopping, Steve's get-up must at least nod in the direction of "physically attractive".

He has chosen the perfect look, by the way. The large belly and small hip configuration of that style of man presents well in Levis 501-ish jeans (though probably a much more kindly cut, more pricey and fashionable brand) worn as he wore them. And it is not a body that is so very easy to present well, so good for him. Not as difficult, mind you, as the man with a spreading or flat or flabby posterior, which is almost impossible to make look “good” and is no doubt why men’s jackets never actually rise above the top of their thighs, no matter how many editorials and advertisements with tight young men in tight little jackets are splashed on full-bleed glossy pages. Only the flightiest of gay men who are planning to make hay today with a tight ass and a substantial package revealed by their too tight and too short jacket at the bar or party tonight would be caught dead in such garments. No self-respecting gay man who expects to invoice clients or run a corporate meeting later this week would dress like that.

But women do.

It is quizzical in the extreme, unless you notice that the women with the most disposable income, the most power and the most beautiful beach houses are almost to a one wives, widows or exes of rich men. Or strippers. There are exceptions, and they are very interesting, but the pattern holds and the children take note.

Go ahead. You can point out as many individual women making as much money as you like. The percentages are still low. Women should, but do not yet rule the world, and though they spend household money, it is still the exception for women to be actually in charge and responsible for that money coming into that household, and to be wholly empowered by it.

The message is still correct, though we may lament little girls, and also little boys, being exposed to it in the media and in real life all day long: A fine ass, big tits, shiny hair, all on a pair of high heels, are what will get you ahead. Either it will get you a powerful and rich husband, or it will dazzle the men who are in a position to promote you. Either way, women are still the young, penny-poor gay men of the straight world, having to expose and present themselves like baboons in order to get to the highest rung on the social ladder.

Not all of them. No. Plenty of women have made perfectly lovely lives being productive and useful and being paid well and deeply respected for their contributions to industry and society, of one kind or another. But most of those women are women who looked at themselves in the mirror at one time or another, probably very early, and saw that they were not going to succeed immensely, were not going to win the competition for the most rich and powerful male, with their ass or their shiny hair. No. And so they honed other parts of themselves, became well-educated, became careful thinkers, became trained scientists, engineers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, became funny, became performers, became famous for being smart and sharp and hilarious. Our richest women, rich in their own right, are beautiful now, but they were not beautiful to begin with and did not make their fortunes by being beautiful or any version of that.

But the thing is, if you are smart and accomplished and kind and thoughtful and compassionate and clear thinking and generous and self-assured and have a bunch of money to back it all up with good grooming and hygiene, it is not very hard to be beautiful at the age of 50, 60, 80, 100. You sort of are automatically beautiful, if you just adhere to a minimal regimen of personal care. Smelly people are difficult to be near, and so difficult to appreciate, so it is best not to be smelly. A serviceable haircut, good posture, clothes that are not cruel or incomprehensible, and a natural interest in others is usually enough to be beautiful after the age of 35, but certainly by the time 50 rolls around.

I know of which I speak. I dress women, from shockingly pornographic 21 year olds to the cream of the 80 year old crop. And they are all lovely, all shapes, sizes, ages, all lovely and most of them have men or women who love them and legions of friends and colleagues who admire and adore them. I think it is around 28, in natural terms, that a person loses their ability to be beautiful in physical terms alone. I don’t think it is because a body gets too old to be beautiful in and of itself. I think it is because by the age of 28 one’s character, one’s thought and substance begins to seep to the surface, especially through the eyes and in the set of expression, in stance, in reputation, and it slowly becomes impossible to appear beautiful if one is in fact, within, hateful, stupid, selfish, mean, close-minded, bigoted or any of the many things that make a person ugly. There is no face so beautiful that it can overcome ugliness as it pours out from within. There are just those few years when the young adult face is still forming, still in the process of losing its baby-fat, when the horrid person can still appear to be pretty. And then, suddenly, it's over.

But none of this changes the fact that from among even those divinely beautiful 40 year olds with sweet character and strong intelligence and rich humor, that the one that will be selected by the rich man looking for a second wife will be the one who is actually pretty in figure and face, or who has worked her angles to appear to be so.

And the fact that women of any age can still find themselves in physical competition with other women to attract high-status men means that women still wear clothing that cruelly reveals their bodies, much like the under-funded, youthful gay men who buff up at the gym and then expose themselves to the limit of legality to attract a much less attractive man but one with clearly substantial financial resources.

It is curious that Hillary Clinton, clearly among, if not in fact the most powerful woman in the country and maybe the world, that she should be mocked for wearing pantsuits. Every man in her field and most men at the top of every field in this hemisphere wears pantsuits. Why is it interesting that she does? And why is it so easy for that campaign strategist to wear jeans and a t-shirt on his clearly imperfect body, when women spend untold hours dollars trying first to improve and reshape the body and then more hundreds and thousands of hours and dollars to find jeans that they can feel OK about wearing? Why is it easy for men and difficult and convoluted and just about impossible for women?

Because women are trying to dress to attract with their bodies. Men are trying to attract with their power and success, and just need their bodies to not look repulsive. It really is hard to make a fat ass on a man look OK, but somehow it is not such an issue for men since they can just put on a sport coat which always will cover their butt. No fashion pendulum ever swings away from that. The sport coat also disguises and de-emphasizes the fat belly of all the men who do not have fat butts. Very handy garment, that sport coat or suit jacket. Plus, no man of any sense would wear pants that are tight. That is the fashion occasionally, but it never catches on. It is uncomfortable and difficult, and men are not interested in being bothered by their clothing. Neither is Hillary Clinton, neither am I. I completely understand her use of the suit (I will say "suit", since traditionally a suit is pants and matching jacket, and that is exactly what she wears), though I am sad that she still has to add so many tricky, feminine details, and can't actually just wear a suit, socks and shoes and a shirt like an actual man.

So that, dear readers, is what we are looking for. Clothing that is as unremarkably flattering, comfortable and useful (that campaign strategist no doubt went straight to his first meeting with the troops in that outfit), clothing which shows us off to advantage without bothering us in any way, clothing that mimics the spirit of men's clothing, but for our bodies. That is the thing. That would be ideal. But what would that entail for women? Mostly, I think, for us to forgo exhibiting our tails in quite such high relief. Men do not wear such tight and revealing clothing, and we are not mystified about which of them has the finest ass or broadest chest. We can tell, they know it, and no one is left cruelly configured in exposing clothing. The less good men profit from the graciousness and forgiveness of traditional dress, and the handsome men look really handsome. Just the exact opposite of women's clothing. The beautiful women look stunning in the tight, skimpy clothing, revealed legs and cleavage, and the rest of us can choose to look trashy or inappropriate, our trouble spots exposed in the style of the day, or grimly drab in clothing that is more comfortable and less cruelly revealing.

It is not that it is not fair. Nothing is fair. It is that it is possible to look great without dressing in a way that a less great looking woman cannot pull off. Oooooo! It is like golf. Anyone can play with anyone, the game itself is democratizing, as opposed to most games and even a bike ride which requires everyone to be at about the same skill level. Men's clothing is like golf. Women's clothing is like tennis. All men can wear the very same outfit, in their particular size, and they will all look fine, the great one's looking great. Women cannot wear the same outfits, and so must be careful, if they wish to be found stunningly beautiful, to be only in groups where the other women are of similar physical beauty and will be wearing similar sorts of garments. Do not find yourself at the high-end bar where the young women hunt for men in the swim-suit-like dresses, at least not unless you already have your man on your arm and pussy-whipped, and I mean that only in the nicest way. He wants to be, so go right ahead. He won't even notice the tiny dress and long legs on the supermodel/stripper, and if you point it out he will merely note that he would like you to dress like that. Probably you shouldn't, except maybe at home, but it is very sweet of him to suggest. And if you are in a place filled with women who do well to dress more modestly, be gorgeous, but maybe don't draw their attention to their regular bodies by showing everything off. Play golf and make friends, and stay away from the brutality of tennis unless you are in the company of comparable players.

Well. I think we may have gained a little useful perspective into the sartorial rabbithole.

Traveling Light July 08

2008-07-02T07:47:00.000-07:00

I am going to try this again. Last time, in May, packing was a spectacular failure, and we ended up buying a new piece of luggage in Chinatown, as well as pillaging Mom's stash of luggage for what is now our favorite bag and the one we will use to go to Irwin, PA this weekend.

Here is the drill. Two parties, a graduation and a 1 year birthday. Saturday and Sunday. Poolside, I imagine, so all the teen age cheerleaders and most of the adults will be in bathing suits when they are not in their party clothes.

But hey. On an interim trip to St. Louis, no parties involved, I still messed up by not bringing a useful jacket of some sort. So there is that, too. It turned out to be an outdoor temperature thing, unseasonably cool evenings for late June, but it doesn't matter. In the midwest and probably everywhere now, interiors are so air-conditioned that you need a little something something to just get through your errands, go to dinner or attend church.

A couple of my favorite jackets walked out of the shop this past month, and so my usual strategy of borrowing things off the rack was stunted. Oh, be real. My wearing and re-washing things on the rack just make them more wonderful, softer, more wearable. Oh. I should wind this up and go make a few jackets to replace those, as well as to assure that I will have something to pack.

Anyhoo.

Super casual people, very party oriented. I will probably not wear shoes on the premises. My husband likes me in dresses, short, light things that make him think I am cool and he can see more of me. Problem is. I am old and fat, and certainly compared to his very young and energetic, did I mention cheerleader sisters.

No worries. I made a dress yesterday that seems to solve all the problems. If it could be compared to anything, it could be compared to a Dave Mackie, hand-painted dress my mom had back in the seventies, and which I wore to senior prom. No date. I slipped on the dress in the restroom of the community college theater where I was rehearsing a play (I was doing lights), and scurried up to San Francisco to meet all my friends at the beautiful design center building where our tiny little dance was being held. Another charm of the very small private school... girls go to proms without dates, and it is not even a little weird. I actually thought it would be weird to go with someone, and so managed to get myself scheduled for rehearsal in order to be unavailable til later. The dress was great in many ways, but mostly it was easy to put on, easy to wear, I looked like I was dressed up, the end.

Today's dress is short rather than long, also of polyester, though this one seems lighter, airer than the old one, crimson rather than black, velvety rather than matte, and of course no gigantic, hand-painted flower crawling down the side. I might add a pocket for my cell phone, though, as that would make this dress exactly perfect, and make my husband very happy every time I actually pick up the phone when he calls. I also made a pair of clam-digger length pants in the same fabric, so I can have an early 20th century-ish sensible dress and pantaloons sort of thing, if I really want to make my knees go away. The shape of the dress, like the old one, is a slight a-line, to allow for movement, to be kind to flaws, and all things that a nice dress should do. the old one had a very thin belt out of the same fabric which you could wear at the waist and blouse the thing, which I might have done, but I am not going to do that now, having no waist to speak of any more.

So. One little dress. Maybe two, since one of the sisters will probably want one of them. Two pair of capri pants, one brocade, one to match a dress. One pair of long pants, linen, drawstring. One long slender skirt. Sorry. I just won't be without one of those. Nope. Camisole tops and t-shirts, total of 5. Bras and panties, one of which must double as a possible swimsuit. A light jacket that will work with anything to take off the chill of night air, or the bitter cold of airconditioning.

Yup. I better go make some jackets "for the shop". See you.

Fit angst

2008-06-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

The conversation about how to find a pair of jeans that fits continues unabated. Why do men not have such a problem finding jeans that fit? Why is this such a panic for women? The discussion just will not cease, which makes no sense as there are endless options at every price point so every woman should be able to find the jeans that fit her particular body by just asking someone who works at the store "which one for me?"

Of course a lot of women are not going to be happy if the jeans for them are 200 american dollars, and there are others who are not going to be flattered to hear that Lee Jeans are really the best fit for their body.

Women ask too much of their jeans, ask for what jeans cannot even really do. Denim is a great fabric for clothing that is not tight, as it is comfortable and wears very well. Not as well nor as comfortable as other, prettier fabrics, but very well nonetheless. But for garments that fit closely to the body, denim, even stretch denim, is going to be a difficult fit and almost impossible to make comfortable in anything other than a casual standing position. Denim was not designed to fit snuggly on a curvy body and allow for movement. Cheaper, flimsier denim has mad it possible for people to wear tight jeans, but it is still not actually comfortable to wear them. What is astonishing is that people have become so used to the discomfort of jeans, that they will insist that jeans are comfortable. But inflexible material squashed up against the soft private parts is not comfortable, and we all know it, however good it might look on someone else.

Clothes close to the body is good. Clothes pulling across the body, at any point, is bad. There. That is the end of that. If your jeans are pulling across your hips, they are too tight in that area, and you need a different cut or a bigger size. No mystery about it. Dark is slimming, but only to the degree that it doesn't stand out against the background. Black is great in grimy cities, like Paris or New York, where everything is sort of dark to begin with, and if you put on white and walked down a street of brownstones you would look like a big fat marshmallow unless you were pin thin. but the opposite is true in many places, especially in the midwest and the west, where colors are light and some cities have a general sense, even, of being "white". There, black stands out, grim and huge, whereas more medium to pale tones would blend in and create less volume. Except at night. Then black is definitely the slimming choice, if that is important. People wearing black, as well as black people, actually sort of disappear into the night. Take note of people in a dark club sometime, and see how fantastically different it is to be wearing black versus a paler color.

Pale color is going to look horrible, as will black, though less dramatically, if it is pulled to tightly across the body.

So, medium to dark colors, in a slender but not tight fit. That is ideal.

But the real answer is "stop wearing jeans."

But what will you wear instead?

More Flimsy Dresses

2008-06-23T06:31:00.000-07:00

I was at a graduation party yesterday afternoon, where all the 18 year old girls were wearing little sun dresses, typically in the empire or "babydoll" style. Gangly things, and they look good in anything, I suppose. But the dresses are so flimsy, and in some cases just plain see through in the afternoon sun, that it was all just a little shocking. One girl was standing in the sunlight for quite some time, talking to her mother, and the aging lesbians sitting in the shade had quite a good time just watching. The whole "dress" situation was eerily similar to a 1959 Playboy centerfold I had seen just a couple days earlier, although the child was wearing some weird strapless bra so there wasn't much to see up there. Just the rest of the body, completely as though naked and cast in a blue light. Again, her parents were there. How does this happen?

Other dresses were flimsy and exposing in other ways, and one or two were actually decent and wouldn't make a father cringe.

We are going to another graduation party in a couple weeks in another state, which should be populated mainly by members of the cheerleading team. Maybe I will bring a camera and post pictures and we can all discuss what the fuck happened that all the children dress like strippers.

Hmmmm. I'm pretty lazy, though, and likely to be drinking, so we'll see if I get any pictures.

North Koreans, all

2008-06-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

We are like the good citizens of North Korea, and the Clothing Manufacturing Industry is playing the role of Kim Jong-il, keeping us completely in the dark regarding the great freedoms of clothing as such, and forcing us to know only the cruel prison of industrially-made garments, which are relentlessly about the profits of the manufacturing corporations, and so concerned only with economies of scale and the bottom line, which is in stark opposition to the needs of any individual body and its bottom line.

Simple garments, simply made and respectful of the body, the climate and all that goes into a day in the life, are mocked and degraded by the industry, much as the joys of democracy and free speech and all that are mocked and degraded by the mucky-mucks of Pyongyang.

The garment industry has had almost a century to convince us that we simply cannot make our own clothing, that it is difficult and time consuming and requires skill and patience, and anyway, you can buy it for cheaper at the store. Which is probably all true, if you were trying to make garments that look as though they were bought at a store. We are like little children, dependent for our every thread on the great manufacturers, hoping hoping always hoping that they might see fit to make something that we can actually wear and be happy in, but knowing that that is very unlikely, as if they did we might not buy something else next week.

Thanks to the constantly diminished costs of making clothing, thanks to an endless supply of very desperate people in ill-managed countries who are happy to undercut the pay-scale of whoever was making the clothing last month.

Just so you know. I do not have a quibble with overseas manufacturing in general, except in terms of the fuel used to port everything about. But I am over it, and see the the good side. But not for clothing. There is nothing nice about making clothing on an industrial scale. It is very different from factory jobs in any other industry, as every other industry has been wholly automated and the workers are mainly supporting the machines and managing the shipping. It is cheaper to have machines do things than people, no matter how cheap the people may be.

But not for clothing. No, the fluidity of fabric insists that a human do the construction of a garment, using machines, sure, but the human is responsible for the whole construction, from cutting to finishing. The human is the machine, and other humans manage and control those humans. It is yuck.

Very sad, and we have solved all that for you very nicely. Feel free to go to the shopping area and order up a nice skirt or pair of pants that will be made to your measurements and sent out, probably tomorrow.

Clothes for air-conditioned interiors

2008-06-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

Here in the midwest it gets mighty hot, which is troubling sometimes. But more troubling are the interiors that are over cooled. You are enjoying the summer day, dressed appropriately in something breezy and cool, and then you walk into the market or restaurant or someone's home, and you are chilled to the bone. It's a good way to end up with a summer cold, which is exactly no fun.

So you need something light to put on, something between a thin cotton or linen jacket and a wool sweater. Oh yes, sometimes these interiors are flat out cold.

Of course we make all kinds of little jackets, long and short, and all kinds of fabrics, so we are never without a little something to put on.

But you can do something very clever and have a perfect little summer sweater.

Take an old sweater that you do not wear anymore. It can be crew neck, V-neck or turtleneck. It can be an old sweater of yours, or maybe an old sweater of your dad's or grandfather's that you would never throw out but which you never wear because, well, ribbing is not attractive on anyone, really.

The sweater can be wool, a blend, or outright synthetic. It doesn't matter in the least.

Throw that sweater in the wash, and do use fabric softener if you have some. Be careful what you wash it with, as plenty of lint will come off. Velvets, terry cloth, things that grab should not go in the wash with the sweater. Maybe jeans, if you still wear those.

Put the sweater in the dryer if you generally dry things, and the sweater is not at risk of shrinking into something too small for you to wear. If you are concerned, just lay the sweater flat, or put it on a rack and let it air dry.

The point is for it to be washed, so that you can wash it later. A summer sweater should not have to go to the dry cleaner. Nothing should have to go to the dry cleaner.

Lay the clean dry sweater flat on a table. Cut off the ribbed cuffs and the ribbed bottom. Don't cut off the collar, at least not yet. Maybe later, but it should be fine.

Now, making sure that the sweater is flat and symmetrically arranged on the table, cut from the very center of the bottom edge to the neck, making the pull-over into a cardigan. For turtlenecks, just cut right through the neck cylinder. It is not very hard to cut a pretty straight line, since you can usually see the knit rows and they will guide you. If you are concerned, use pins to mark a straight line, and then cut.

You might be done. Often this is just perfect. Wash and dry the sweater as you did before to felt the edges a little bit, and you have a perfect little something to put on in those cool interiors.

For some sweaters, especially crew and V-neck, you will want to do a little finishing. You can do as little as just hand-sewing the cut edge of the collar, or you can do a couple rounds of fat zig-zag around all the edges. You can add buttons and buttonholes if you like, or not.

There you are.

Waist bands

2008-06-12T10:24:00.000-07:00

We don't really do waistbands, as they are usually understood. We do not do the sort of thing you find on jeans and slacks, the waistband that insists that you be a certain measurement around. It has been many a long year since that seemed like a good idea.

