Fashion & Clothing: Follies, Fads & Social Norms

[Spudrick68]

Like when British people have things like "dickwad" tattoe'd on their arm in Chinese letters.

 

[Zeke Newbold]

Like when British people have things like "dickwad" tattoe'd on their arm in Chinese letters.

I've told this anecdote elsewhere but...anyway. In Moscow I have seen a prky guy in late middle -age sporting a `Blondes Have More Fun` T-shirt logo. I don't think it was irony - more an example of the above two posts.

Mind you, it goes both ways. I had (have) a belt bought in Russia which says on its buckle (in Russian) `Be my Valentine`. I thought this was a harmless, even innocent, sort of message and was out wearing it for quite some time - but wondered why, for example, two young ladies were surreptitiously taking pictures of me on the Metro.

I later discovered that this phrase, to a Russian, has implications more along the lines of `Be my pimp`! So no doubt there is a pic of me doing the rounds on social media somewhere!

 

[kamalktk]

Please let this not be a fashion trend: "Vagina Wigs". (Obviously any link with "vagina wigs" in it is not going to be safe for work).

https://nypost.com/2018/02/16/these-nyfw-vagina-wigs-speak-for-themselves

 

[Spookdaddy]

Please let this not be a fashion trend: "Vagina Wigs". (Obviously any link with "vagina wigs" in it is not going to be safe for work)...

They're just merkin fools of themselves.

 

[Spookdaddy]

You won't be allowed to wear them in pubic.

Only in privates.


Someone please stop me...

 

[Mythopoeika]

It's an awful fashion faux pas. Like codpieces.

 

[AgProv]

This is interesting. What makes a fashion? how do they begin? What are the deciding factors? this has got to be a foirtean thing in itself - what shapes this and decides, for instance, that trousers and leggings with great big rips in them are not only fashionable, people will happily go out and pay a premium to buy them pre-ripped? I think I'm getting old: but I do remember when, if your jeans tore like that over the knee or over the thigh, you had three options: stitch them, patch them or chuck them out. Go out wearing them like that and it was a badge of poverty, or skanky scruffiness, or whatever. finding it difficult - not off-putting or judgemental, just difficult - to see how this could have mutated into high fashion in a little over thirty years. Still, what do I know, i'm over fifty...

 

[Andy X]

Like when British people have things like "dickwad" tattoe'd on their arm in Chinese letters.

I have an old t-shirt from Matalan or Primark or somewhere - as modelled by Sidekick Simon of MMM fame:

I've occasionally wondered if the kanji-style characters are meaningless or actually say "wanker" or "please help me" or something.

Is anyone else astonished to see the return of the ripped jean?

 

[Spudrick68]

Merkins. I've often joked that if it were deemed fashionable to walk around with your willy hanging out of your jeans, some would be idiotic enough to do so. Now I'm not so sure it is a joke.

 

[Timble2]

On the grounds of equality of ridiculousness if Merkins are coming back, so should Codpieces. (Apparently back in the day it wasn't just boasting, some chaps kept their loose cash in them, they'd be handy for storing your smartphone these days.)

 

[Spudrick68]

 

[James_H]

Just f*ck it: Wildly offensive English language t-shirts are apparently all the rage in Asia

Part 1: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/...nglish_language_t_shirts_are_apparently_all_t

Part 2: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/...fensive_t-shirts_from_the_streets_of_shanghai

Where can I get some of these?

I see a fair few of these about in Hong Kong, memorable ones being 'Fuck my liver', 'Tired all day working at the brothel' and 'If I was a bird, I know who I'd shit on'

 

[Min Bannister]

I was amused last week about the consternation caused by fashion criminal Justin Trudeau's wardrobe choices when he was visiting India. He wasn't so much choosing traditional Indian gear as dressing like a bridegroom in a Bollywood film. I particularly enjoyed this comment.

"too flashy even for an Indian"

.

 

[XBergMann]

This is interesting. What makes a fashion? how do they begin? What are the deciding factors? this has got to be a foirtean thing in itself - what shapes this and decides, for instance, that trousers and leggings with great big rips in them are not only fashionable, people will happily go out and pay a premium to buy them pre-ripped? I think I'm getting old: but I do remember when, if your jeans tore like that over the knee or over the thigh, you had three options: stitch them, patch them or chuck them out. Go out wearing them like that and it was a badge of poverty, or skanky scruffiness, or whatever. finding it difficult - not off-putting or judgemental, just difficult - to see how this could have mutated into high fashion in a little over thirty years. Still, what do I know, i'm over fifty...

You forgot the 4th option,which I personally favour ... cut of the legs and make them into a pair of shorts.