We also do not do the Wal-Mart elastic waist, where the fabric bunches up uniformly around the waist, or just along the back.

Nope.

Ideal Garments are ideal in many respects, but one of the great corners of delight is that the waists, or wherever the garment stops on the torso, is not cruel. Does not pinch or insist. Is flattering.

We have a few tricks, and I will share them. But I did just want to point this out. Ideal Garments are materially different from the clothing you are used to finding in stores, clothing manufactured in factories, or made in smaller quanitities but according to antique principles of garment construction.

No need. We are modern. We are now, and we do not need to adhere to useless conventions.

The convention that is not useless, I will point out, is the very old convention of looking nice, as registered by those who see you, and possessing a general sense of being well-dressed. Appropriately and respectfully dressed. That is an almost forsaken convention, but that is, nonetheless the overgrown path we trail blaze here. We are not even a little bit interested in you being "comfortable" at the expense of looking marvelous. Nor are we even slightly intrigued by the idea of your looking marvelous at the expense of even a grain of comfort.

So waistbands as we have known them for the past century are Out. Comfort, elegance and general happiness are In.

Gosh. It really isn't that difficult.

Fit

2008-06-06T11:26:00.000-07:00

Making clothing for others, making and wearing clothing myself, the idea of fit comes up, and the word is unavoidable.

What does it mean for clothing to "fit"? What is "fit" and what "fits"?

The thing that seems to have occurred over the years as I have been making clothing for myself and for others, is that I have become progressively more liberal in my interpretation of fit. Stretchy things have gotten tighter in many cases, and non-stretchy things have gotten less close to the body.

The thing that I cannot ignore -- the thing that is unavoidable for me, though not for others, I do understand -- is that a person must move in their clothing, take positions that are not all standing at a flattering angle to the camera. I take it too extremes, preferring my clothing to allow me to do a quick episode with the free weights in Muscle Beach and maybe some stretching in between other tasks and goofing off. My clothing must go into the washing machine, and must not be troubled by spilled things like coffee or wine or olive oil or even tomato sauce. All staples at our house. And it must look lovely at all times, and it should pull on easily and not criticize me, and it should make me feel lovely and happy and ready for anything, and on that note it should pull off very easily as well. No wrestling with zippers and buttons in my house, I'll tell you what. And the qualities of the garments and the way they are on my body should make people who see me feel good and not know why. People should not be concerned that my clothing is uncomfortable, or wonder what I am hiding, or otherwise feel a general desire to avert their eyes, sad that I did not choose a more flattering t-shirt. No. I want to be what they want to look at, not because of anything in particular, but because they feel better when they look at me. Reassured, hopeful, comforted, joyful.

But this is alot to ask of garment. The clothing in the stores that we dream of being able to wear and work our selves into a frenzy trying to fit into, the size eight chinos, the of-the-moment jeans or babydoll dress, the clean and cute white t-shirt that does not allow for a belly or for messy eating (I guess those things kind of go together...) These garments preclude most activity, are destroyed by too much activity, too many spills of too many delicious things. Even the little black dress is nearly disposable, should anything really actually happen while it is being worn. Too strenuous of a dance party, or a little something something behind a potted palm could render the dress kaput. And it probably was not going to be a good garment for a moonless hike up the edge of Fort Mason to gaze at the bay by starlight and make-out with a delectable acquaintance. No, little black dresses require shoes not made for walking, especially not on wooded paths, and they are not very sturdy and get snagged by passing branches, even in the gentle urban forest, and who has a jacket to make the dress suitable for the chill night air? Should you make it up the hill, and should the dress survive, it will have to go to the dry cleaner, which is just sad. We jabber constantly about being green, and then we wear things that must be chemically cleaned if even water is spilled on them. We wear clothing that is really just a gesture, as we require climate controlled buildings or vehicles to be around us, a very outer layer, at all times, with energy at every moment being expended to keep us comfortable in our clothing; clothing that plainly does not fit life.

Except New Yorkers and Parisians and all the charming residents of large cities with good subway systems who are outside all the time, if only to hail a cab. They do dress for the world because they must, and so they get to be outside more than we, who almost live on the prairie, ever could imagine. We are indoors, in cars, always in a controlled climate, wearing clothing but really wouldn't need to if there weren't laws of various kinds insisting upon it. (not exactly true... the over-cooled interiors of summertime require that we port around sweaters and little jackets.)

So a garment might fit the body, enough but not too much, but it should also fit all the positions and movements of the body over the course of a day and night, and it should fit the climate and the possibilities for adventure, and it should fit the personality of the wearer, fit the contemporary moment, be what it needs to be, fit closely the person it is clothing, in order to support and allow all that the world might offer to that person.

Make no mistake, though, all this does not mean "gear." No no no. Gear is tough to wear, too tight, too gear-y, and not at all appropriate for going to work or to restaurants or parties, or really anywhere. People wear their gear to the store, but others don't really like to see all that. Toooooo much information. Sure the stuff fits, like a glove, but that sort of fit doesn't fit most occasions. The underside curve of butts, even the underside of breasts, is something that strangers and acquaintances don't need to see much of, if at all. It is not for them. Too intimate, generally. Too much "fit", and not at all fitting, as much as we have become used to it. It is telling that people won't wear such stuff to events of any importance, whether to work or court or a debutante ball.

But I am avoiding the main thing about fit, which is that we no longer have any idea what it means for a garment to fit. Oh, a few of us sort of do, but it is a rare person, man or woman, who is on top of how their garments fit and in the course of dressing themselves creates a sculptural form which is informed by their actual body, but improved. Better than naked. Many many people look terrible in their lumpy and ill-fitting, or skin-tight and frightening to regard get-ups, all the while believing that they are adhering to some standard of dress and all is well. It is not. It is difficult to see. Even a person who apparently looks dressed in clothing that seems to fit them might pass by and offer a view of a butt that needs simply more clothing, or better clothing or different clothing, in any case something to keep me from seeing the dimpled flesh that is none of my business. Or a perfectly fine butt might bend over and the seam of panties create a sort of cat-face at the very vulnerable spot that should only ever be seen in such relief by a lover. Something doesn't fit. Are the pants too tight? Not if she didn't bend over. Standing straight and not walking, as one does in a dressing room, they probably looked fine.

At least these last ladies are trying to wear clothing that is respectful of others. Too often women, especially young women, will wear clothing that is too tight, too cheap, too disrespectful of them to be described. You can almost hear their friends telling them how great they look in this or that garment, how they should flaunt what they've got. Well yes, I am all for that. Flaunting one's beauty, especially the inner stuff that is so dazzling.

Being oneself, truthfully out in the world as one's own self, that is the beautiful thing, and anything that distracts from that is, it seems, wrong.

The flimsiness of fabric

2008-06-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

As clothing has gotten cheaper and cheaper, and we increasingly fetishize "soft", and we have forsaken undergarments, and now typically just wear one layer of garments (if even) over whatever weird little bit of panty or girdle-like thing we have on, we have entered a strange period of being dressed but not being, in any meaningful sense of the word, "dressed". We wear clothing that cannot tolerate temperature extremes outside of 68-74 degrees fahrenheit, we wear shoes that can only walk short distances on very smooth, but not too smooth surfaces, we dress to entertain ourselves, to satisfy some fantasy or indulge whimsy, but we do not, in any practical manner get dressed.

Oh, sure, people put on clothing and run to the store, and those clothes are sort of functional. Sort of. But mostly not. They are almost always intolerant of actual outdoor temperatures and conditions, and they are generally either very exposing, as in the skin tight athletic attire which has become accepted for public wear, or baggy disguising stuff, which doesn't really disguise but rather creates an even more terrible sculptural form than whatever the body was to begin with. The real problem is that the person inside knows that they are not dressed for anything other than to not get arrested, that they would be unlikely to do anything important or useful in these clothes, other than child care, maybe. They would not go to lunch with friends or colleagues, they would not go to work, let alone to a meeting, they would not go to an afterwork cocktail party, god forbid an actual party. No. They would have to go put on a costume of some sort that would project whatever role they were going to play, and those clothes would do that, maybe, but they still would not render the person inside "dressed". Dressed-up for an event, but not simply dressed.

The cheapness and flimsiness of clothing could be part of how we got here. No clothing has the strength or stamina to take us through an entire day, let alone a day and a night and the next day, which is what they really should do, taking us to all the things we might need or want to go to, allow us to do all the things we need or want to do. The outfit for lunch with friends is often not appropriate for work. And work wear is not at all what the lunch pals wear to lunch, if they are not headed to work. You can tell which of the lunching ladies are taking their lunch hour and which got dressed for lunch. It is weird.

The flimsiness of fabric, brought on by the manufacturers constant eye on the bottom line and so the progressively cheaper and cheaper, but always softer and softer, and now flimsy to the nth degree, also has very immediate effect on our aspect as seen by others and as felt by ourselves. Our bra straps, and the little hardware that makes them adjustable, are now ubiquitously visible, often in relief through too tight, too flimsy t-shirts, our panties in all their terrible glory clearly visible through the cheap twill of khakis or whatever too-fitted or too flimsy pants a woman is wearing. No wonder people resort to jeans. For the most part the denim of jeans is still graciously substantial, and hides the things that clothing does well to hide, while, for the most part, exposing just the general shape.

Say, I don't want to bash the flimsy t-shirt. I happen to love the very light "tissue" fabric that is all the fashion these days. Especially since I can't control my own temperature anymore, and need a very flimsy layer against my skin so I can cool off. Oh, fuck you. This is just how women are, and our clothing would do well to honor and support this thrilling rollercoaster of therms that we are thrust upon.

My point, and there is one, is that fabrics are flimsy, and therefore cruel and exposing, since they do not have the wherewithal to be otherwise.

I'm just saying. So watch out. Even though you look around and everyone has a bad panty line, or a uni-ass clearly squeezed into some elastic garment, and everyone's bra hardware is on display, and everyone's flimsy dresses blow against their body in the lightest breeze, or just while walking, leaving nothing to the imagination, and not usually in a good way, even though you see this everywhere and therefore are able to believe it is OK, just fine, just like everyone decided showing ALL of one's underwear was fine back when Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw continued to wear her 2-hook bra across her back when the dress was clearly trying to be a backless halter, and every pre-teen girl with an ounce of courage instead of a grain of sense made sure her thong was apparent at all times, all this is everywhere, and still is here in the middle of nowhere (though mercifully less so on note of pre-teen thong exhibition), but that does not make it OK. It is a process of cultural degradation that is mysterious but obvious, the same sort of process that has made our schools crap, our housing crap, everything that is available to us so declined in quality as people, providers, manufacturers, cut corners and get away with it because it allows them to win the price competition in the marketplace. By the time we wear a garment and realize it is crap, by the time our children (well, your children) graduate from highschool, if they indeed do graduate, and still can't form a clear line of thought in their head, let alone communicate it to another person, by the time you realize that they are too flimsy to take a serious role in the economy, which you don't notice partially because you are at the mall hunting up yet another new pair of pants to replace the one's that turned out to be crap, it is just too late.

And you can spend as much time at the mall as you like, and maybe you will chance upon a great, strong garment on the sale rack, something that no one else wanted for whatever reason, and your hunt will not have been for nothing. But more likely you will just buy another piece of flimsy crap that was cheap enough not to matter, hoping that this time it will prove different, because you just will not pay the price for a real garment, and really why should you when even the costly garments are also pretty much crap, since that is now the prevailing standard for women's clothing.

The thing is, flimsy, exposing, crappy clothing does not serve you, does not create the vision of strength and intelligence and maybe even power that you want to have, in the workplace, in your social circle, in the home among your children, with your beloved partner. We are used to it, have grown inured to women traipsing around looking like shit in their crappy clothing, their extra large crew neck t-shirts and elastic waist shorts, their cheap little dresses that look OK if they stand just right in front of a commercial photographer, but which in real life drift or pull against the body in ways that men love because they can see exactly everything, but which does not increase their interest in what the woman has to say, who she is or what is important to her. If you want to be heard, show a little less leg. If you want your legs to get attention, of course, show them off.

I walked through a mediocre mall in the middle of this city in the middle of the country, and noticed the window of a large, contemporary and hip clothing store catering to both young men and young women, teen-agers and people who have decided to remain teen-agers into their twenties and beyond. The window with the male clothing was shorts and t-shirts. Giant shorts that go well past the knee, though nowhere near the waist, and giant t-shirts that would disguise anything, or give opportunity to shoplift small appliances. Whichever. The female side of the window had a selection of dresses, mostly, one tinier and more whorish than the next. It boggles the mind to think of what kind of body would look nice in such garments, and the work that would have to go into that body, and sad to think of all the girls who will wear these dresses, seeing as how they are in fashion and in the stores, but whose bodies will simply be exposed. Again, men love it. But not only will they be unable to hear a word any of these girls say, they will not find respect for these girls welling up in their hearts. The clothing sets the tone of disrespect, and it would take a mighty strong girl to counter that message, to insist on respect while wearing clothing that refers exclusively to the tradition of street-walkers in large cities.

I was a little surprised at the contrast between the male and female sides of the store, the exact opposite direction the costumes have taken. I was surprised to be surprised, since I worry about this all the time. But it was so stark and sad. And then I saw the girl at the bar later that evening, in one of those dresses, just this side of being a swimsuit. She had the body for it, though inexplicably was wearing a bra. It did not correspond to the neckline, was lumpy under the thin fabric, and she couldn't have needed one in the first place. This beautiful girl dressed like a whore, but somehow at the same time as prudish as my sister who took a slew of shabby slips from my mom's antique slip drawer ON HER HONEYMOON. As though it were more important to make sure that nothing was untoward, seen that shouldn't be seen, than to be lovely for her husband. Wha?

OK. Enough of all that. The clothing available to women is gear or crap or fantastically expensive, and maybe still crap, and certainly still tough to wear. Fit being a problem always.

It's not that hard, ladies. Learn to sew and make yourself some clothing, and get out there and have fun.

Shoes shoes shoes

2008-05-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

As I get older, maybe you too, it is increasingly difficult to find shoes that are wearable. I'm rarely concerned about how they look anymore. Just wearable. Shoes that I can wear with my clothes and have everything be fine. I want to look lovely, I want to be comfortable and respectful of the climate and todays particular weather adventure, and also respectful of whatever cultural adventures I will be having, the places I go, the people I see, the events I participate in. I want to be able to walk or run or dance or stand around. In my particular case, I want to be not much taller than I already am, I want to be able to walk on irregular, even unsafe surfaces.

And I want to be lovely. which I am not right now. I am wearing sneakers. My new thing. I haven't worn them since I returned from Paris eighteen years ago, where I wore them every day for a year and a half, except for the hot summer days when I wore those Accessoire sandals that I want to have copied. It was quite an affront to the Parisian people, I came to understand later, that I would wear sneakers as though they were shoes, wear them everywhere.

When Cora and Gladys came to visit in 1990 they brought me a new pair of the exact same sneakers. Apparently I sloughed off the old pair in the apartment I had borrowed for these ladies, put on the new ones and off we went. A year later when I returned to California, a large watercolor of those distressed sneakers greeted me in Cora's family room. She had taken a photo of the shoes on the floor of that 1st arr. apartment, and had some artist make it all very big. I think Gladys had a painting done of them too. Shoes. There is something very important about them, and I am not sure what it is. But I think the same weight that made the ladies have paintings done of my old Reeboks is what inspires the amazing variety of shoe sculptures one can find in the stores. Almost nothing wearable, unfortunately for me. But the shoe sculptures are mesmerizing, seductive. Women are forgiven any fiscal indiscretion if it involves a beautiful pair of shoes. Of course they bought them. They could not help themselves.

Still, today I am wearing sneakers. Cora picked them up for me several years ago, at Costco no doubt, and I have put my orthotic inserts in them. I put them on today when I had to hike into the park to find the dogs who had escaped through an open gate. I wouldn't normally be at a cafe or in public at all in sneakers, but here I am. Almost twenty years later, feet long ago ruined for normal shoes, wearing sneakers like an old lady, with clothing that does not at all require sneakers.

Young women cannot be convinced that bad shoes will ruin their feet. They just can't. They can only think of whether a shoe looks cute to their eye, whether it will finish off a particular outfit. in this cruel modern world, young women don't even know that a shoe might not fit their foot, might be throwing off their gait, their body, might be making they look just awful, no matter how cute the shoe is.

Oh! this is certainly a very big reason why Ideal garments include many many long to the ground slender skirts and wide leg pants. It matters very little what shoe one is wearing with such garments. I actually walked barefoot through the Nelson-Atkins museum, right in front of a number of guards, any of which would have scolded me and thrown me out. But it seems that my wide-leg pants made it impossible to tell that I was barefoot. It is very ideal to not have to worry too much about one's footwear, to allow the weather and one's mood to determine the right shoe. Oh, yes, mood. What is on one's feet has a great deal of effect on how we are, how we hold ourselves in the world. Plus, some shoes, especially in the women's shoe category, take some effort to wear, if only because they are heeled. But perhaps they are shoes that are very beautiful, and one needs to be up to snuff to wear them. Otherwise the shoes will be disrespected. And as I said, the shoes are sculpture, and so art, and so need to be respected.

Not all shoes. The crappy shoes you pick up at the crappy shoe store are not sculptures. They are the equivalent of poorly printed posters of fine paintings... They might look OK if no one looks to closely and they are framed well, but if they end up in the trash, no big deal.

In this current age there is nothing that is not allowed. So it is fine for me to be sitting here with sneakers on my feet while wearing clothing that clearly calls for something else. Anything else. No one cares.

But when I do not want to be wearing sneakers (which is almost always) or flip-flops (which is almost never) what shoe can I wear?

Fat girl

2008-05-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

I went to California this past weekend and was told, at length, by my brother-in-law that I am fat and, further, that I should be careful lest my husband lose his sexual interest in me because I am so fat. The discussion went on like that for awhile.

So you know, I am 45 years old, 5'10, 170 lbs, and live in Kansas City Missouri. I would be a size twelve, if I ever shopped for clothing, and my body mass index, the government's primary indicator for healthy weight, is within (if just barely!) the healthiest weight range, the lowest risk for what have you. I have been being treated for breast cancer the past two years, see doctors all the time, and not once have I been told that I should lose weight. No suggestion at all. Actually, that whole adventure is what put the last, dangerously chubby pounds on me, but again, the numbers are not bad. Plus, I make clothing for women of all sizes, am measuring women;'s bodies all the time, and know that my measurements are extremely normal to slim. What I do do is drink too much wine, put tooooo much cream in my coffee, love mayonnaise and extra sharp cheddar cheese, especially together on sourdough bread, and have a little "good time pooch" as they call it in these parts.

My brother-in-law went on to express concern for my knees and joints, because I am so fat that I am putting added pressure on them. I can't remember what else he was concerned about. Another sister of mine recently suggested that I might be very tired because of all this extra weight I am carrying around. OR it could be that I live in a barely heated building, wrestle with two wood stoves to keep the place livable, and don't sleep well at night thanks to noisy dogs, an affectionate husband and hot flashes.

Don't get me wrong. I would be thrilled to have the flat tummy I had when I was a mere 150 pounds of fun, rather than this more jolly 170. But at that weight I got a lot of comments about looking gaunt, whereas now I get a lot of comments about how beautiful I am, how lovely I look, even with cropped hair, and at times no hair at all. It's possible that people were being kind since I clearly was sick, but it is also from people who know that I am fine, and strangers who just stare. Basically, I look fine. And my husband's last fiancee before marrying me was actually fat and his interest in me shows no decline.

And then there is this memory I have from when I was around twenty, around 150 and was in the ladies room at the Compass Rose in the St. Francis hotel in San Francisco. With my family. We did that at Christmas time sometimes, go shopping in Union Square, everyone going where they pleased, and then we would meet at the Compass Rose, and then go have dinner somewhere marvelous. Victors, at the top of that building one year, and I had a medallions of beef in maybe a madeira sauce which was sublime.

Anyway, back in the loo downstairs at the bar, there was a very short woman, Latina it seemed, older than I was, but she could have been 30 or 60 for all my perception of age at that time. She was wearing a catsuit, fashionable at the time (and fashionable again, if HSN is to be believed,) but still a complete mystery to me. It was black and stretchy, and had a zipper up the front. The woman was lovely to my eye, but in particular she had a shape I am not sure I had really seen to that point. She was more or less a round ball in the middle. Not a little pooch of a tummy, nor a pregnancy, but that great thickness through the middle which I have come to understand as the fate of many women, especially those who have had children and who are not very consumed with being slender. It is the normal body of the mid-age woman, as far as I can tell. If she does nothing to counter it, that is where we go. We don't need to worry about our asses, partly because we get old enough to realize that men like asses, but also because the weight begins to head for our middle.

Which, to give my brother-in-law his due, is the worst, least healthy place to carry extra weight. Also the least attractive. It is much easier to work with a large butt, I assure you, than a round middle.

But here is the thing. That is what women look like. Men know we look like this. They still want to have sex with us. They still think we are beautiful. It just isn't that big of a deal.

And yet it is. And deep inside of me, I agree with my brother-in-law. I am fat. I say it everyday, and friends and family ask me to stop, since clearly I am not fat. And in fact, many of the people around me actually are fat, are at health risk, are daily trying to combat their old habits in order to create ones. I am normal. Slim for this area. The recent studies suggesting that the people around you have more of an effect on how much you weigh than anything else I think is true. If I lived in NYC I am sure I would be 20 pounds slimmer within a year. People eat differently. Walk everywhere. Here habits of the culture are what they are, and it puts us at the high end of the scale.

I remember that woman in the restroom at the St. Francis often, remember how at the time I was concerned about this or that body flaw, any of which would have been imperceptible to a panel of my peers. And here was a woman whose body did not in any way conform to the standard of the time, and who was so beautiful in her catsuit that 25 years later I am still jealous of her. Jealous of her beauty, and of how she knew she was beautiful and knew that any body is beautiful and she was not flaunting hers in some slutty, exposing way as had been the fashion around that time as it is now, but rather had simply clothed her body, allowing it to be apparent, to be what it most happily was, and she was comfortable, not constricted nor overburdened with extra, concealing fabric. Brilliant. I do believe I have been forever influenced by this woman. Not the catsuit. That just seems like an impractical garment, if only for the logistics of using the restroom. But by her shape and how beautiful she was to me.

Life Preserver

2008-05-08T20:37:00.001-07:00

It's late and I am still working on that travel wardrobe for two. Tell you about that later.

I want to be the clothing that you wear when you have marvelous experiences, where you are powerful and free and sensual and way too vulnerable for your mother's taste. (Happy mothers day, mom)

I want to be the clothing that allows you to be your most best and extreme self, your quietest most tranquil self, your public self and your private self, your self that entangles with a lover and the self that testifies before congress, whatever self you have aching for garments that do not preclude, do not exclude, garments that allow and support, like that really wonderful mother or friend who somehow thinks hard enough to understand what it is that you need and then moves heaven and earth, as they say, to get it for you.

I want to be the clothing that loves who you are, the shape you are even when you don't.

Yup. I am still twenty pounds over the weight I felt lovely at. I wasn't. I was a little boney and really could stand to put on a few pounds, but now that I have I am all wound up about it. But my clothing is not. My clothing loves me, loves my body, doesn't ever or in any way criticize me.

I am working on that travel wardrobe and it is late and I wish I had time to start over, but I don't. I am drinking wine and listening to "classic rock radio" and REM comes on and I think of how this music, their music, was so much a part of one part of my life. A particular romance. It is, was, as intimate a part of that experience as whatever underwear I was wearing at the time. More, since I cannot remember the underwear at all. Rem. Sarah MacLaughlin. Neil Young.

I want to be as important as music. The strong background, the lyrics that ring true and kill loneliness. I want to be the clothing that you were wearing, and even though the experience might have been regrettable, lamentable, it is still your experience and these are the things that bring you to the surface like a life preserver. Oh, you are still in the cold water, and you may or may not find your way to land, but at least you are at the surface.

What if the most comfortable thing in your closet was a black velvet halter dress?

2008-05-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

Not that it is the most comfortable thing in my closet, since I have sooooo many comfortable things (no shoemakers child, I), but this cool spring morning I thought I would test out a new two piece, panne velvet halter dress, mid calf length.

It's fine. I kind of screwed up the strap around the neck, as I got the stretch confused when I was sewing. But the dress is otherwise perfect and beautiful, just plain comfortable, and I don't see myself taking it off until I come up with something else I need to try on. Which I probably will, since I am actually sewing today. You would be surprised how seldom I do that. The time spent sewing Ideal Garments is soooo small compared to the time spent thinking up ways to make them more ideal.

A couple of years ago we were slaving away at some project and it was 95 degrees, and I was exhausted but had to go to a little bbq reception for some arty big-wigs over at pal Monika's sweet house. Well. What would you have put on? It is 7pm in August, 92 degrees and you are almost too tired to stand up.

I took the required shower, and then pulled on a deep magenta stretch velvet two piece dress with long skirt and strapless top, and a necklace, maybe, fresh flip flops and went to the party. Then I came back and lounged about on the steps of my cousin's porch and yapped with her sister who was in town for a visit. Then I walked home and hung out in the yard with my husband, the skirt pulled up off my legs I'll guess, and then we went to bed, at which point the dress would have been pulled off, effortlessly and without leaving a mark on my body, and no doubt was thrown in the wash with everything else from the day.

What would you have worn?

Jean sizing

2008-05-07T07:14:00.001-07:00

Well, I can't figure out how they came up with that weird group of numbers for jeans sizes... clearly the number "31" doesn't correspond to any measurement on a size 12 body.

But I think I understand the single number sizing, after I just read a whole essay on getting your jeans hemmed, a thing that men never need to do, since they can order their jeans to the 1/2 inch length, which my dad does so I know about that.

Single number sizing means that manufacturers have to make fewer versions of the same jean (each size in only one, maybe two, lengths) and so have fewer in inventory, and fewer left over when the next style shoves the current one off the shelf, which will happen in about ten minutes.

So, it seems that the expensive jeans manufacturers have mimicked the cruel sizing of women's clothing in general, and probably came up with the new numbers to pretend they are sizing to measure, to separate themselves from the discussion of what exactly is a size 10.

It is also interesting to note that none that I could find go above the equivalent of a women's size 12 (a mysterious "30" to "32"). Wait! Maybe that number corresponds to the fantasy "low waist" measurement in size charts. Which are possibly valid for very very young women with very flat tummies, who might have a 29 1/2 inch waist, a31 inch low-waist and a 42 inch ass. Not most of the chubby 20 year old size 12s I see around these parts. These girls do not have slender waists. Nor do I. And almost no one over the age of 30, certainly not over the age of 40 or 50. One or two slender ladies, but for the most part our waists have all gone the way of the wooden nickel.

Oh, I give up. I have no idea what these manufacturers are doing, but it is working since there are stacks of 200 and 300 dollar jeans on shop display tables not a mile from my Ideal Garment fortress of sartorial sanity. Fuck them. We are going to go with real measurements, and that will be the end of that. We hardly ever change our designs for skirts and pants, anyway, since we cannot bear spending time on silly detail. So real measurement sizing is the course we will take.

I think I will go make myself a pair of denim pants, 42 ass, 42 outseam, medium butt.

Measured fit

2008-05-07T06:23:00.000-07:00

Ladies. What do you think of the idea of sizing clothing to actual measurements? In the same way a girl used to buy jeans in 34-32 or whatever. (How did the single number sizing for expensive jeans come about, anyway?)

How about if we have our clothing made according to our actual measurements? True, we would have a third measurement sometimes (waist, hip, length), but men should probably have that measurement, too, and do when they use a tailor. Butt measurement is very important to modern fit.

Anyway, ladies. Would you be willing to actually know your measurements, to admit numbers that cannot be inflated?

I'll tell you what. With the correct numbers at my disposal, I can make a perfect fitting skirt of infinite comfort, glamour and usefulness in about an hour. So could you. Real numbers. Ladies, are we ready for that?

Travel duds

2008-05-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

We are going on a trip this weekend. The weather will be much like it is at home right now, but there will be social events one after another, and some sightseeing, and it is a family thing, if that makes a difference.

And I am sort of fat. Everything is fine except for my tummy. It is a pain in the ass to have a body part that misbehaves.

But I know, because I clothe women all the time with much more dramatic and interesting glitches, that it really doesn't matter. Whatever one's body is, if it is clothed in a manner respectful of the person inside the clothing and of the people that person will encounter, it is fine. All bodies are fine. I know it is sometimes difficult for people to relate to someone who is truly gargantuan, that really fat people are often treated poorly. But so are ugly people, short people, people of colors or who are wearing unbecoming clothing, or who stink.

I'll tell you what. If you want to be treated well by sales people at the mall, clean yourself up, dress nicely, stand up straight, and if you are a girl put on a little lip color. Hell, you can get the attention of salespeople this way even if you apply the lipstick right in front of them. Suddenly they are interested.

But other than that, in all other situations, people are amazingly accepting of all kinds of bodies and clothing, see through whatever there is to what there really is.

Which is not to say that you will not get points for looking nice. But not because you look nice, but because others appreciate that you made the effort to look nice for them, because your ability to look nice is a pleasant skill to possess, and because everyone would like to encounter a beautiful thing. But that can be anything. A smile is pretty much the top of the top in that category, but a handsome shirt, a pretty dress, an outfit that comes off as just perfect for the situation and the weather, or, better, which appears to be perfect for many situations, beautiful just like that and not at all tricky or encumbering to wear. People don't want to worry about you. They won't know why, but they will be happier if they see you and can see that you are safe and comfortable in your clothing, as well as beautiful. But again, it is the smile, the interested eyes and ears, kind actions and words worth hearing which will really make the outfit.

But none of this solves my travel wardrobe problem. And I still feel fat. This is the contemporary bondage of women, this feeling of being fat, especially when one is not. Shackles.

To the machines! If I can solve this for you, I can solve this for me.

Shoes

2008-05-02T09:30:00.000-07:00

A very beautiful woman was browsing in Anthropologie the other day. She was perfect in the execution of her look. Slim and in a dark grey dress of divine simplicity, to the knee, a pair of heeled pumps that were just right at the ends of her lovely legs. Long straight hair straightened to a gleam, well-cut and clearly cared for. I was impressed.

As I drove out of the parking lot I saw her again, about to cross the street in front of me. Oh good! I will be able to see if her walk is as elegant as the whole look.

Nope. Like everyone wearing mass manufactured high heels, her walk was ruined, stilted by what were obviously shoes that did not match the shape of her foot.

There is a photograph of Salvatore Ferragamo, surrounded by the wooden lasts for the feet of dozens of movie stars. They are just wooden feet, but you can see how very different each one is, the name of one beautiful woman after another scrawled in black marker on the side. Apparently Ferragamo was troubled by his beautiful made-to-measure shoes hurting the feet of his customers, so he went off to study anatomy at USC. Read all about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Ferragamo

In any case, the thing is, if a shoe is made from a last of your own foot (an extreme luxury!) you will be able to walk in that shoe with a natural gait, complemented by a heel of whatever height. Very beautiful, very sexy, very ideal, and people can tell even if they do not understand that you are more beautiful and happier and better dressed than anyone else. No wonder the studio heads had all the starlets get their shoes made from Ferragamo's unique, custom lasts... a woman is much more beautiful in such a shoe, her movement natural and elegant, her stance balanced and sure.

I've only had one pair of shoes like this. In the 1980's Joan & David used a last, one among probably eight or ten different lasts according to the salesperson, and which matched my foot just about perfectly. I bought a pair of suede Louis XIV style heels and wore them to death. Women would regularly try to buy them off my feet. One of my sisters, seeing me in these shoes, went down and found a similar pair from the same last, her foot being much like mine, and had the same sublime experience of being shod, being at one with one's shoes, rather than wearing shoes that hurt.

If the last used to make your shoe is not your foot or something close, you will walk with a stilted gait, which is only attractive and sexy, by the way, to people who are turned on the idea of a woman being hobbled and in pain. Most good people will cringe inwardly to know that you are being thrown off, your gait ruined, and in all likelihood your feet throbbing in pain. Most good people do not like that, nevermind how darling the shoe might be on its own, or on your dangling foot as you sit at the bar.

But man, a beautiful woman in high heels is a very pretty thing, and heels do shift the experience a woman has of her own body, her own self. Such a trick. This winter my husband and I were headed out into the bitter cold to a play at one of the big theaters. We dressed a little better than usual, and I slipped on those now ancient shoes. My foot is bigger, and they are a little tight. But mostly my man looked at me and said, "Put on your boots. You won't be happy in this cold. You won't want to walk three blocks in those heels." We did have to run to catch the curtain, through horrible cold winds, and then later when the show let out and the crowds herded to the door I couldn't help but notice all the young women (and really only young women) in their high heels and bare legs or nylons, some of the shoes not even shoes but really heeled sandals, and none of the looking like a well made shoe, no. Not that they were wearing clothing or coats to go with the weather, either. It was a sad sight to me, but I am old, and perhaps me in my warm boots was a sad sight to them.

I don't know what to do about shoes. At this moment I am considering going to the cobbler with a pair of Target flip-flops from a couple years back and a pair of Accessoire sandals I got in Paris almost 20 years ago, and see if they can just make me something on the order of, something, anything that will work. Hell. I went to the department store yesterday, and the tiniest little shoes were all more than 150., with some more than 300. I should be able to have a shoe made just for me for that. I'll let you know.

The Thing about Clothing... 2

2008-04-30T06:02:00.000-07:00

There are many things about clothing which make it different from all other material goods that we possess and use.

The first thing is that we wear clothing on our bodies. So not only do we have an intimate relationship with whatever clothing we are wearing, that clothing will have some effect on how we are in the world, how we feel about ourselves and our relationship to others, how they respond to us and so on our experience of others, how we then regard and respond to them, and, recursively ad infinitum, how they understand us to be and how they respond. Let alone how our clothing determines our relationship to the world, whether we are chilled or overheated, too fancy, too casual, clothing too ill-fitting or too ugly and we are not comfortable in our own skin. But our skin is not actually the problem. Our clothing is. Or the other way around, and you are dressed perfectly and can be exactly yourself and do all the things you have the opportunity or inclination to do, your clothing supporting you in all things, protecting and flattering you, presenting you to the world, allowing you to be completely all you wish to be.

There is no way around it. Even the people who seem to care not at all about what they wear are nonetheless affected by their clothing and I have yet to meet the seemingly careless dresser (and I have met many) who does not have ideas about what would be good to wear, who is not aware of their manner of dress to some extent, even if for one reason or another they have given up generally on clothing. Yes, even when it seems like they pull things blindly from the closet, and put them on without reference to whether they fit or whether the colors, shapes and textures are even able to be in conversation with one another, or even if the clothing corresponds generally to the current climate. Sometimes it seems like people have just put on any old thing, and they might even claim that they have, and that it makes no difference to them what they are wearing, but it is not true. And people don't even make that claim if you ask the right questions.

So while I can hear from here your little mind going "I just wear what is comfortable, and what I find on sale, blah blah blah," and that might be sort of true, it is also true that you have feelings about yourself and the world around you instigated and shaped by the garments you are wearing, and you know it even if you do not understand the details of it; and you know that if you dressed differently, for better or for worse or just for different, your experience of yourself and your experience of the world would be different as well.

But for fun and profit, let's start with the idea of "comfortable". What does it mean for garments to be comfortable? For example, perhaps you have pajamas that are, to you, comfortable. You put them on and pad around the house, maybe with a robe over them, and you are, in one sense, comfortable. Your body is not being disturbed by your garments. You are warm and snug and feel protected, at least as long as you stay indoors. Or if it is the summer months, perhaps you are wearing too little for public view, and are cool and unencumbered, also not disturbed in anyway by your garments. Comfortable, at least as long as you stay out of public view.

That's nice. I would suggest that all your garments should be so comfortable, comforting and useful, but that maybe they should be more available to taking you out. They kind of sound like a spouse who just won't leave the house. Pleasant as they may be, it is nice, maybe even important, to get out occasionally and participate in the world around us.

In most cases pajamas are not of a design that would feel strong and supportive of your goals in the world, in the workplace, and most garments for public use are not as comfortable and comforting as pajamas are in the home, and so there rises up an idea of "comfortable" which is outside the bounds of your pajamas.

Of course, you might be cynical and careless enough of others to wear your pajamas to work or a restaurant, but it is likely that you would not feel as comforted and snug in them as you do at home. Possibly even feel exposed, or not dressed in a manner which projects you to the world correctly, whatever that might be. Pajamas are then not comfortable. Too loose and possibly even cumbersome compared to clothing designed more for the rigors of the outside world. Possibly silly, since pajamas and robes continue to be made in childish or whimisical patterns of fabric, or out of things flimsy in an attempt to be sexy. For sitting up and walking quickly down the hallway or the street, getting in and out of vehicles, and mainly for presenting an image of yourself as an intelligent adult, pajamas as they can be found in the department stores and specialty shops are not appropriate, and people are not inclined to wear them out.

As a quick addition to this reverie, I will say that I am not impressed by how they look in the home, either, and don't understand why people who live with what should be their lover, are willing to just look awful in the name of "comfort". I'll tell you what... it is not comfortable for me to look at a beautiful friend wrapped up in a hideous bathrobe over pajamas more unflattering than what they would be willing to put on a child. And then, to have them not actually BE comfortable in all this because these garments are almost useless outside of the 70 degree home, is just too sad and drives me to drink.

Take this situation, for example: My beautiful friends with their new RV's camped together in the fall, and we joined them one night with our tent. We also brought pumpkin pies and music and a bag of booze. We try to be gracious camp guests. Anyhoo, dinner was marvelous, fried turkey and all the Thanksgiving fixins, so we could pretend we were sharing that traditional meal with these people we love. Kick off the season with a perfect holiday dinner by a lake.

After dinner a great fire, and a table full of things to pour in your coffee, and everyone sitting around the flames freezing their asses off. Not us of course. We don't have an RV, and our tent is scheduled for an upgrade, but of course we came packing our double-fleece ultra robes with hoods. So there we were, wrapped up in our elegant, to the ground, black and taupe robes, put on over whatever we had been wearing, which at that time of year was probably also soft and fleecy, and we could have stayed out all night. So beautiful the night sky, the fire, so delightful the company, except that it is a little discomforting to listen to the chattering teeth of friends, and not that fun to look at them inelegantly and insufficiently bundled up in hodge-podges of jackets and sweaters and what have you, and be able to plainly see that they are still cold and not comfortable. Stupid stupid jeans. Stupid stupid "gear". Stupid stupid leather jackets!