I am over 50 too

 

[Swifty]

I was amused last week about the consternation caused by fashion criminal Justin Trudeau's wardrobe choices when he was visiting India. He wasn't so much choosing traditional Indian gear as dressing like a bridegroom in a Bollywood film. I particularly enjoyed this comment..

He looks more like Dick Whittington in those pics to me .. I'm sure he meant well though, sort of like Clark Griswold putting his whole family in berets in National Lampoon's European Vacation ..

.. and Germany ..

Justin Griswold and family ..

 

[Min Bannister]

He looks more like Dick Whittington in those pics to me .. I'm sure he meant well though, sort of like Clark Griswold putting his whole family in berets in National Lampoon's European Vacation ..

Yes indeed. In these days of asking the internet and "awareness" about everything, the good old diplomatic faux pas is becoming rarer. Especially now that the Duke of Edinburgh has retired. I applaud Mr Trudeau for stepping up to the plate!

 

[EnolaGaia]

You forgot the 4th option,which I personally favour ... cut of the legs and make them into a pair of shorts. ...

Yep ... Back in the Sixties / Seventies, everyone had that one pair of beloved well-worn jeans that were destined to become cut-offs at any given time. I did the same thing with corduroy pants, because corduroy cut-offs were even more comfortable than the denim versions.

This was so common that the apparel purveyors began offering denim shorts designed to look like cut-offs - even to the extent of fraying the lower hems / leg ends.*

Back then it became popular to patch older jeans with arbitrary fabric patches to yield a sort of Raggedy Ann / country bumpkin motif. Naturally, the clothing companies picked up on this and started offering new off-the-rack denim apparel with contrasting patches or sections.

* Are the lower portions of a pair of shorts properly called 'legs' if they only cover an arbitrary expanse of thigh?

 

[GNC]

* Are the lower portions of a pair of shorts properly called 'legs' if they only cover an arbitrary expanse of thigh?

As they point out in that creepy movie The Comfort of Strangers, there's only one word for "thighs", but calling your longer shorts a pair of thighs sounds weirdly disturbing. So legs it is.

 

[GingerTabby]

Yes indeed. In these days of asking the internet and "awareness" about everything, the good old diplomatic faux pas is becoming rarer. Especially now that the Duke of Edinburgh has retired. I applaud Mr Trudeau for stepping up to the plate!

This Canadian is deeply embarrassed at Justin's questionable sartorial choices on this tour. I worked at our foreign ministry for over a decade and I find it difficult to believe that anyone at either headquarters or at the high commission in New Delhi would have recommended that the PM play dress-up while on an official visit. In fact, I expect he would have been strongly discouraged from doing so had they known of his plans. My guess is he and his political minions thought it would be well received both by his hosts and by the Indian diaspora community at home. Much of Canadian foreign policy seems to be driven by a concern for mining votes in the various diaspora communities, but that's another matter.

I gather from media reports that the Indians were bemused rather than offended by Justin's attire. Perhaps they were just indulging another Commonwealth member, but I appreciate their good humour.

 

[Min Bannister]

I gather from media reports that the Indians were bemused rather than offended by Justin's attire. Perhaps they were just indulging another Commonwealth member, but I appreciate their good humour.

Yes, no need to be too embarrassed, no offence was caused, just some amusement!

 

[James_H]

I gather from media reports that the Indians were bemused rather than offended by Justin's attire. Perhaps they were just indulging another Commonwealth member, but I appreciate their good humour.

Massive generalisations coming, but I think often the people most offended by 'cultural appropriation' of this kind tend to be immigrants in western countries, as they are displaced from the culture in question. e.g. When the Kimono thing hit in Boston, a lot of Asian-Americans (not just Japanese Americans) were upset and protested about it, whereas many Japanese people in Japan didn't see what the big deal was. I have experienced a certain internal cultural cringe at times being asked to wear traditional Chinese clothing for events, but few people here are that bothered by it because it's the cultural mainstream.

 

[AgProv]

Troudeau: A French-Canadian going to France and discovering - this is pretty much universal - that time and distance inevitably separates people from the "colony" from people in the "motherland" - separated by a different set of cultural perceptions and an inevitable divergence in the language spoken? Also, there's a sort of gauche awkwardness between the "younger" society overseas and, possibly, the perceptions it has of the "motherland" - the stereotype of Americans in Britain might be a parellel, the perception that Americans view Britain as a sort of quaint "theme park" to which they ought to show some sort of respect, only they're not sure how or why... meanwhile the other half of the stereotype is that people in the "motherland" look upon the visitors with a sort of patronising superiority "you don't have our depth of history, poor dears, but you're trying hard and you speak a sort of English".

I'm reminded of a Dutch friend, witty, cultured, laid-back, who had a sense of despairing horror at meeting Afrikaaners from South Africa for the first time - she couldn't get over the way they spoke Dutch, for instance, which was intelligible but to her ears sounded like a mangled and slightly caveman version of a common language. What she saw were largely good-natured outgoing people, but who still came across as a sort of Neanderthal encountering Cro-Magnon Woman.