We were warm and comfortable and lovely in the extreme (except that we were both suffering from the flu, and would not have been there at all if we hadn't needed to return a borrowed log splitter.) I will not believe that I am the only one who delights in seeing their lover, their beloved, looking beautiful, comfortable, completely cared for and visually stunning, their features set off by the glamorous usefulness of the garment that embraces them. It is just as marvelous in the summertime, when he wears a single layer linen suit with a linen shirt so light it seems to attract the breeze. Just as marvelous to see him comfortable in the heat of a formal summer event, not packed into a regular suit and sweating through an ironed shirt, again set off perfectly by the rich, plain garments that both serve him and honor those who look at him.

So the thing about clothing is that it is as intimately a part of our experience of the world, and the world's experience of us, as our actual bodies, can make us comfortable or uncomfortable, be useful or not. No matter what, people encountering us will have our clothing as part and parcel of that experience of us, us them, our own clothing part of the way we experience them, too, including the relationship between their clothing and ours, whatever all this might involve, which is plenty I can tell you right now. Wait, now that I think of it, people are more forgiving of bodies than they are of clothing. Clothing is a choice, and so it is given more weight in its reflection of ourselves than our bodies, which for the most part are not a choice. Somewhat, and I don't want to go into that, but for the most part we are what we are.

Hypothesis: Luxury is the combination of usefulness and beauty, but without any disturbance at all. Hey! That almost exactly defines Scientific Panties, which have proven this hypothesis repeatedly in experiments over the course of five years. So maybe it is moving already toward becoming a theory... Maybe that should be discussed.

What is Ideal?

2008-04-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

An ideal garment is ideal. You can tell it is ideal because when someone asks you about it (and they will because even the really bland ones emanate a certain something that people do not often see and which is very very appealing and curious) you will say this or that and then blurt out, it's ideal!

Ideal for you, anyway. Because you can wear it anywhere you might be called upon to go, and feel handsome and dignified and comfortable enough to doze off if what you have been called to is deadly dull. Or you can just tip over and go to sleep when you finally stagger home if where you were called upon to be was super fun and you were there and then somewhere else and had a very very good time and now are too tired to change for bed, if you even made it to your own bed. What would be ideal is if you could just go to sleep and worry about it in the morning, without waking up in the middle of the night with something poking you in the ribcage. Or still not worry about it in the morning, the clothing able to keep up with you as you rise from bed (or couch or well-groomed lawn) and go about continuing the adventure that life has served up. It would be ideal if your clothing had even more stamina than you do, could go even further than you yourself can.

And given the possibility of such adventure, it would be ideal if garments were not only easy to care for, going right into the washer and dryer with no special instructions, and not needing to be ironed, but also if they did not easily begin to look as though they needed to go in the wash. If clothing stood up to quite a bit of good, strong living, absorbing or deflecting spills, in any case never looking spilled upon, not getting crumpled or looking limp and tired. That would be ideal, especially for long long days that run together. (Take note: you should also avoid looking crumpled, limp or tired. Eat well and take naps, is my suggestion.)

It would also be ideal if the clothing did not start nagging you about your waist line or bottom line, if it looked nice on all the usual shapes and sizes you might hit during the course of a year. If the clothing did not ever or in anyway suggest that you needed to diet or go to the gym, Nope. You be what you are and the clothing will deal with it, and make you look always fine, slim and shapely, elegant. Yes, that would be ideal.

It would also be ideal if it did not fall out of fashion, which sort of insists that it not be "in" fashion in the first place. Which turns out to be very very easy to do. Not be fashionable, but to look great, really great. In fact, the difficult thing is to wear the fashionable clothing and to look great. Lately that has become quite a trick, but arguably that is the point of fashion, to be difficult so that the striving is constant and the goal unattainable and people have to keep buying and trying new things ever in hope. That is not ideal. Very not ideal. So we don't do that.

As a matter of fact, that is how you can tell if something is not ideal. If someone asks you about it, you will say this and that are nice about it, "but it's not ideal..."

Dressing the part, 3

2008-04-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight a sort of hostess pajamas, to go with my role as hostess, and my inclination to be in bed.

Not dressing the part does not mean not dressing. We are who we are and our choice of clothing will reflect that. Are we someone who is performing a role, and costumed as such. Or are we who we are, and costumed as such.

To be costumed as ourselves.

But what would that mean? Tonight I am in pajamas, but pajamas that could be worn anywhere at all. That's handy.

As I understand it, that's how the traditional man's suit came into being. Englishmen at home in the country came up with this easy and useful alternative to complicated compositions of shape and form: matching pants and jacket, not very fitted and very very comfortable if not in any way stylish, and that was what one would wear for walking around the countryside with the dogs in the morning, for lunch on the patio with no one in particular, just at home pajamas. You wouldn't wear it to anything of any importance, ay more than you would wear any pajamas, nor if you were to be in the company of anyone you wanted to impress. No. Then you would put together a more difficult ensemble, coordinating, contrasting, fitted and flattering, shapes and colors fashionable but at the same time dignified. It's a trick. Still today. Not for men, since they have so completely adopted the pajama which we now know as the man's suit. But for women.

Not me, not tonight. Pajamas. Pants, a long tunic (which will double as a sassy short dress on another occasion), and a sort of duster, belted under my breasts. All in a warm, brownish charcoal grey, sensuous and substantial wash and wear fabric. I have out done the suit. I can wear this anywhere, including to bed. It is the at home thing that can slip out the back door and go terribly astray.

But is it me? It is alot of one color. I can wear jewelry to declare myself, or a scarf, much as a man wears a tie. But the garment itself is very very bland.

Right. Because it is not for my clothing to be interesting unless I am in a mood for that. It is for my clothing to allow me to be interesting and careless of my clothing. Forget that it is there, allow my thoughts to run free, never pulled back to an awkward sartorial situation, a pinched something or snagged something else.

Clothing should be beautiful and substantial, to reflect who we are as people, not who we might be in any particular role. The clothing is there, like a costume, to support our role, not as "mother" or "lawyer" or "candlestick maker", but as fine, thinking person who will walk many miles today, be many things to many people, all the time being who they are. Whoever that might be.

How we do what we do.

2008-04-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

Everyone, everyone who walks into the Ideal Garment shop wonders how it all works. No. Not everyone. Sometimes a woman, maybe from a small town, will walk in, browse and buy something off the rack just like that and leave. Not the sort of person you would expect to be so comfortable with an urban boutique, but maybe being from a small, farm town, such people are used to individuals having their very individual shops. Less used to the big mall and discount stores and their economies-of-scale, third-world-labor pricing. More used to buying things that are clearly useful and beautiful, rather than whatever glitters and seems to be a bargain.

But for the less sophisticated, the shop is confusing. There are no price tags, though there is generally a price list somewhere. That's bad, I know. But price tags don't mean anything in this shop. I do not know why that is.

The way things work is this. People browse through the racks of clothing that is already made and maybe try some things on. Or they tell me all about the garment they wish existed, the thing that would make their life perfect. Then we see if there is something in the shop that will work, or work with minor alterations, or if something needs to be made fresh, either in a design that already sort of exists in the shop, or a new design that I am willing to try because it could prove to be a whole new sort of ideal garment.

If an alteration is small, or if the thing that needs to be made is something that can be made quickly and with fabric already in the studio, I might make something right away that is the perfect thing, perfect size, perfect fabric for that person.

If it is a more elaborate thing, more things, or something that I need to invent, then I ask for a few days, a week, to come up with something. If there is a rush, it can happen more quickly, but a week is good for invention, for finding the right fabric, for trying out some shapes and ideas before the customer comes over to try it on. More than a week, and there is a risk that I will have time to forget what was discusses.

If the design and fabric were already determined on the first visit, that will be the end of that, and they will go home with their new Ideal Garments, if they like them and they fit.

If it is a new, experimental design, then there might be something that works perfectly, but more likely we will make some adjustments to fit or detail, and then they will come back later to pick them up.

Panties and skirts I like to make right onto people, so I prefer for them to come assuming they will hang out here for an hour. There is always something to drink, coffee, water, wine, and plenty to look at or to read to pass the time.

Then, when the garment is done, and the customer is very happy, and probably wearing their new clothing, they give me a handful of money or write me a check for whatever the price ended up being.

The end! Some people only wear ideal garments, so they come back more often. But for many people, the ideal garment is so useful that they do not need another something for a long long time. Usually people leave wearing their Ideal Garment.

April Second Friday in New Hoboken

2008-04-08T19:37:00.001-07:00

April Second Friday in New Hoboken
Friday April 11 + + + + 4518 Troost Avenue + + + + 6-10pm

Well, if it isn't that time of the month again!

Plan now to get thine own fine self
to the ever transforming Firehouse
for Second Friday festivities.

Friday April 11
6-10 pm
Ideal Garment
4518 Troost Ave
Kansas City MO

This month we celebrate the installation of
The Durwin Rice Workshop Studio.
It's fabulous, it's full of gorgeous papers,
and the new, tall table will be great
for sewing workshops, too.

What the heck! We'll have it all set up,
so if anyone wants to buy a plate
and cover it with paper and glue, they can.

Sure, we know it's a soggy drab week.
Take off the chill with a little time by the fire,
a glass of wine in hand,
and some warm conversation under the new lights.

You just can't know what superstar you will meet
in New Hoboken on a Second Friday.

Don't forget! Our closest, artiest neighbor is
The Nelson-Atkins Museum,
A very pretty six blocks to the west.
And they are open Fridays until 9 pm.
Thursdays and Saturdays, too.

I'll bet they would love for you to pop by there,
maybe for a stroll through the galleries,
maybe for a cocktail or snack in one of the cafes.

Then come by the Firehouse and tell us all about it.

Tell me:
Is there any better way to squander a Friday night?

New Hoboken,
happy all the time.

Live free and die.

The thing about clothing 1

2008-04-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

There are many things about clothing which make it very different from all other material goods that we possess and use.

The first thing is that we wear clothing on our bodies. So not only do we have an intimate relationship with whatever clothing we are wearing, that clothing will have some effect on how we are in the world, how we feel about ourselves and our relationship to others, how they respond to us and so on our experience of others.

There is no way around it. Even the people who seem to care not at all about what they wear are nonetheless affected by their clothing and I have yet to meet the seemingly careless dresser (and I have met many) who does not have ideas about what would be good to wear, who is not aware of their manner of dress to some extent. Yes, even when it seems like they pull things blindly from the closet, and put them on without reference to whether they fit or whether the colors, shapes and textures are even able to be in conversation with one another, or even if the clothing corresponds generally to the current climate. Sometimes it seems like people have just put on any old thing, and they might even claim that they have, and that it makes no difference to them what they are wearing, but it is not true. And people don't even make that claim very often if you ask the right questions.

So while I can hear from here your little mind going "I just wear what is comfortable, and what I find on sale, blah blah blah," and that might be sort of true, it is also true that you have feelings about yourself and the world around you instigated and shaped by the garments you are wearing, and you know it even if you do not understand the details of it; and you know that if you dressed differently, for better or for worse or just for different, your experience of yourself and your experience of the world would be different as well.

But for fun and profit, let's start with the idea of "comfortable". What does it mean for garments to be comfortable? For example, perhaps you have pajamas that are, to you, comfortable. You put them on and pad around the house, maybe with a robe over them, and you are, in one sense, comfortable. Your body is not being disturbed by your garments. You are warm and snug and feel protected. Or if it is the summer months, perhaps you are wearing too little for public view, and are cool and comfortable, also not disturbed in anyway by your garments. Comfortable.

That's nice. I would suggest that all your garments should be so comfortable, comforting and useful. But in most cases pajamas are not a design that would feel strong and supportive of your goals in the workplace, and most garments for the workplace are not as comfortable and comforting as pajamas are in the home, and so already there rises up an idea of "comfortable" which is outside the bounds of your pajamas, since you would not be "comfortable" in the workplace in your pajamas.

Or maybe you would. Probably not.

The stories we tell ourselves

2008-04-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

We tell ourselves stories about everything, and then we believe them. They could be stories we were told, or stories we made up ourselves. We repeat the stories at every occasion, to ourselves, and to others the moment we are asked why we do one thing rather than another. Or just "why". Or just think we were asked. Or just feel defensive because we sense that our stories are being questioned, which would be a great problem since they might prove wrong, and then we would have to adjust our way of thinking, which would be more difficult than moving the Seagrams Building twenty feet to the left.

The stories can be about anything. There are the big, broad stories, which we call "religion". Or "culture." Then there are tiny intimate stories, like the one about why you dropped off the hockey team in college, or why you don't speak to your siblings anymore, or why you didn't marry that person, or why you did. And there are the in-between, half-public stories you got from your parents and early community, and stories you got from the media about how a person must live in order to be considered plausible to others. "Civilized", whatever that might mean in your community.

All these stories profoundly affect the way we behave at every moment, the choices we make, big choices and tiny little choices, and all those choices, big and small, affect ourselves, everyone around us, living things and not living things that we don't even perceive as being near us, and the planet and the universe (at least the part we are adjacent to).

Yup. These are some powerful tales. And our choices are powerful things.

And our choices are interconnected. Where we choose to live, the sort of building we choose to live in, the things we choose to do, the people we choose to associate with, the energy we choose to use, the clothing we choose to wear, the food we choose to eat, the recreation we choose, the work we choose, the causes we choose to support, the actions we choose or do not choose to take at every moment affect everything. Telling yourself that there is no reason to pick up litter because it just comes right back, leads to choosing not to pick up a piece of litter and itself contributes to the perceptions of others that the street is filthy, unsalvageable, the neighborhood undesirable, investment is discouraged, buildings remain, or become, ramshackle and increasingly energy inefficient, ownership drops, slumlords make terrible choices regarding maintenance, contributing eventually to landfills which use up a city's resources so it cannot make other choices. Choosing to both pick up that piece of litter, and then also plant some flowers in a stretch of dirt where there are only weeds will have the very opposite affect, contributing to perceptions that it is a pretty part of town, desirable, ownership increases.... and so on.

It may seem that what you wear is an entirely personal choice, affecting only you. But choosing, for example, to wear clothing that is comfortable only at temperatures between 68 and 78 degrees means that you can only be in buildings that are kept, expensively, at that temperature, which means shops and offices will have to use energy and spend money keeping the buildings comfortable for your fashionably dressed self, which means the price of everything goes up, especially if someone in the goverment makes a choice to attack an energy producing country and the price of energy spikes. Which means food is more expensive, which means people revert to cheaper, junkier sorts of calories, which means they are less healthy, which means health care costs go up for everyone, which means the cost of everything goes up because companies still provide health benefits of some sort, for the most part, and so, strapped for resources, people make even worse choices about everything, finally throwing up their arms in surrender and going into the debt that beckons them like a siren from the window of every envelope.

Another choice might be to wear clothing that is difficult to wear, provocative but at a price. High heels. Short skirts. Flimsy fragile fabrics. Nylons. That choice will also affect people around you, people who see you, contribute to their perceptions of women who look like you, and so how they treat them. It is never just about you.

Well, that was my little reverie. Another person would have followed a different trail of cause and effect branching off from some other story. The point is that our choices matter.

A couple years ago I made patches that say "Vote with Your Whole Body". It was an election year. But the t-shirts I put them on are good all the time. When you vote, and of course you vote, you should vote with your whole body. You should think about the world and how people are in it, you should consider what your heart and your brain and your gut and your sex and your feet and your tummy have to say about how the world and specifically your own community should be run. You shouldn't just play back stories from your childhood regarding political parties or hot-potatoes. You should be real and not supress the opinions of back-corners of your own self. Your stories are a massive wall between you and the realities around you. But your body experiences the world more profoundly than your consciousness does, and it has information and wisdom for you, if you listen to it.

The other thing, though, is that you vote at every moment with each action you take, what you buy, where you go, how you get there, who you go there with or to see, and whether or not you pick up that piece of litter. Every move you make, every choice, every purchase especially, but also your choices about how you are in the world, your clothing, your home, what you eat, is a vote for the world to be one way or another. Make those votes count by being in conversation with your whole self, which is, in some way, in conversation with the greater world, the one outside of that cramped courtyard with massive walls which you have created with your stories. There is a door in those walls because you are human, and your body will be human, you will be sick, you will be sad, you will be wronged or suffer remorse for having wronged others, you will be human and so there is a door out of those stories into the greater world, a connection to reality which you can call upon and when you do you will make different choices than you are allowed to make if you stay in the walled area, washing yourself daily in a shower of stories, the door shut, no connection made to the world at large. You will vote only to maintain your stories, and you will deny your full self, and you will deny your companion humans. All for stories. Stories. Stories. That is all they are. They are not truth or of any interest to anyone but you, or perhaps to someone, like a therapist, who is trying to understand you. They only become interesting in literature if the writer has gained perspective on those stories, understands them as stories with something to reveal about the frailties of the human spirit or soul or mind or body, and then has the skill to communicate what they have seen. Maybe not even completely consciously. Sometimes a writer learns from their own writing. Sometimes that is why they write. In any case, to believe these stories and to behave s though they were completely true and the only truth is a childish act, as though an adult continued to believe the stories of Santa Claus and the stork long after the age of seven.

What is difficult is finding a way to see one's own stories. It is easy to the the stories of others, as long as they do not match our own. But if we are only around people whose stories are similar to ours then we cannot see them. They are reality, and everything our bodies tell us differently is considered perverse and is hidden, and that is how you get religious leaders who commit hideous acts that are completely against their own teachings. They knew about this other part of themselves, a sexual part perhaps, but because their stories denied its existence, and because they believe their stories, they have no choice but to crimp and cramp that part of themselves until it absolutely has no hope of being a healthy thing. It's not good.

Footbinding is another example of a story gone terribly terribly wrong, to leave aside the topic of religion since it is such an easy mark. Thinness in women in our current culture is another very bad tale, and now one of woe, but woe that is personal, intimate, or at most familial or shared by a small community. The necessity of HVAC and the unqualified good of manufacturing are stories shared and subscribed to by only a small percentage of the world's population, but they are more globally sorry tales. Everyone, everything is affected and suffers the affects of those stories, even though only a small percentage is actually served by them.

Oh, here is another story that is just terrible. The story of travel and shipping. That we always need to be there rather than here. That we need to be with our family 3000 miles away for every holiday or event, that we need to do business wherever it seems, according to the story, to be cheapest. It is a terrible story, and one that has debased the amazing discovery of flight for humans into a thing that is just poison on the planet. Shipping too. A debasement of the idea of ships on the ocean, of the ocean, of energy, of travel, of human effort, of everything. But the story is repeated endlessly by everyone, reaffirmed needlessly by the people who profit enormously from it, and believed even by the people who suffer from it.

Stories. Do you know which stories you tell yourself? About what parts of town are OK to live in, which you can shop in. Which kinds of people you can befriend, which kinds of people, establishments you can patronize. What kinds of clothing you can wear, how you can look. How must your home be, how many things must you have before you feel that you have fallen off the silver tray of civilization. I can tell you, just so you know, you need heat if the environment is cold, hot and cold running water, refrigeration, some means of heat for cooking, and you need most importantly, and this is a truth that I would think would smash more stories, water out. Sewage. Yup. There is no possibility for the civilized self, even in the finest most elaborately appointed home, if the sewage does not leave gracefully, completely, and of its own accord. Poop must leave the building. Water must drain from the sink. Without that, there is no story maintainable by the westerner, or anyone who as adopted our stories of what is and what is not civilized in terms of living or working space. Water out. That is the first thing. Then water in. Then refrigeration. Then heat, for cooking and for the interior space. At some point, when the space becomes habitable, chairs, beds, fabric. Whenever that is. Sometime after water out. I will carry in water, but it must leave of its own accord.

This story of civilization, by the way, is only about 100 years old. Before that, the story started with heat, and barely included refrigeration. And 100 years before that there was no notion of refrigeration at all. None at all. That story is recent, too. So, if we can agree that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine were all civilized people, then civilization depends only on an interior being gracious enough for intellectual, political and domestic conversation and activities. Like reading and discussions and cooking and lovemaking. So, just an interior that is pleasant, chairs, beds, table, and heat. There you are. That is not a story. That is actually what humans need in order to pursue their human activities. Some cultures don't even need chairs and tables. So maybe no one does. Maybe just heat. There is no means of being civilized, of being anything but desperate for heat, if one does not have interior heat when the exterior is cold. That is all. Just heat. Being without fur, and having moved out of warmer climes, we do need that. But that is all. And I have tested this, and it is true. You can have a beautiful life if you have a pleasant interior with heat in the cold times. Otherwise you can just be outside. Of course, somewhere outside you will need to arrange for a clean source of water, and a workable solution for poop. But in the great outdoors, before we poisoned the earth by blindly adhering to our stories of false civilization, those were not difficult challenges.

Interior heat for humans who do not live in warm places. That is the only truth I am finding here. So everything else is stories. Which means you can explore them, prod them, behave contrary to them, since they are not truth. Just stories.

Live free and die.

Dressing the Part, 2

2008-04-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

We dress the part. We just do. We dress the way we think others will expect us to dress for the particular role we are playing at any particular moment. We dress the way we think a professional whatever dresses. We dress to look bohemian, or suburban, or to appear to be part of the elite, which is a very complex dress code, indeed, whichever elite you are thinking of. It is no easier to infiltrate the costume conventions of the upper east side, than it is to fool the second grade junta, or the trailer park high-trash. Cool is still cool, and you probably aren't, and you probably are going to try to dress in some way that will suggest you are. Or might be.

As a teenager I read a book, the name of which has long left me, in which the very uncool protaganist is taken under the wing of an even more complete social outcast girl who counsels him to wear particular clothing and to carry around a fat book. Proust, I think. To appear to be mysterious and intellectual and arty. Well-made turtlenecks and narrow slacks in dark neutral colors. Accessories that announce silently that you are in some very big way better than whomever you encounter. Hey! That is not a bad description of the methods of the upper east side gals and all their parallels in every community in the country. Except that instead of an impressive book, they will be carrying a huge purse that is known by all to be so expensive, you would have to be actually rich to have one. Or so stupid as to go into debt to get on. Or have a line on really good knock-offs. Or just don't eat for awhile, or keep a roof over your head.

But we also dress for vacation in what we think people wear on vacation, and we dress for love in the garments sold to us as garments appropriate for sex. Well, that is brilliant. Obviously, no clothing at all is needed for sex, and yet the industry of undergarments and "loungewear", sold and purchased exclusively for the promises it makes about how appealing you will be to the sexual target of your choice, is leviathan. We buy clothing that makes us believe we are sexy. Of course it doesn't. Most of that stuff goes to waste. More like a very pricey greeting card, when given as a gift. Who is really going to wear that thing? But the point is made even if the garment is never worn... The giver has communicated that they think the receiver is sexy, and deserves to be costumed as such. Or maybe they really do want the garment to be worn. Maybe they want to participate in the costume drama of love, as scripted for us by a gazillion advertisements and movies. What the hell. Put on the garment, ladies and gents, and do not fret. It won't be on long.

I cannot help wondering, then, what is going on with all the people, all the time, who just look awful. Women and men both, who wear ill-fitting shorts, unflattering and usually screenprinted crewneck t-shirts long after the time when shorts are at all appropriate for public wear, and no one has ever looked good, or has commanded any kind of respect or adoration in one of those t-shirts. But we wear them. Why? Why do we look in the mirror, and it can hardly be avoided, and feel that it is alright to leave the house looking just awful? Do we think others cannot see us?

I have a gorgeous girlfriend who dresses marvelously for every occasion, and in general, too. But there are times when she would wear dastardly outfits and walk the streets of New York. Mind you, they were just bad, bad outfits, not viciously unflattering like the outfits you see on everyone shopping at Wal-Mart. But the outfits were hideous to her, she knew it, knew she should have long ago thrown out the terrible skirt, but instead she would put it on and trip down the stairs into Chelsea. It was what she would wear to go to the gym, or maybe for an emergency visit to the grocery store or shoe-repair place. Superfast. Destination. No role to play, no self to put forth, just go and get back. And when she would have on these clothes, she believed, deep in her heart, that no one could see her. We would laugh about it, because she would be regularly shocked if someone said hello to her while she was out in these get-ups. "How could they see me?"

OK. That's something to think about.

My mom, for years, bought me every "sexy" piece of lingerie she found on a bargain rack. She believed I loved sexy underwear. I don't, and didn't, and never had occasion to use it as intended. Brainy boyfriends, and they really didn't care what I had on as long as it came off easily. But it is true that I would buy much underwear, much of it very pretty and lacy, always looking for something that would work. I never reached for the granny-panty display, because part of the role of underwear, in my mind, is to nestle against my body, press up against all the parts that are soft and likely to be treasured by another. Underwear should work, and part of that work is to make me feel great and then also to look great itself and make me look great in my clothing. I confess that for years my sisters and I wore Legg's pantyhose. Bought them by the dozen at the grocery store. They were a great in between, not frail like normal pantyhose, but neither pinching like control pantyhose. We loved them and wore them all the time. I do cringe at some of the things I have done, and this is one.

But the quality was a enticing one, and one that Spanx and the like are trying to emulate with their not-quite-a-girdle girdles that they have sold us on. Not me. I managed to invent scientific panties in time to avoid this grim new age of constriction.

Looking great, and the role that foundations play. Christian Dior, I believe uttered the words, "Without foundations, there is no fashion." Why? Is it because women's bodies are just so hideous that if they are not constricted into some other shape, any other shape, then clothing simply cannot look good? And who even cares if clothing as such looks good? Isn't it really that we want to look good? To appear attractive to others, not our clothing but us? Isn't it the role of clothing to set off the human body as it is, to envelope and protect even as it flatters and shows off the person within?

And isn't that the exact opposite of dressing a part? That would be dressing our selves. Whole selves. Dressing for what we really really have to do today, for who we actually, deeply are today.

What the hell would that mean?

Sometimes, I suppose, it might mean dressing for a part. Like when I iron a shirt and tuck it into my skirt because I am going to be encountering the city council in chambers, and it seems to me that an ironed and tucked in shirt will communicate who I am that day better than the softer, more form fitting tops I usually wear. Or when I put on a black velvet outfit because we are going to a party, and I want to be part of the texture in the room that says "party!". (Not that I don't always look like a party, what with all the bright colors I am likely to wear, and not that black velvet doesn't work as well for anytime of day or event.)

But in general it does seem that if you dress yourself for who you are, taking into account the things you will want to do or have to do but not pandering to those activities, you will be fine and lovely for everything you end up doing. I have fixed a leaking roof in the same long, furry skirt I wear to every possible event and sometimes to bed. I have gone to very nice parties in the same drawstring pants, either fleece or rich linen depending on the season, that I wore to do plumbing and construction tasks all day long. Sometimes I throw the garments that have been destroyed by the day's construction or gardening activities into the wash so that they will be clean and ready to wear out to dinner or an event that same night. Or just because I want to be clean again, and those are my clothes, so I wash them. Especially if I have become used to a certain jacket or other garment, and it is all I want to wear. And I can, because it clothes me as me, and not as some temporary role I might have played during the day, so it works for everything, precludes nothing, and releases me from ever wondering what I will wear. I will wear my clothing.

The work we do not see

2008-03-30T16:21:00.001-07:00

There is a new tv ad which is a showcase for editing. It is lovely, fast, rhythmic, and makes me want to buy a cell phone, even though I already have one that works just fine.

The ad reminded me of a few dates I had with a sound editor, and the visit to Lucas Ranch where he was editting something. It is unthinkable to anyone who has not witnessed the work of details. It takes forever, and it takes skills and concentration, and the willingness to stay in a chair in a dark room for countless hours and endless days.

And the effect is to make us want something. Not the guy who was doing the film. He wasn't selling anything in particular other than the film, and was just working for hire. And for the possibility of winning an award for best sound editing, I suppose.

But the editing and the graphic details that go into a print ad, on top of all the professionals from the director to the caterer that go into all that, all that is done at great expense and effort just to sell you something. Or sell you on the idea of something.

Yup. That's what everyone is doing. And the work which goes into creating the images that sell you on all the things you think you organically desire or truly need, that is the work we do not see, because the point is to make it appear that there is no work. That all you have to do is buy the product and you will be as beautiful, as rhythmic and swift, as happy or as virile or whatever. That's all. A thirty second transaction with your visa card, and you can be and have all that is promised in the ad.

The work you do see is the product itself. You can see all the parts and the design, and you know it took designers and engineers and all kinds of people and machines to put it together. Ads go to great length to convince you of how much work went into the product itself, and therefore why it will cost what it does, and then you can add for yourself all the ships and trains and trucks to get it to the store where you can plainly see dozens of people working, making it possible for you to conveniently pick up the product and bring it home. That is the work you do see. We are also asked to appreciate and value such work when it is done for the sake of art or entertainment, as the awards programs remind us repeatedly of the people and all the honest work that goes into making an image communicate effectively. In that case, it is to their advantage to convince us of how much work has gone into the film, and by how many people, in order to convince us that we should absolutely not pirate films or otherwise take money out of the mouths of the sound editor's children. That's fine.

It is the work you do not see -- do not see because the people who paid to have it done do not want you to see it -- which is draining you away.

Modern Clothing

2008-03-28T10:06:00.001-07:00

I am writing today from ground zero of modern furniture. My pal's shop, Retro Inferno is full of mid-century modern treasures, plus a few decades on either end of that terrific period. He is open minded, and has embraced Memphis Group and the eighties. Me, I am still arrested in the seventies, now that I have revisited the California chardonnay, lycra blends and classic rock, and there found my bliss.

In any case, I think, since I am here, we will visit the idea of Modern. Contemporary. What is modern? What is contemporary? They are tricky terms, like "conservative" and "liberal" and prone to poor interpretations. Narrow and wrong-headed interpretations. Like when people announce that they hate modern furniture, or jazz, or democracy. I mean democrats. How can you hate a well-made and comfortable couch or arm chair with clean, generous lines and gorgeous upholstery? What's not to like, and how is it even different from the best design of any period, except that added decoration is reduced or maybe even removed, the shape itself being called upon to be all the beauty? And who doesn't like Stan Getz? "Oh, well, if that's what you mean by "jazz"... sure I like that."

Even I don't love every piece of modern furniture. Some shapes I don't particularly like, or colors too bold or bland or whatever, or maybe they are an experiment that I find contrived and ultimately, in my view, unsuccessful contributions to the modern conversation. But contributions they are. Just because I don't agree with something you say, doesn't mean I don't like anything you say, or that what you have to say is now determined to be universally without value or interest. And just because you once encountered a chair that was too wildly experimentally "modern" and did not like it, or just couldn't, at that moment, imagine ever having such a chair in your own home, and were forced to listen to some too-esoteric, 1970's jazz improvisations while you were sitting in that chair, does not make Modern furniture bad, and does not render the 100 year history of Jazz contributions to music unlistenable.

I suppose there are similar problems with modern clothing. Designers who have made striking contributions to the possibilities of modern dress, and who in doing so have assaulted the sensibilities of people still stuck in whatever notion of costume that was the norm for them at some impressionable age, have at the same time been overly experimental, overly bold, and have made a million things that the regular person with a regular day to navigate cannot imagine wearing. They could be wrong, of course. Just because something in a photograph or on a rack does not look like something you can plausibly wear, does not mean that if you put it on and actually wore it that it would be awful. It might prove to be just the perfect thing. Who knows? Designers do not become designers in every case because they are vain twinks who want to drunkenly orbit in the high fashion milieu. No. Some of them really have good, inventive ideas about how clothing can be better, look better, function better, and work really hard to create garments that solve problems for the contemporary person. There are great things out there, and they are not all difficult decorative shackles masquerading as "clothing". Many are, but some aren't.

And by the way, that overstuffed and supposedly "comfortable" couch you chose instead of the better made and more intelligently designed couch you felt was "too modern", may very well end up being a horrible shackle itself. Too large, too consuming, too quick to become worn and sag, dated and hateful five years after you buy it. A bargain that might not in the end be much of a bargain. You do not always know what you like. You do not always know what you want. Good design is transcendent and must be sensed and respected.

Power & Light Food Court

2008-03-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

So, I finally got myself onto a barstool down in the much vaunted Power & Light district in downtown Kansas City. I happened to be a block away with money in my hand at the perfect moment, but apparently I don't have any friends who can catch a drink at 5pm on a Wednesday, or at least no one I thought needed to waste gasoline to get to downtown. I can go to a bar by myself, and so I did. I was especially interested in Gordon Biersch, since the original opened in Palo Alto back in the late eighties when I still lived in California and was still young enough to stay out all night and did and got to work the next day for days on end. I am not a violent drinker, but we drank plenty, and Gordon Biersch was a place we would often begin the evening. It was great. A brewery restaurant and beautifully done, the beers were interesting, the food fine and we were there. For lunch with friends. Dinner with dad. Dates beginning at the bar. I still find myself there when I visit Palo Alto. It is still a great place. Could it be that we would have a great Palo Alto kind of place here in Kansas City? I had to go.

I also wanted to check out Raglan Road, an Irish place, as I had heard a rumor from a good style source, who had heard from someone else, that it was very outrageous and beautifully done. And I love Irish bars, and so does my man, and so I thought I should do a little reconnaissance to see if we should head there for a pint some evening.

Well, my hard-working pals missed absolutely nothing, other than conversation with me.

Gordon Biersch is of no interest at all, and the bar staffed by children who not only know nothing about beer, but hadn't been even lightly coached in the qualities of the beers made and offered on the premises. What do you think? I think a brewery restaurant bar should have bartenders that are of a certain age and well-versed in beer and the art of brewing. Maybe they should have beards. Yes! I want to get my handmade beer from someone who looks like a lumberjack and who can intelligently recommend from among the house beers, which I obviously will not be familiar with, a choice that I might like, given what sorts of beers I already like and don't like. The very pretty child who took my order was stumped by my question, "What beer is this place most proud of?", and could only tell me which beer she herself preferred. Out of politeness, and a severe drop-off in interest in my whole Power & Light adventure, I took her suggestion.

Four chairs down from my corner perch at the unremarkable but reasonably busy bar, another of the very young bartender whores was being chatted up by some way too old guy, and her voice was sooooo loud and she kept talking about how she liked martinis and where one could get good ones, or ones that are not too expensive. This from a chick behind a bar built on handmade beer. The guy was chatting her up, but at least his voice was not carrying along the length of the bar, and so I cannot be annoyed by whatever silly things he might have been saying.

I didn't even finish my beer, if you can believe that, and made my way out.

So I went to the Irish place to see if it was really magnificent, and it too was nothing to write home about. Nothing at all to remark upon, except that I had a very good glass of wine and when I paid for it it was two dollars less than the price list had declared. So that was nice, but I had kind of set my heart on spending too much for a glass of wine...

And the winner is... Cordish and all the developers in Missoni sweaters who lugged all their huge sacks of cash out of downtown. And the scairdy-cat suburbanites who need something corporate to patronize, or they might not go to low-brow pop culture events at the Sprint Center. There is no reason, not one single reason for anyone who identifies as a resident of Kansas City to go to any of those places. Pierponts at Union Station is a million times nicer, and the better beer is an even better bargain at happy hour. Jack Stack. O'Dowds. Classic Cup. City Tavern. McCoys. Le Fou Frog. Accurso's. The Cashew or Peanut. You name the locally owned place, however bland it may be, and it will be a better place to get a drink and food and waste some quality time with a pal than anything in the Power & Light food court.

To add to my distress over the whole Power & Light experience, as I was initially walking up to Gordon Biersch from a couple blocks south, I noticed the windows above the front doors let on to what look like utility closets. Someone was in one, flourescent light on, and it was disturbing, like a scene out of Bladerunner, where everything has gone to hell. A curtain wall of windows revealing a bright white storage room in the same way another window in a real city might display a great set of furniture or stand of glamorously garbed mannequins. Really bad architecture. They need to put some translucence on those windows. Pronto. What is a little disturbing is the cynicism which led to putting a storage closet in a place that would be an obvious fit for second floor retail or at least window display. A very high profile vitrine, people with disposable income coming and going. A high end bridal boutique or art gallery... I could see that. But no. A storage room, since no one really expects that downtown will actually become vibrant and filled with commerce and require second floor commercial space. Fuckers. Even Waldo has second floor commercial space.

I will admit that all the places seem to have outdoor seating. That's nice. But most of the other local places I mentioned also have outdoor seating. And aren't in a food court.

You do not need to go.

Abandon

2008-03-26T20:45:00.001-07:00

We have been listening to classic rock lately.

I love TV dramas

2008-03-26T20:44:00.000-07:00

I love TV dramas.

The Substance of Clothing

2008-03-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

Maybe the important thing about clothing is its substance. What it is made of. Maybe the reason why clothing has become so unsatisfying at the common level is that the fabrics have, in a sort of natural downward progression of quality in response to the expectations of consumers for ever cheaper clothing, become actually cheap. Cheap in character and in feel, in actual quality. Not good. Without value.

We have mangled the idea of a bargain so that if we get something cheaply, as long as it has some surface indication of a "quality" garment we are thrilled. But the garment is not actually of any quality or value, the indications a charade to fool the bored and vain consumer, and the substance of the garment close to nothing. So it is natural that it should have been cheap. What would be unnatural is if someone paid a substantial price for such a garment. Oh, we do that, too!

There is no way around it. Our clothing is and must be made of fabric, and fabric has many qualities, and can be of any quality. The only imperative for the manufacturer is to have the garment appear to be of sufficient quality to fetch a too-high price (by alot or a little), so that their bottom line is fat. The only imperative for the consumer is to find a garment which will solve whatever today's sartorial problem seems to be. A pair of black pants. I need them. A pair of shoes to wear with that new dress. I need them. Very specific needs, which are filled unsatisfactorily, but sufficiently to get through the particular day or evening, or the wearer decides that something they already have will do or that they just won't wear that dress, or whatever, and the person shops again when some other minor need raises its impossible head.

The only thing it seems people shop for is jeans. They shop and shop and buy jeans, always believing that this pair of jeans will solve all their costume problems, now that jeans are accepted attire almost everywhere. But jeans are capricious, changing style almost more swiftly than the general fashion, and they are a cruel fit, only looking great, if ever, at a particular size and fitness level. So demanding for what is supposed to be and once was a very practical and service oriented garment.

But the thing about jeans, and maybe why they maintain such a hold on our psyche and continue to hold forth the idea of being an infinitely useful garment, is that no matter what, no matter how degraded the "denim" might be with spandex or other polyester, it must still appear to be denim in order to be "jeans", and denim has more substance than most any other thing we put on our bodies, other than overcoats. And the substance of denim is, however meanspirited and unforgiving the fit, a kinder thing to cover our asses than anything else available to the regular woman shopping at the mall. Jeans may be cruel and uncomfortable compared to, say, velour sweatpants, but the denim does not expose the dimples on our butts. Denim, in its way, even and maybe especially when very snug, hides a multitude of bodily crimes. Not that a dimpled ass is such a crime. Not at all. In fact, there is no crime other than to be unhealthy and unhappy in one's own body. It doesn't really matter what the details are of any particular body... there is no need to expose them to absolutely everyone in the restaurant. Even the finest rear-end or front chassis becomes vulgar and more provocative than lovely when overly exposed.