I'm reliably told you get the same sort of semi-understanding fault line between Spanish people and Latin-Americans; Spaniards are not best chuffed, for instance, when people from the USA assume everybody whose first language is Spanish speaks English with a Mexican accent. I get it that Spanish people think about Mexicans much as my Dutch friend thought of Afrikaaners - that although they can be nice people, they really, really, mangle the language atrociously and tend to lack table manners.

Seemingly, the same sort of tensions between people from Portugal and people from Brazil: the Brazilians appear to think, not unreasonably, that as they're larger, more numerous and more internationally significant, their Portuguese should become the standard form of the language and the parent version in Europe is only a dialect... (implications for the two main forms of English there, but British English does appear to be losing that battle).

I'm wondering if Troudeau ran into a metropolitan French sense of natural superiority - how does the Academie Francaise, for instance, view Canadian French? I bet it's sniffy about quebecois... the beret thing does suggest either a sophisticated joke playing on the idea of visitors from Canada being gauche and trying hard to fit in without managing to do so. Or else a sort of two-fingered gesture of "you think of us as a bunch of inbred backwoods lumberjacks living in log cabins. Let's pay up to that."

Having said that, though, the first Canadian troops ashore in France on D-Day were French-Canadians - this was thought to be both symbolic and diplomatically useful. There was a French guy in one of the first Normandy villages to be liberated by Canadians who saw the troops coming, and resigned himself to dealing with another bunch of occupiers unable to speak French who expected the locals to speak English this time. Instead he got people who spoke French like natives, albeit with an odd accent, and his first meeting was with a tank commander who politely requested him to move his horse and cart off the road, if he'd be so kind, and was this the road to Caen? Then the locals realised all the Canadian soldiers spoke French... if Troudeau's sensible, and he is, I think, he'll use things like this to ease his passage in France.

 

[ramonmercado]

Having said that, though, the first Canadian troops ashore in France on D-Day were French-Canadians - this was thought to be both symbolic and diplomatically useful. There was a French guy in one of the first Normandy villages to be liberated by Canadians who saw the troops coming, and resigned himself to dealing with another bunch of occupiers unable to speak French who expected the locals to speak English this time. Instead he got people who spoke French like natives, albeit with an odd accent, and his first meeting was with a tank commander who politely requested him to move his horse and cart off the road, if he'd be so kind, and was this the road to Caen? Then the locals realised all the Canadian soldiers spoke French... if Troudeau's sensible, and he is, I think, he'll use things like this to ease his passage in France.

Great story!

 

[James_H]

how does the Academie Francaise, for instance, view Canadian French?

I think French French find Canadian accents a bit funny, like an exaggerated version of Northern French accents. They also find the swearing quaint. However, the Canadian dub of 'The Simpsons' is preferred to the French one.

 

[AgProv]

Ah, les sacrées...

 

[GNC]

Massive generalisations coming, but I think often the people most offended by 'cultural appropriation' of this kind tend to be immigrants in western countries, as they are displaced from the culture in question. e.g. When the Kimono thing hit in Boston, a lot of Asian-Americans (not just Japanese Americans) were upset and protested about it, whereas many Japanese people in Japan didn't see what the big deal was. I have experienced a certain internal cultural cringe at times being asked to wear traditional Chinese clothing for events, but few people here are that bothered by it because it's the cultural mainstream.

This reminds me of when the British comedy game show Banzai was recreated in the USA, Asian-Americans (i.e. of Japanese origin) were horrified to hear Burt Kwouk and Eiji Kusuhara narrating in their strong Asian accents, and thought the whole programme was a send-up of their culture, unaware of both actors' long experience in comedy. There were other East Asians involved on camera too in a comedy capacity. Over here in the UK, it was a cult hit for those who appreciated its absurd humour, no controversy at all, but transplanted overseas to another English speaking market, it was scandalous.

Even weirder, Scottish cultural cringe is mostly embarrassment at things that really are Scottish, like The Alexander Brothers or Fran and Anna. Groundskeeper Willie barely registers.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I liked Banzai!

 

[GNC]

I liked Banzai!

Yeah, I thought it was really funny, never occurred to be it might be offensive. Not even Normski's exposure. OK, maybe Wee Jimmy Krankie's bra was a step too far.

 

[hunck]

Ripped jeans were last years thing. These are the latest - look out for them in your town soon - & only $168:

Front

Rear

 

[Timble2]

Ripped jeans were last years thing. These are the latest - look out for them in your town soon - & only $168:

Front

Rear

Why bother wearing them at all? You're going to catch on something and rip them right off in no time...