What is useful

2008-03-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

Usefulness in the context of clothing is a little complicated. If you only had one garment, or just one article of clothing for the bottom half and one for the top, it wouldn't much matter at all what the garments were, they would be infinitely useful. You would not be willing to give them up, and would use them everyday, all day long. Useful in the extreme. No one would suggest that you throw them out, no matter how wrong they might be for your body, for who you are, for what you do, for where you are.

If you had two tops and two bottoms, all of them would be very useful, as it would give you the possibility of washing one set while still having something to wear. Which in most climates and cultures is rather required. (This, it turns out, is one of the great challenges of serving the homeless community, as making laundry available to people with only one set of clothing is a little awkward. It doesn't seem like that hard of a problem to solve, though, given the fantastic amount of unused and unwanted clothing that drifts around this world.)

Add just one more garment and now you are in a position to have a favorite and a least favorite, a thing that you care least to wear and so don't unless everything else is filthy. That would be the least useful garment, and one would be inclined to say "toss it", except that this spare garment might provide something that the others do not provide in terms of style, in terms of the emotional gratification owning it, if not actually wearing it, provides. Maybe it is the thing that one wears only when one has a desire to feel dramatic, or sensual, or official. This is where my shirt that gets ironed and worn about once every two years comes in. I wouldn't get rid of it because it is completely useful in certain situations. But it is not, in general a useful garment, not at all, not for me.

But if it were simply the third of three tops I had available to me, it would be very very useful, and I would wear it all the time.

In this world where we all have many more clothes than we need, many clothes that would be useful if they were all you had, but which given other choices are not, comparatively, useful, and so not worn... how do we determine what is useful? (By the way, I'm thinking that whatever we discover along this trail of thought will probably go for all the crap in your kitchen, on your desk, in the tool shed and everywhere else a great deal of clutter has accumulated.)

First of all, let's just say that there is a very big difference between the ways different kinds of people regard the value of spare objects. People who have plenty of money and who do not make things, who are not creative and handy, who go out and buy whatever they need when they need it and don't think twice about it, view anything that they do not use regularly as clutter, and they are right. It is in their way, a task and a cost to keep, a distraction in their environment, and it might as well go away. If it turns out two years down the road that they actually do need a stapler, they can buy one or go somewhere that has one they can use.

People who do not have scads of extra money, do not have lots of resources other than their own selves, are much more likely to hold onto things and to view them as valuable, because they are actually valuable. Keeping a stapler that one rarely uses will be important when the time comes and you need a stapler. Or in the case of handy people, scraps of wood and fabric and small hardware which are the very worst kinds of clutter are of great value suddenly when one needs to make a sign or a table or whatever comes up and something certainly will. It costs money to get materials if "clutter" has been thrown out, if you can even buy the right clutter to make the thing imagined and needed.

Two very different points of view on what is useful, and what should be tossed or given away.

Two different views that don't live well together, I might add.

Usefulness is maybe like helpfulness. Maybe. Lets see. Something that is helpful in one case or situation is not helpful at all in another. Substitute the idea of "useful", and that sentence is still true. But then, so would substituting the idea of "beautiful".

So, is usefulness, and helpfulness, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder?

Yes. Only the opinion of the person who sees usefulness in an object of any kind is important. That others do not see its usefulness does not diminish the quality of usefulness for the one person.

What becomes difficult is when people confuse usefulness with a fear of throwing things away. When someone insists that they might need that empty mayonnaise jar, and put it on a shelf in the basement with 300 other empty jars, and in a lifetime have only managed to reuse, perhaps, 30 jars, then you have the idea of usefulness being used as a screen for a fear of some sort. Probably a fear of one day not having what is needed and having no resources to get it, which is common in people who have lived through depressions, who have been very poor and resourceless, and people who do not feel that they are on solid economic footing in one way or another. For example, women, being economically disadvantaged generally speaking (I trust you are familiar with the wage differentiations between men and women that still persist) are much more prone to keeping things that others will perceive as clutter. Students and artists don't throw anything away, and tend to pick through the discarded trash of others to find things they think could be useful at some point, sooner or later.

But like help that is the wrong sort of help, clutter kept out of fear rather than out of a genuine quality of potential usefulness, instead of being useful can be very destructive, expensive in itself, and an obstruction to the real goals of the person holding onto it. The opposite of useful.

People who have plenty of resources view everything this way. "Get rid of it" is their motto, and that is nice because they give much of it to the Salvation Army and the DAV, and in that way a benevolent secondary market occurs. It's all good, as they say. But when people with plenty of resources harp on people without resources, and try to convince them that they should get rid of things that could actually be useful at a later date, it is trouble. Of course anyone would love to live elegantly and not have to maintain a stash of construction ingredients, but that is a luxury for people of means. Other people, by necessity, keep things that seem to be junk. Trash. Pieces of wood that no one else can imagine would be useful. But the day does come when a piece of wood just that size is required, and it is there and no one has to go to the store, no money spent, and something was not put in the landfill in the first place.

To view things not currently in use as useful is a civilized act, even though the elitism born of wealth would suggest that having only the things you currently use is most civilized. For that matter, to view people who are not currently particularly useful as potentially useful, or appreciated because they were once useful, is also a civilized act, as opposed to the throw-away inclination of those who perceive themselves as the absolute height of useful.

But what does this have to do with clothing? Why not throw away something that you have not worn in a long time? Well, it depends why you haven't worn it. Some clothes become not useful because a person has legitimately outgrown them, either physically or intellectually or emotionally. Many men give away a closet full of suits the minute they retire, as they know they will never need that sort of useful thing again. They have gone past it, as much as schoolchildren get past their uniforms the minute they graduate from school. They are done. It won't come up again. A new suit is often purchased, for weddings and funerals, one that is not tainted by years at the grindstone, one that might not even adhere completely to the style demands of the work suit.

But perhaps you haven't worn something because you forgot about it. Because you wore it and wore it because it was such a useful garment, and so grew tired of it and put it to the side in favor of another, maybe less ideal thing, and then forgot why you stopped wearing it. The wisdom of the women's magazine would have you throw it away, and it would not be a tragedy if you did, since you would most likely give it to a charity thrift store, and someone else, with a less blinded eye would find it and give it new life. But you are out a useful garment, and they are not that easy to come across. So perhaps the consideration needs to be deeper than "have I worn it in the past year", especially since a great deal of the clothing that any give person did wear in the past year probably should be thrown away.

Panty Science

2008-03-22T06:43:00.001-07:00

We are asked alot what we mean by "Scientific Panties". Which makes us wonder ourselves.

Here is what is meant: Scientific techniques of hypothesis, experimentation and thesis are employed, and not just for the panties, although the underwear, it is true, requires greater research than say, a slender skirt which is the equivalent of Newton noting the apple falling from the tree and seeing gravity. Easy and obvious, though somehow invisible to everyone for a long time. Panties were harder. More like figuring out the idea of electricity, but still we solved panties for everyone--everyone female anyway--and now the bright light of Science is turned on the brassiere.

(You can visit the Wikipedia explanation of the Scientific Method, in case you are a product of some wacko, anti-science school system, probably in Kansas, and don't know about Science. You might note that what we are doing is really a combination of science and engineering, which is typical in the modern world, and no crime. We are unapologetic that our science is done purely in order to create a thing that works, since the imperative for a bra and panties that is perfect is overwhelming.)

Ahhh, boobies. Any pleasantly whorish straight man will tell you breasts come in an infinite variety of shapes, weights and sizes. Even on the same person, the variety can be impressive.

What is stunning is the audacity of a manufacturing industry which gives us, what, 20 or 30 sizes to choose from? Really. It is not a big surprise that women are disappointed and dismayed and generally feel unserved and exploited by the bra industry (as well as the panty people, and they are much the same people.) Exploited because the industry has noticed that women, in their search for good underwear, are vulnerable to every kind of marketing ploy, from the idea that their undergarments will transform their actual body (which in the case of breasts can sometimes be true...just watch women get dressed at the gym, and notice how very normal breasts can become something high, perky and perfectly round once lifted and jammed into an expensive bra,) or various ideas of potential sexuality implicit in the fabrics and designs, which over a 100 years later still harken to the naughty postcards of Victorian times--the first opportunity for modern man to get a regular glimpse of half-clad women not related or married to him. He's still not over it, or rather women still think that is what men think is sexy. and maybe they do, because it is pretty, and men have been trained to find it sexy, but really they can see that they are not good undergarments, and part of their mind is thinking about how silly the woman is for wearing stupid undergarments when they both know she has a lot to do today. Oh man, when will we be done with the sentimental idea of lace being a good fabric for an undergarment? Unless that undergarment is coming off in the next hour or so, it is a bad idea. Especially in the tinier and tinier manifestations. Ouch.

So, like good scientists, we work at the pure science of underwear, what the principles are, what forces are in effect and how they work together to create a system, which we then unify with the science of clothing and that of outerwear, until we have a unified theory of clothing. Which we have, and which we have been testing for several years now.

(The bigger unified theory will include the buildings we are in, and the food we eat, and our actions in relationship to the earth, but that is not yet complete. This is a unified sub-theory. Just wanted you to know that we know the scientific field is bigger, and that a unified field theory is the grail. We're working on it, but we're drinkers and have a hottub, so things go a little slowly...)

Science, plus engineering because we have to make real things, not just come up with ideas.

But the science will be useful to you, so you can go about making your own things, which will be different than what we make, but still ideal and scientific if you adhere to the laws which, like gravity, are immutable. If you try to construct things that are in hopeful, fantastical denial of the laws discovered by science, you will be disappointed, your garments will fail to be garments, in the scientific sense of the word.

Back to the breasts and what they require to be happy... Science and engineering have been working on that. It is tricky tricky, if only because small breast have very different science than large breasts, and so the engineering must also be different. But if we find, as maybe we are, that all women, no matter what size their breasts, are mostly happier with no bra on, and regarding a garment or undergarment seek only to have those breasts look "decent" and to not be uncomfortable. That isn't alot to ask, and yet there is nothing hardly at all unless some manufacturer unknowingly stumbled on a good design, made a bunch of them, and then, as with all designs, discontinued it in deference to the new season.

Rats. And the chances of finding that exellent bra in the first place were about as good as finding the right psychologist for a severely troubled person. Not likely.

Better, really to make your own. Or teach a teen ager to sew and then make them make what you want for you. It's easier, really, to just make your own. And a lot less time consuming than knitting a scarf, which everyone seems to have time for these days. Jeez. A better scarf can be made in about 15 minutes, with about 2 bucks worth of fabric. Less, really. Anyway, stop knitting scarves no one needs, and make yourself a garment for your breasts that will serve you every day until it wears out.

Guys who like breasts and also like women take note: You could become good at making these garments, and panties, too, and then all the women will want to come hang out with you and take their clothes off, all the time discussing their most inviting body parts, which you will then have to stare at and examine closely so you can make them a little something, which they will then try on and really, I do not know why more men do not make women's underwear...)

Here is how to make a garment for breasts: Cut and sew a loop of double thickness, stretchy-with-spandex fabric. Have the loop be about 6-8 inches smaller in circumference than you are at your broadest point, and have it be wide enough to go from under your breast to the top of your breasts. You can cut it down to please yourself, but better it be too wide to begin with than too narrow.

Put on the loop, seam in the back. Make sure it is tight enough, but not too tight. Only you know for sure. Mark with pins where you want straps to be on the front. Everyone is different. Take it off. Fold so the pins match, and then cut a sort of swoop from that point to the back seam, The loop should be at least 3 or 4 inches wide at the back, so don't cut it too narrow. Now, there are several things you can do to make the front part fit your breasts. You can cut a light scoop in the front, or a broad V, or leave it straight, or pinch it down and create pleats, or you can be bold, cut down the middle front, sew darts to fit yourself, and then resew the front. That last thing will take some sewing skills or instruction, or at least alot of experimentation. I'm not sure I have effectively done that transformation.

Zig zag around the edges of the loop, so everything is sealed up nicely.

Now it is time to tighten up the lower edge, so that it stays in place under the breasts. There are several ways to do this. The easiest way, perhaps, is to sew a piece of elastic along the bottom edge, pulling the elastic as you sew it so that the final effect is that the bra fabric is gathered up to some extent or another. You have no doubt experienced the "shelf-bra" built into many a camisole in the department store lingerie section. This is a little like that, except that I think it is better to not bring the elastic all the way around. Leave four or five inches in the back that do not have the added elastic. There are all kinds of benefits to doing it like this, but you can judge for yourself. You can sew the elastic on what will be the inside or the outside of the garment. The one I am wearing now has a soft, natural cotton elastic, about 3/4 inch wide, and sewn onto the outside of the bra-lette, which happens to be a double layer soft pink cotton/lycra. Sweet.

Another way to bring in the bottom edge of the bra-garment is to make a few darts. To do this, snip two, 1-2 inch vertical cuts in the bottom edge of the garment, more or less centered on each breast. The length of the cut is proportionate to the cup size of your breasts, as in it is a longer distance from the ribcage to the tip of the breast on a D cup than on an A cup... The cut should be about half that distance, whatever it is. Cross one side of the cut over the other, creating a triangle of overlap. The larger your breasts, the longer the cut, the larger this triangle will be. Sew down one side of the triangle. you can sew down both sides, or you can snip off the extra fabric after you sew the first side.

Now make straps, double thickness and in the direction of the least stretch, if you have a choice. Make them at least 15-20 inches long so you have room to experiment. Make them wider than normal straps. An inch is good. You can make them thinner, but wider is more comfortable, better engineering, and if it shows it looks less like the strap of an undergarment than that of just another garment. Do what you want. Sew your straps onto the back of the loop, 2-3 inches off center, to either side of the seam. Be sensible: fold the bra so the center front is one fold, and then put matching pins to mark where the straps attach in the back. Err on the "too close together" side.

Put on the garment and bring the straps to the front. Experiment with how they should attach to the front. Pin them, walk around, see what it feels like... Put pins in the straps at the point where it hits the garment, and take it off. Sew on the straps. Sew sew sew, many more zigzags across the seam than is necessary. For security purposes.

You are done.

Wear your new bra-lette, and be very critical about what works and what doesn't work, what you like and what you don't like. I have found that in many cases, even if there are things I am unhappy with and wrong, the bra-lette is still so much better than any of the manufactured bras still drifting around, that I wear them anyway, improving them when I get a chance.

When you make your next little garment for your breasts, you will do better. By your third, you should have a good grasp on how to make a perfect bra-lette for yourself, and maybe some friends who are not too different than yourself. Your sisters and cousins, maybe.

Energy Efficiency

2008-03-18T07:35:00.000-07:00

We, I, have, for almost a decade or more than a decade, been living in houses and buildings where "energy efficiency" has pretty much taken the form of barely heating the place, and having very spare lighting, and nearly no light switches. The one real energy efficient action is that if there is a switch, I put a dimmer on it, but I do that primarily for dramatic and psychological purposes, or "security reasons" as my husband likes to say, as a joke, but indeed the dimmers do a whole lot for my emotional security and sense of self. Especially the ones in the bathrooms. I haven't seen myself in cruel bathroom light in years, unless it is at a hotel or someone else's home. You might have heard me shriek last December when I went into the beautiful bathroom in the expansive guest quarters of my sister's home, and flipped on full wattage lights. Jeff and I offered to install a dimmer during our visit, partially for ourselves, but also because mom was visiting the next week, and she doesn't need to have glaring light for 80% of the activities in the bathroom either. In fact, given how glaring she likes the light for make-up rituals, a dimmer seems absolutely necessary. We were turned down. Which was sad because since their hottub is closed down for the winter months, we didn't have much to occupy us and a little project would have been fun.

Anyhoo. Her house is very energy efficient, large as it is. While our buildings are not. But even if they were, we still hate using energy. We just hate it. We love electricity and all other public utilities, especially "water out", don't get us wrong. But we do not like to use energy, we do not like the idea of polluting the earth more than necessary by using energy we do not need, and we do not like to spend money on it. Money literally gone up in smoke.

So we have very cold spaces in the wintertime. Cold? Cold to you, anyway. Except for the very coldest days, when it doesn't get above 10 degrees fahrenheit, our interior is about 60 degrees. But on those cold cold days, the interior gets down around 52, and it is pretty cold. Brighter lighting helps make it feel less cold, an interesting psychological phenomenon, but the really interesting thing is that 60 degrees is very nice and comfortable if you are dressed for it.

And mind-numbingly cold and depressing in real terms if you are not.

I did some research and it seems, if I remember correctly, that for every degree F you lower the thermostat, you decrease your energy usage for heating by perhaps 2-4%. So putting your thermostat a few degrees lower is a nice gesture, and it will reflect a little bit on your heating bill. But what you really need to do to make a difference to your bottom line and to the amount of energy that we are using as a nation and as a species, is to turn the thermostat WAY down. I mean to 60 degrees. Lower maybe, on very very cold days. The differential between the outdoors and the indoors makes a big difference to how much energy you are using on any given day. So if it is 40 degrees outside, you can have the house at 60 and you are using very little energy. But if the outside temperature is 0 degrees, 60 for an indoor temperature might be extravagant.

Ha ha ha, you say, since your thermostat is at 72, and aren't you green if you put it at 68 and feel real smug about the whole thing. "It takes more energy to heat the house back up, if I turn down the thermostat," you posture like you know what you are talking about. Sure, if you live in a passively solar building which holds the heat and the cool and so you have to heat up the actual structure, not just the contained air. But even then... The bottom line, like it or not, is that we are spoiled brats, insisting on wearing cotton clothing appropriate only for California spring and fall, and so we are not actually comfortable indoors unless the temperature is between 72 and 82, just like California spring and fall. Jeans. Foolhardy, and only a great idea for people doing gritty outdoor activities, and only then if they are roomy enough for movement, and again, only in California. And not even all of California, and not all year. Just the really temperate parts, like the gold country, where Jeans took hold of the American fantasy of self and have only tightened that grip over the following century and a half. And only during spring and fall.

Here is the truth. If you want to be comfortable at cooler temperatures, it is not enough to put on even a wool sweater, let alone a cotton or blend sweatshirt. You need to put on warm clothing which is appropriate for lounging about in the indoor environment. Gearing up with fleece garments designed for strenuous outdoor activity is not a good answer, as such clothing does not complement our idea of our at-home and leisurely self, and it makes us feel that we are dressed to be out of doors. Because we are.

You must put on warm clothing, and such clothing needs to be all your clothing. You cannot have on thin cotton pants and a heavy wool sweater and think you will be warm and comfortable in a 60 or even 65 degree room. No. All your clothing must be real clothing, made of fabric that has thermal value, but which does not make you feel incapacitated or bulky and unattractive. Forget walking around with a fleece throw or blanket wrapped around you (as many a slacker tenant in a drafty building will do.) Long underwear can be an OK thing, but for the most part it does make people feel a little like a small child dressed to go play in the snow. Or just makes the wearer feel fat. Neither of which is conducive to delightful adult activities, especially not the ones most well-suited to the long winter nights, if you are so lucky and catch my meaning.

Ideal Garments are many things, but the whole thing is mostly just an exploration of what kinds of clothing will work well for the sensible, sensual life, wherever that life may be taking place. In the case of cold winters, that does mean warm clothing that is delightful to wear and delightful to the eyes of others, clothing which allows a person to be indoors and not be sucking too violently on the public utility tit, and to go out doors without having to put on an arctic-rated parka, and still be cold because pants are thin and useless. In the hot summer, it is clothing that makes it possible to not cower from one air-conditioned interior to the next. Oh, sure air-conditioning is terrific, but as with all energy-using luxuries it must be used with discretion if we are not to be destroyed by our dependence on oil and other forms of fossil fuels.

So that is the point of this. That we are silly and spoiled and have forgotten entirely that our clothing is our first layer of interaction with the climate. Even indoors where with think we are protected from interaction with the outside world, we are not. We are paying profoundly and sadly for the luxury of such interiors. Yes we are used to doing that, but I would posit that the garment industry has been part and parcel of the transition from creatures who dress sensibly for their climate to creatures who do not even have access to clothing that would be appropriate for their climate, except for the small moments from restaurant to car, or for actual outdoor activities. So for the experts to suggest that we lower the temperature of our homes to a point were we are comfortable is an almost useless suggestion unless it is also accompanied by good suggestions on how we can be more comfortable at a much lower temperature.

Every day someone is in my building, wearing cotton or some other flimsy contemporary apparel, usually something that has a costume-y affectation of being "warm". A velour sweatsuit, perhaps, though I assure you there will be no sweating done unless they head for Muscle Beach and throw down. So the person, male or female, is cold, but they do not recognize that they are cold. It is not that cold, I suppose, or they have no experience of being in a 60 degree interior and so can't register their experience. They do become depressed and develop a little bit of tunnel vision, and eventually might confess that they feel chilled. I especially like this when it has been pointedly clear through flimsy clothing that they have been cold for some time. So, with hard won permission, I put a garment on them. Maybe a robe. Maybe a pair of pants and a pullover. Something warm, fleecy or wool. Something with actual, measurable thermal value. And they are immediately recovered, happy, fine. Delighted to be in the cooler place, which is easier to breathe in and easier to go outdoors from, less dry and stale, now that they are comfortable, warm.

It is not such a big deal, and the clothing is easily made by individuals with very little skill. Throw away ideas of what looks warm, fantasies of wintery attire. Just clothing that is clothing, but warm. The very same clothing, in fact, which when made in linen or cotton or weird modern blend is perfect for the heat of summer, and some combination takes care of the spring and fall. Imagine another time, another place, not long ago, and not far away, where central heat is not available. Let's say a castle in Germany in the twelfth century... How warm do you think open fires made those buildings? Not warm at all, is the correct answer, King Friday. So clothing was what kept people warm and functional. Real clothing that still set them off attractively, as in a twelfth century castle it is going to be pretty important to look good so they keep you around. You get the idea. Central heating, overused in the extreme, is a luxury allowed almost exclusively to Americans in the United States. Other cool countries do not over use fossil-fueled heat as much as we do. No one is a wasteful of energy as we are, not now, not ever. If we are going to change our ways, and be better members of the earth community, we need to simmer down and get sensible. "Put on a sweater" is a patronizing comment. There is much more to be done than that.

Mind you. Energy efficiency at the architectural level is very very important, but it is often alot more expensive and difficult to achieve, or impossible to achieve in some older or just plain poorly built buildings, or not appropriate to achieve if it is not your building. To be comfortable in an interior where the temperature is considerably lower than we are used to saves more energy than any other single thing you can do. Which saves money, which maybe can be used to make that building more energy efficient (if you own that building, which you should), which will save you even more money. Now you look great, your home is efficient, and you are saving money on a monthly basis. Put it in the bank for a rainy day, please.

Over-packed

2008-03-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

For all my hard thinking on the matter, we still over-packed terribly. But the weekend itself was kind of overpacked, so I miraculously had occasion to wear almost everything.

But the more interesting thing is the party that my sisters threw for my mother. I did the invitation, so I was very clear that it was not a birthday party or any milestone of any kind, not the kind of thing that, if you just stay alive and don't cause trouble, everyone comes up to. Not a birthday, not an anniversary, not even a wedding.

Nope. It was a tribute party for a person who would never, through any official means, ever be thrown a party, or even a lunch, of appreciation.

Not because she doesn't participate in her community, in philanthropies, extending herself for family, friends and sometimes even strangers. Not because she has not accomplished anything of note. But she is not drawn to the tasks and roles that get recognition. Avoids them, even.

Now, in this case it is a person who has done countless lovely things, but more to the point has been a flawless friend, parent, grandparent, co-worker, volunteer, etc. for a very long time. More than two hundred people were invited, 140 showed up and stayed. And that doesn't count extended family because they weren't invited.

Nope. It wasn't a celebration of just being part of a family, for however many years. Even the most ill-tempered asshole of a parent gets birthday parties thrown for them now and then.

I love Tyra Banks

2008-03-15T07:28:00.000-07:00

I really do. I even like her next top model show, even though none of those girls have any hope of being a top model, since they are all at least eighteen year old. Too late, ladies! I mostly like the catty discussion by the judges at the end. Not really catty. Insightful and truthful, and spoken by people who are long used to saying whatever pops into their heads, and who are just plain funny in one way or another, on purpose or not. It is hilarious. They should make a whole half hour of that, and cut back on the vapid comments of the girls. Who cares? They aren't competing against each other in a way that makes their relationships pertinent, as in other reality shows. Nope. Their competition is much more traditional, like sports such as diving or equestrian competition, where judges make the final decision about who wins.

I don't know why we are so mesmerized. Maybe it is just that we cannot turn away from beautiful young women. We just cannot avert our eyes.

What is interesting today to me is the window it throws open on the way in which the images in magazines and television are created. The utterly and profoundly inauthentic quality of print advertising and editorial, which amounts to the same thing as advertising, just with greater freedom of expression for the photographers. Which just means advertising for them for more highly paid, bluntly advertising work.

In any case, we get to see how young women who are deeply uninteresting in themselves are dressed up in garments that barely even look good on them, and then forced to pose in situations that are difficult and sometimes even dangerous to them in order to create an image that whimsically entered the mind of the photographer or director. And the empty-headed young thing is further coaxed into expressing attitude or emotion that in most cases the girl has absolutely no knowledge or experience of. Last night, Tyra (whom I adore) taught them how to disguise their emptiness by faking gestures associated with pain. That is the only possible experience of any weight that these girls might have at their disposal. Maybe they had a headache and were crushed by pain. Or cramps. Or someone stepped on their toe. Or they twisted their ankle, falling off some tall tall shoes. I twisted my ankle once, and then again, barefoot at a dance party, Man it did hurt. I went to the barrel of ice and water and beer bottles in the kitchen and stuck my whole foot and ankle in. Hey, it was my house. Anyway, as I recall I did look pretty fetching in my terrible pain, and got all kinds of attention.

But to leave that scene of draped batik, books and handsome young brainiacs attending to the fallen maiden -- it was a set piece for sure -- maybe Tyra is right that pain is a perfectly fine place to find a little depth and drama, to become interesting.

It is good to know, I think, that the images in the magazines are really just there to capture our attention in a vaguely positive way, to encourage us to buy something, anything, and not to do anything else. That is all that advertising requires. And that is all the images are meant for. The only reason everyone goes to the great lengths they do to create them. Oh yes, great lengths, involving huge casts of people, which process is lightly exposed on Tyra's terrific show. We could see even more of that, but we do get a glimpse of all the work that goes into creating the image, from the make-up and stylist and designers and lighting people and assistants and the director and the photographer and others I am forgetting, let alone the manner in which a model is picked solely for her ability to appear interesting, which Tyra so wonderfully exposes in her cruel show. Someone is paying all those people. They are not doing it for their health. And the money comes from advertisers, in one way or another. And so the agenda of advertising must be served. And know that it is.

But did you know that even when a magazine does a spread on, say, some starlet, that the person is dressed and made up and otherwise made into something the magazine thinks will grab viewers and so more advertising dollars? Yup. Lately many magazines don't even pretend that they are catching the star at home, and revealing them to you intimately. They just use the object in question as model for a bunch of clothing and accessories and let it be what it is... advertising. And juxtapose an interview. But the more homey women's magazines still maintain the charade, continue to insist that they are catching the person as they are, and you are getting to know them just as if you had, yourself, stopped by their home for coffee one morning.

Tyra does a great service revealing to the world the great shallowness of modelling. It is fun and fabulous, and completely mysterious how she herself manages to straddle that world and the world of very real and substantive journalism that her other show often is. But the thing that makes a great model is that they have substance within them. And not just fierce sassiness, which passes sometimes, briefly, for substance. Super models like Tyra and quite a few others are revealed later to have very good brains and to be women of great substance. And we can then see why they were so captivating in photographs at the time when it was not a good idea to in more blunt ways reveal their other strengths. Just rake in the money, enjoy the ride, and be who you are when it is time. Which Tyra certainly is.

I love Tyra Banks. Go Tyra.

I will be happy, though, when she stops wearing clothing that looks uncomfortable, and stops wearing shoes that should not be worn by anyone. For now, that is still who she is. Her beauty is irrepressible and will shine out from within, regardless, and I look forward to when it is not blurred by beauty and fashion industry contraptions. When her intelligence and curiosity and humor finally eclipse the need for weaves.

Tyra will rule the world.

American style

2008-03-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

Americans are not stylish, and it generally doesn't turn out well for us when we try to be. Oh, we have style. Sure, we have style. But we are not stylish.

Stupid stupid bridge

2008-03-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled across renderings of the proposed Troost Avenue Bridge over Brush Creek.*

Wow. It's awful, and I understand its awfulness is making the bridge cost millions more than would be necessary to sensibly replace the bridge, which does need to be replaced. This in a city that does not have millions to spare.

I also see that somewhere along the line in the past four years (since I attended a community meeting regarding this bridge) responsibility changed, and most of the people responsible for the final foolish design of this bridge are acquaintances of mine. You know, the kind of people that when you run into them at Home Depot, you spend a little while catching up.

Oh, sure, their carelessness is epic. First of all the design of the bridge is idiotic, a distracting piece of "light art" down the middle of the bridge, making it impossible to get out of a lane if necessary, or for the authorities to divert traffic in the event of an accident or what have you. Which is bound to occur with this terribly "interesting" bit of art crap right in the middle of the road. Something that plays with light. While you are driving on a bridge. How dumb. Look for yourself.

But more than that it was designed by these people without one of them ever stopping by and saying hello to me, the only person with even the smallest art-ish bent within sight of the bridge, and well known as such due to regular press coverage. And they know me. And they know the building I am in. And they know the commitment I have to this area, the changes my presence has helped along. Not enough, I know, but hey, I was the only one here for a long time. Still am, along with my husband and tenants.

Now I figure they have been driving by for years, designing this too-expensive bridge with fantasies of "transforming" this part of town with their clever design; a part of town that is a thorn in the side of the city, and still bleeding openly from wounds sustained during the racial disaster of the 1950's and 60's, a street which is still perceived as a dividing line between the black and white communities. Ooooo, let's put up a bridge with a barrier down the middle. That will help heal the pain.

I'm just saying... If they had even the most remote interest in how their design was going to affect the community around it, you would think they might have said Hey Susan, what do you think about all this? What do your neighbors think?

Here is what I think: I think you all are addicted to public money, especially public money for "art", and that you have designed a stupid stupid and also dangerous and stupidly expensive bridge that disregards and disrepects the sensible reality of the street it is on, and the financial crisis of the city it is in. No wonder people hate artists and art, and dismiss them as parasites on the culture.

I think my neighbors are not going to have any thoughts at all about this expensive bridge, since they are busy and a whole lot of them don't even have cars. I think the plastic barrier will be tagged and scratched and forever look crappy, the color dated the day it is installed. And I think the designers and artists will be comfortable and warm, their children's college funds fattened, and all is good. Some of them are decent people, or have seemed so in the past.

Ah well. Stupider things will be done in this city in the name of art and design and "public improvements" this year. And these same people will no doubt be carrying home city funds for those projects, too. How else can it take a half a million dollars to redo the men's room at Starlight, or over a million to add some "streetscaping" to yet another downtown block. It looks like developers are going to have to scoot over at the public trough and make room for hoggish designers and artists who have figured out how to work the system, too.

*I went to a public meeting or two maybe four years ago regarding this bridge, and was disturbed and revolted by the selfish idiocy of the community comments, and the willingness of the "designers" to listen and incorporate, no matter how foolish, unecessary and fantastically expensive such inclusion might be. In fact, that whole process, and a few other "community input experiences" have convinced me that community input has very little value. Some, and it is good to listen to people who live nearby to a project, as they might know things that the designers, who invariably do not live nearby any project, cannot know. And they can put it in the stew of knowledge and understanding as they work their magic and design something that ends up being better than the community could have suggested. But no. Instead the narrow-minded shrieks of community are pandered to, and at great expense and to the detriment of the project.

That is the normal course of events, but this bridge is especially disturbing.

Dressing the Part

2008-03-07T09:49:00.000-08:00

Most of the things we wear in public, most, are costumes that are supposed to reflect either the role we are actually playing, or the role we would like to be playing in our world.

So the assistants and drones dress up each day in low end suits that mimic their idea of what a higher level executive would wear. And the high end executives may or may not dress the part in the manner imagined by the underlings.

It seems that the more excellent one is at one's role, one's job, the less need there is to dress the part. It is old news, but you can still take a gander at the usual dress of the richest people running the most successful companies, which in most cases they themselves created from scratch. They are not dressed poorly or in a fashion that would be disturbing to others, but neither are they dressing to a role. They are wearing what they think they look good in and which is completely comfortable, as they have no time or attention for being annoyed or troubled or in anyway inconvenienced by a costume. They busy, and they know no one cares at all what they are wearing, as long as it is respectful of others and they do not stink. I don't care how successful you are. If you stink, people will turn from you.

But most of us dress the part, dress to the part, or, as the magazines counsel us, dress to the part we aspire to.

All this is unfortunate, as all the demands of costume preclude thinking clearly about what would be good to wear, good for activities, for keeping comfortable, for looking actually good rather than looking the part. As modern people, one might think that we would be allowed to dress ourselves according to some overriding principles of good clothing, rather than still adhering to antique and obsolete ideas of what should be worn. Pantyhose, for example, are a mystery. Why do they still exist?

Do you dress for a role? Do you purchase and wear clothing that will broadcast your status to others? Help people interpret you as whatever role you wish to be? It is not just in the workplace, you know. Men and women dress their roles in the evening, too. Women wear strange, uncomfortable and unsafe clothing in order to project the sexuality they think will be well received on the open market. What they do not understand is that their intended audience, though always willing to enjoy exposed female flesh, is not stupid and can plainly see that the woman has dressed herself in a manner that is foolish. And so in addition to whatever experience of sexuality they might get off the girl, they also, and sometimes without knowing, register that the woman is foolish, needs to be cared for, cannot get safely back to her home on her own.

Men are not as stupid as they seem. And what good men, and good people of every kind, want is for the others around them to be beautiful and dressed for possibilities, safe and snug. It's nice if it looks like the clothing will come off easily, too.

Anyway, men can see women through their clothing, and are not extremely fooled by much. So women should just dress to be attractive and happy, and not worry about whether they are presenting their assets. The assets are assumed, and usually perceptible. Just try to strap down your breasts. Just try to get rid of your hips.

Is it possible that all this dressing to the part is to blame for the sorry aspect of most people most of the time when they are in what they perceive to be their private spheres, but which is often a public place, like Wal-Mart or the airport? Is it possible that because we dress the part professionally and socially, and our clothing budget and attention goes to making sure all that is in order, when we are just ourselves there is no sense of costume, and so no sense of how to dress and people just wear any old thing, no matter how bad it looks on them or how poorly it reflects on them. Ill fitting, crappy garments on our misshapen bodies. It is terrible, and unnecessary. Good clothing is something that we forsook, turned away from in childish delight at whatever new ruffle, bow or brilliantly colored shirt was presented to us by everything from the first Sears catalog to the current infinity of real and virtual retailers. The opportunity for good clothing did not cease to exist. We decided we would rather spend ourselves costuming up for the work and social places, and then who cares about the rest.

Here is an idea. If a person were to dress in a more attractive, sensual, sensible and safe manner for everyday in the home and excursions to the store, what do you think the effect would be on the people around them? Rather than waiting to tart up for an over-sold evening on the town, what if a couple dressed beautifully for each other everyday and in the home? What if instead of bad jeans and a big old t-shirt, a spouse wore something graceful and attractive, and obviously even more comfortable than the jeans and tee? What if they looked beautiful and felt sensual and safe, unconcerned for their garments, embraced and supported by them in every way?

That would be different.

And maybe those outfits would serve for the workplace and the social realm, too. I'm just saying.

Costuming the fantastic self

2008-03-06T20:47:00.000-08:00

I went shoe shopping today. It is a bit of a crisis. I didn't find anything that would solve my shoe problems.

I did, however, find plenty of shoes to fit all my fantasies of who I could be. My goodness. There was a particular pair of Tahari boots that I think I might dream of tonight. Then there was the Born wedge sandal that would have been so practical, if only I were a different person. The shoe I probably should have gotten was by Jessica Simpson. Imagine that. It may or may not have solved some problems, but in that case I couldn't imagine myself in a Jessica Simpson shoe, and besides it was made in China. If I can avoid that, I do.

Oh, these shoes, and especially the ones I did not even try on. They want to live in my closet and whisper stories of what might possibly be, in a parallel universe where I wear delicate, intricate shoes with heels, sensible and stylish flats that go as well with my capris as the tv show fashion makeover people assure me daily that they will. But I know that I won't, I shouldn't, and mostly likely can't even wear these shoes. I am over it, practically speaking. I put on a pair of pretty and heeled shoes to go to the theater last month, and my husband laughed at me and told me how unhappy I would be and that I should just put on my snow boots as usual. He was right in a most overwhelming way. I couldn't even get off our second floor in the shoes, and when we trotted to make the curtain, and when we were thrust back into the cold cold night, I was very very very happy to be wearing the snow boots.

But why do I want these shoes in my closet? Why do I long for them? What dream of what possibility do they embody or contain or otherwise control, that I would consider spending money (and we have none to spare) on them? What is this fantasy? Why does it still have hold of me when I have not left the house in heels in possibly a decade? Curious.

What are you wearing today?

2008-03-05T11:59:00.000-08:00

I'm very curious. At a party a couple of cold months ago, 80% of the women were in jeans (the expensive kind, and with high heels for the most part,) and the other several women were in fantastically short dresses. I averted my eyes when they sat down, is all I'm saying. And I almost cried when these bare legged girls headed into the 10 degree night. Of course I would have also cried if they had been wearing pantyhose, and I am trying not to think about how many of the women were wearing some form of contemporary girdle a la Spanx under their Jeans. My lord.

But what are you wearing today? And what are you doing today? Physically, socially, professionally, emotionally. What is the weather where you are? Outside, inside.

I am wearing a pair of ideal fleece drawstring pants over scientific panties. A scientific bra under a target t-shirt under a new ideal fleece jacket, classic men's jacket length, with a pocket and belted under the bosom if I get cold. Socks and Totes snow boots. An ideal hat and scarf occasionally. I am winding up a long move from one building to another. The weather outside, where I have not actually been yet, is maybe 20 degrees. Indoors it is maybe 60 degrees, heated with a wood stove which I keep going all day. I am climbing stairs with heavy boxes, going through boxes, keeping up with my email, drinking coffee, putting wood in the stoves, and trying to figure out how blogs work. I don't intend to see anyone besides close friends and my husband today, but who knows. A client could come by, or the mayor. I look fine for that. I should probably brush my teeth, what with all the coffee, though.

What are you wearing? Why? How is it working out for you today? Any day?

Bras

2008-03-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

Bras, I understand, are a problem. Which is strange, given how much money is made selling them. And yet, I understand that the majority of women can't stand their bra and take it off at the first opportunity.

Guys take note.

It is true though, and also true that not wearing a bra isn't always ideal either. A girl wants to be a little managed in that realm, but they don't want to be oppressed by that management. Kind of like any relationship.

Being a maker of underwear, and having completely left behind the world of manufactured bras and panties, I naturally find this all fascinating. Since I make clothing for people, and they need to, in many cases, wear something under it, I am even more interested. Being a breast cancer girl, and having one breast a wee bit mangled by a lumpectomy and not at all interested in being uncomfortable, I am potentially obsessed with the topic. I'm not, but I would be if I did not occasionally come up with a solution.

Yup. There are several things a woman can do to have her breasts not bother her by being too jiggly and free, nor too constricted. There are a few manufacturers who have made things I have not tried, but which Oprah swears by. She should know from bras and comfort, and goodness knows the lady always looks great.

But there are things you can do to make yourself happy. I will tell you about them sometime soon, or you can ask me about it in case I don't get around to it right away and you are anxious. Inexpensive, easy, and perfect for you. And not so lingerie-y. We don't like that whole lace fantasy around here. Lots of reasons, but it does mean that our undergarments can be worn as garments, and no one is the wiser. Ha!

You can also go to idealgarment.com to see if instructions to make a bra for yourself have shown up there.

The thing about jeans

2008-02-25T16:20:00.000-08:00

Jeans, like leather jackets, seem like they should be useful. Afterall, the origins of each are rooted in usefulness, and in narrow circumstances are still excellent garments. Leather pants and jacket will keep a motorcyclist's skin safe. Leather chaps, especially worn over jeans, will protect the horserider's legs from being lacerated by bristling chaparral. And in more standard circumstances, pants made of denim, jeans, are easier to wear and care for than the previous gold standard, wool flannel. And there is a general trajectory in human costume from more formal to less formal (see Dressing the Part, 3), so it is not surprising that everyone should have adopted what was once the lowest form of work-wear. Dock workers, coal miners, grease monkeys and the like wore jeans. Durable and cheap, and of a midrange color that shows the least amount of dirt. Thick enough to protect skin from the vagaries of hard labor, but still wearable. Do you think it is possible that since the main wearers of jeans would have been men with pretty fine bodies, given that they earned their livings with physical labor, possible that those origins helped fuel the romanticism of jeans as "looking good" in all circumstances? There is certainly a mythology, since people do not, in general, look that good in jeans. Most of the lumpish or spindly bodies wearing jeans do not look particulary good, especially in the very narrow versions, or the sadly "practical" versions that can be had cheaply and which are infinitely unflattering.

But here is a story on the other side. Two friends, a pair of tall, slender gay men had worn out and through all their clothing and they just looked awful. But having a zillion other things on their minds and 87 places more important to put their money, they had not bought new clothes. So, being myself broke as usual, I went to Steve and Barry's and bought them two pairs of jeans for $10 each. An impossible thing to imagine, that such nice, substantial garments could be manufactured and shipped to Kansas City for such a small sum, but when you take into account the low wages and grim working conditions in the country they were made (not China, but somewhere not here) and the fact that ships can burn waste oil at great expense to the environment without being fined in any way, then maybe it all makes sense. fifty cents of fabric, a dollar to construct, another two dollars in management expenses, a dollar to ship, and there you are... the ten dollar jeans are being sold at a nice profit margin, even on sale which they were. Terrific.

But the real thing is that, for these two men these two pair of jeans, two different styles and two different waist measurements (I was casting broadly in hopes of hitting on something that would work for one of them) are completely useful. Both pair fit both men just fine, and they both look great in them. They are pants made of denim. They do not cling or pinch, and they do not require any particular kind of shoe to make them look nice. This is really why people think jeans are great. Because in the manifestation as practical and inexpensive garment, at least on men's bodies, they are great. Not so great for the softer, rounder bodies of women, which do better with a little more wiggle room, I think.

Other than that, we are just used to them, have romanticized them, and though they are difficult to wear, neither warm enough for cold weather, nor cool enough for hat weather, we wear them anyway.

Well, I don't.

currently jeans and leather jackets are just very difficult and not that useful. Jeans have even become cruelly expensive, akin to finding the holy grail, and then sit in your closet scolding you for not being the right size, or require some kind of heel to look good, whereas you only want to wear comfortable shoes, so you become a dumpy thing, wearing sweats and sneakers, though in your mind, at every moment, you COULD be wearing your jeans and looking great. But you don't.

The thing about jeans is that denim, to be called denim, must have a certain level of substance. They cannot be flimsy, as rayon-blend chinos can be. If denim gets to sensuous, it is simply no longer denim and cannot be passed off as "jeans". And the sartorial get-out-of-jail-free card available to anyone wearing jeans is not available to the person wearing a flimsy, denim looking fabric.

The point is the the fabric.

Both denim and leather are apparently durable, protective, concealing.

That's nice. And true to some extent.

Hell, I had a leather skirt in college that was, at that moment, ideal and I wore it nearly everyday and it was effective in all realms.

And then there were the years of jeans. I lived in northern California at the time, the land of jeans, their birthplace.

Misshapen

2008-02-20T07:50:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in here I used the word "misshapen", and it has haunted me.

What on earth could I mean by that, when I tell absolutely everyone that their body is just fine, no matter what it is, and we clothe it delightfully and that is the end of that. What am I talking about?

There is certainly the fact that many people, especially women, think their bodies are not the right shape, and they strive for something different through diet, exercise, surgery and/or constricting undergarments. That's true, but that does not make their bodies actually misshapen, unless they are misshapen by those efforts. But that train of thought is getting recursive, and I'm putting a halt to it right now.

No, by misshapen I do not know what I meant, unless I meant that the clothing we tend to wear tends to render us misshapen, to emphasize exactly that which we would prefer not to be highlighted.

It is not entirely our fault. The clothing available at the very cheap level is not flattering. It almost can't be since it is made of very flimsy, and therefore cruel, fabric. It is a trick to hunt down the cheap garment that is flattering. It happens, but it takes time. Sometimes years. After which purchase, the wearer announces to everyone how they only paid 12 dollars for this great pair of pants. No mention at all of the decade of not having a pair of pants, and going into every store and trying on everything that looked at all possible. No mention of that. Just the triumph of having found an OK pair of pants at a bargain price.

Really people. Does it make sense anymore to say that you do not have time to sew? I can make a pair of pants in the time it would take you to drive to the mall and back again, never mind the time you would have spent wandering around in an increasingly dark state of depression, finally assuaged by a cocktail at one of the mall restaurants. Oh, I've been there.

Or just have a pair of pants made to fit you. How much could it really cost? What if it cost $200? I can imagine that, though that is not what we do here. But even $250 for a pair of pants, which I think is an adjusted for inflation price near to the $150 my friend reluctantly paid for a pair of perfect black wool pants in Soho about 9 years ago. Very reluctantly. We had to think about it overnight, and over a lunch in Little Italy, and we probably spent that much money on food between the time we found the pants and the time the designer was finally asked to fit them onto her. A tiny alteration, and we went joyously back into the world, and I don't think she spent another moment looking for a pair of black pants to this day. If she has a brain in her head, she would have ordered up a new pair if the first ever wore out. But in the absence of my encouragement to spend money on good clothing, this frugal girl who hates to spend money was no doubt sucked back into the industry-sponsored fantasy that you can find great clothing at some fantasically cheap price: and if those pants did wear out, she has probably spent $1000 in $35 dollar increments over the past few years on pants to replace the excellent pair.

First, that is stupid. Secondly it is insulting to the designer. If I were him, I would not agree to sell her a second pair of pants. But I am more petulant, and prone to insult than most designers. In fact, I am insulted for him! He made a pair of pants that made this woman beautiful, that flattered and presented her particular shape divinely, a pair of pants that would be appropriate for every occasion, every time of day, in beautiful wool, perfectly, sensuously tailored, pants that made this woman who at the time already owned her own very successful restaurant in the midwest even as she had failed to own a decent pair of slacks, finally feel like an adult woman. How could she not, out of gratitude, simply order a new pair of pants every few years, just to be sure to always have a fresh pair, and to assure that the designer stayed in business? But she probably didn't. I don't know. She doesn't talk to me anymore.

Now, this woman is a good example. Darling, but not shaped like the things in the store or the models in the magazines. Neither, and they are different. As far as I can tell, no one fits into the clothing in the stores. In any case, in clothing off the rack, she had to take on a funky aspect, making things work in some unconventional way since they simply did not fit in any normal sense of the word "fit". This person is creative and inventive and able to do that, although it does mean that she continued to present a sort of teenage persona to the world, which did not necessarily reflect the development of her grown up self. It was a bohemian time, but now it is over, at least for us.

But the fact that she could work something that did not in fact work for her doesn't help the legions of people who do not have so much visual and sartorial skills. The rest of us just need to get dressed, and we don't want to have to work hard at it and then wonder if we did OK. Men don't have to spend energy on this, though they could if they wanted to. Why can't it be a choice for us to be or not be creative, and if we choose not to be, why can't we just simply look great, our clothing clothing us gracefully and effectively and not exposing us cruelly.

Another woman did and maybe does have one of those bodies that everyone envies, tall and blond and maybe 28. Perfect. Dating a friend, and so the two of them stopped and said hello to us in our car as they were crossing the street in front of us one summer day. He in shorts and a shirt, she in a cute red sundress in a cotton jersey. The light changed and they went on their way. I of course watched them as they walked away, as one does, musing on them as friends do, and was jarred from my delightful day by the sight of the woman's behind as it walked away. She was wearing a thong, which she might have thought meant no lines, but the manner in which it cut into her flesh, and the manner in which it left exposed a perfectly fine behind, was disastrous. Grim. And the dress was not tight, even had a flared skirt, but the thin fabric gave every dimple its due.

This is four years ago, and I am still suffering memory of the sight. Misshapen. That is what I mean. Any body can be misshapen, and conversely any body can be not misshapen. Our bodies are our bodies, and they are the bodies that we will be in today, make love in, offer as comfort to others. These are our bodies, and they are fabulous and do amazing things and get us through our days and nights. Respect your body with clothing that respects it and presents you to the world as your beautiful self. Your body is not the problem. Your disrepect of it is the problem, and the thing that is misshapen is your perception of yourself, which perception is then inflicted by you on your body. Your body is fine. It is the thing that contains and supports you in all your endeavors. Let your clothing contain and support your body, as well as all the other parts of you. Don't be cruel.

Stupid Things We do

2008-02-18T09:11:00.000-08:00

1. We wear stupid clothing.

2. We wear stupid shoes.

3. We think a "bargain" is a bargain.

4. We are duped by greedy jerks, repeatedly, and then again and again.

5. We "love" stupidly, and despite all evidence.

6. We listen to voices saying we are fat.

7. We are not true to ourselves, and then wonder why we are depressed.

8. We do not make hard choices, are lazy, and behave, generally, like little children believing that a world should simply exist for them to live in comfortably.

New Hoboken

2008-01-22T00:16:00.000-08:00

We live and work in a place that is dismissed and disregarded by the surrounding metropolis. Our neighborhood, which is a neighborhood to us, has no name and is not claimed by any neighborhood nor even any city council district. It is orphaned, forsaken. The name strikes fear and dismay into the hearts of people who have never been here. It is considered impossible and good only for tearing down.

It is, nonetheless, well and centrally located, littered with historically interesting and stout buildings, and has a commercial pulse that is separate from the rest of the city, even though it runs through the city as a main artery runs through the body.

So we wanted to give it a name and call it our own. In the tradition of naming places on the frontier after places we have left, "New Hoboken" came to mind. Because Hoboken is a place that we are reminded of, that has our affection. Because it too was disrespected and disregarded and feared unreasonably by the very people who should have embraced it. And it is doing fine, has found its way in the world nonetheless. We will too.

But our neighborhood is not just a neighborhood in the local sense, it turns out. It turns out that it is not just the street and the buildings, but also ourselves who are unclaimed. We are, for whatever reason, not woven into city around us, as much as we might participate in civic life, but instead connected - artistically, intellectually and affectionately -to all our neighbors who are far flung to the ends of the earth. Shanghai and Rome, Michiana Shores, St. Louis, Paris, New York City, Newark and Hoboken. Some of them even in Kansas City.

New Hoboken, named only in order to give us a neighborhood, turns out to be a neighborhood without borders. It might be small, just a cove around us. Or it might be large and encompass anyone, anywhere. We don't really care.

New Hoboken. Happy all the time. Live free and die. Do what you need to do, be your part of the world, and you are our neighbor, and all that entails. Let us know if you need anything.

The Thing about Clothing... 1

2008-01-05T07:41:00.000-08:00

Clothing has to be made by humans. Fabric is just that way. Too fluid. Machines can make fabric, but cannot make fabric into clothing without the very active participation of a person. Every cut and stitch on your clothing was executed by a person, probably using a machine, but nonetheless.

That is worth considering when you are buying a garment. Think about the person who made it, who actually held the fabric in their hands and guided it through the machines necessary to make your garment. The fabrics used in manufactured clothing (as well as the fabric at your fabric store) is coated in various substances, sizings, to make it less fluid, easier for machines to wrap onto a bolt. It sort of makes the fabric more convenient for the person who is sewing up the garment, but it is also a toxic thing that is then part of the air they breathe. That's nice. Especially when the place where this person is working is full of other people also cutting and sewing and ventilation is likely to be poor.

I make clothing, although rarely do I spend the whole eight hours of a work day cutting and sewing. And all the fabrics I use are washed in a washing machine before I cut into them, so the sizing and any other finish chemicals are mostly gone. And my studio is large, there is usually only me sewing, and ventilation is superb, thanks to old windows that even when closed let in plenty of fresh air. If the weather allows it at all, the windows are open. It's pretty nice, really. You should come by sometime.

Still, if I spend a few days mostly sewing, I can feel it in my lungs. Which is why I don't scold you people more for not buying Ideal Garments exclusively. I don't want to make clothing for everybody. And I don't want to be responsible for other people being damaged by too much sewing, so manufacturing is out.

It is the nature of fabric, of every kind. The most organic cotton still throws dust into the air that is not ideal for breathing in.

Maybe I could wear a mask. That really doesn't fit into my idea of self, and so though I should I don't. And count on most of the people in the factories where clothing is made in massive quantities also not wearing masks, but more because they don't have them.

Maybe instead other people could occasionally make their own clothing. Make yourself a skirt and a pair of pants, a jacket and a few pair of scientific panties, and you are dressed for a season. And that is less than a day of sewing for you in your well ventilated home. An evening of sewing, with a bottle of wine and some good music playing. And the clothing will fit you perfectly. And because you will have washed the fabric before you sew with it, you will not have that phenomenon where clothing shifts and changes, and the seam is not where it originally was because the fabric after washing returns to its fluid self and finds it natural way. Nope. That does not happen if you make your own clothing with fabric which you washed first. And since the fabric is washed and already returned to itself, you can wash your clothing in the washer forevermore. No more dry cleaning, is the point.

I'm just saying. If you were to make a few things for yourself and maybe make some stuff for your mom and some of your friends while you are at it, and if those garments were not stupid and sentimental, but rather sensible, sensual and Ideal, you would not need to prowl the malls for clothing made in places you would not want to spend a day in, you would have clothing to wear that is flattering and comfortable, and manufacturers would be foiled in their plot to continuously sell you clothing you do not need and which will not serve you, but which you buy ever with hope that it will. And because it is cheap. Which it is because the conditions under which it is made are poor and wrong.

At the very least, to honor the people who are spending their lives and their health making you clothing to assuage your fantasies of who you wish you were, how about you stop telling people how cheaply you acquired the garment. You know the drill: A friend says "I like that top. Very cute." To which you invariably reply "Thanks, I got it for 80% off, just 7 dollars!"

It doesn't really matter what you paid. The person who made it got their pittance whether you paid full price or not. And the manufacturer and retailer are still making plenty of money. Think about the person who made it, and be appreciative, and don't denigrate their labor by bragging about how cleverly you have exploited it.

Plus, it perpetuates the idea that clothing should be super cheap. Which is the reason clothing has become so fantastically useless, flimsy and, well, cheap. Cheaper and cheaper, until people think that it is cheaper to buy clothing which has been made in some other place and then shipped here at great expense to the environment (learn for yourself of the vile nature of shipping fuel...) Cheaper for whom? And anyway, the clothing is so crappy that you have to keep buying more of it in search of the pair of pants that will actually work for you, be your friend or at least be a useful garment. Crappier and crappier, because you insist on paying less and less for it, and so naturally the manufacturers stay one step ahead of you, using cheaper and cheaper materials, and paying their workers less and less and spending less and less on maintaining a reasonable work environment.

Just shut up. And if you find yourself in a shop where the person who made the clothing is standing right there, please try not to be all shocked at the same prices you would not question at J. Crew or Macy's. Here is the thing. We make clothing that is exactly for the people standing before us, taking into account their full selves. At least that's what we do here. Which takes time and great consideration, and then sheer labor, which is hateful and I feel terrible for the people who have to do it all day, day after day. And because things are not made or ordered in massive quantities, there is rarely any reason to mark things down to almost nothing. It's not like we need to get rid of last season's stuff to make room for this season. Nope. People who are designing and making clothing for individuals don't tend to change their designs all the time to prey upon your emotional frailties, poking about for the exact combination of color, cut and unnecessary detail that will make you swoon and remind you of something you once were or wanted to be and maybe this garment will make it all come back and be real again.

Obviously not, but that is why fashions change, and so randomly. Designers and manufacturers aren't trying to solve clothing for you (except for a small number, but they too have to make their numbers each month, and so have to get people who do not need clothing to buy it anyway), not trying to make things that will serve you. They are trying to create successful businesses for themselves.

Here is a terrible business model: Make something that once purchased means that nothing further needs to be bought until the first one wears out. Which it won't anytime soon, because it is durable and also allows for the person wearing it to change size to some degree without the garment becoming problematic. No one is going to do that except maybe me, and that is because I have a husband with a job, and because this is not so much a business as an adventure in understanding clothing so that I can write about it and make my philosophical offering to the advancement of civilization on this count.

Terrible business model, you can plainly see, and that is why I am discovering that you should just make your own good clothing, so you are dressed and happy all the time, and then if you do see a pretty blouse in a store window one day and it strikes an ancient chord in your heart and you must have it, you will have pants and skirts to wear it with, and money to buy it.

Do not let people tell you differently. It is much cheaper to make your own clothing, if you do it in a sensible manner.

Yes, there is no other solution. People must return to the normal human behavior of making their own clothing, or having it made by someone nearby who likes to do that sort of thing, if they want to be dressed and able to move freely and happily through their day, knowing they look marvelous and that their garments will support all possibilities; just as they must return to the normal human activity of cooking their own food, or having it cooked by someone nearby who likes to do that sort of thing, if they want to cease to be fat and unhealthy. All choices must be made locally, intimately, and with intelligence and a grasp of reality.

Yup. That's what I think. But really, what are the chances?