Hills in the hometown, a Guy on dresses and … whatever …
We have hills in Asheville.
I was out running today. Most days I run. I’m no spring chicken anymore though. Weather’s getting warmer, I got out later in the day today, pushed the mileage. The motor’s still working. I’m not complaining. But …
We have Hills in Asheville …
I have enough years on the odometer that, as I commented here not long ago, I’m not particularly keen on any of the Presidential candidates remaining in this contest. But, Hills was here the other day, wooing and maybe wowing some folks in what has been a generally conservative CD (and first-term Democrat, Rep. Heath Shuler is a Republican in Dem drag, for what it’s worth) …
Sen. Hillary Clinton told a raucous and inspired Asheville crowd Thursday that as commander in chief she would end the war in Iraq while enacting universal health care and reviving a faltering economy.
This is not a comment about isolationism, global disengagement or any of that serious stuff, but, apropos of the setting (Thomas Wolfe Auditorium), America needs an Angel (whatever gender) to Look Homeward now.
Not leaving Hillary entirely behind as you’ll see, but off to the subject of fashion (There used to be, some years back, by the way, a group of local women from Asheville performing musically as “Crimes of Fashion.”) … where I’ll leave it to you, dear readers, to make your own political and fashion sense out of this …
Borrowing from the male wardrobe is hardly new …
the prevalence of mannish jackets represents a real shift from the girly dresses dominating runways in recent seasons - and may be a sartorial signal of something more. Judging from fashion history, masculine styles often signal a moment when women are looking for clothes that assert authority.
Designer Peter Som says he was thinking of Hillary Clinton …
The ‘boyfriend jacket’ comes on strong
… and …
Just look, Hil. All those pants.
It’s not exactly a state secret — the U.S. senator and presidential hopeful is pro-trouser. And why not? She looks good in them. (Better than those drab dresses …
Who’s wearing the pants here?
… and from a Guy’s perspective …
“The eye is looking for something new, and so is the psyche,” Anne Slowey, the fashion news director of Elle magazine, said last week from the set of “Fashionista,” a new fashion reality show in which she will play herself, a fashion editor, only meaner. “The dress has been done to death,” Ms. Slowey added, “not to sound really cliché.”
…
This prediction will come as a surprise, perhaps, to retail analysts like the folks at NPD Group, who not long ago termed 2007 the year of the dress, pointing to sales of more than $5 billion in the 12 months that ended last April, and a rate of growth in dress sales fully 30 percent higher than the year before.
“The first hint of chill in the air, and the full-legged, pleated high- and low-waisted legions will be out in the urban jungle,” said Ms. Slowey, already so adapted to her new television role that she speaks in thought bubbles. The expiration date for the dress, she claimed, “is end of August.”
This prediction will come as a surprise, perhaps, to retail analysts like the folks at NPD Group, who not long ago termed 2007 the year of the dress, pointing to sales of more than $5 billion in the 12 months that ended last April, and a rate of growth in dress sales fully 30 percent higher than the year before.
It may also come as unwelcome news to the female members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose wildly anachronistic Laura Ingalls Wilder frocks, Skechers and wave-pool hairdos have become as much an obsession in certain Manhattan circles as their polygamist habits and 416 children.
It is also, for what it’s worth, unwelcome news to me.
That is because, unlike Ms. Slowey, I am not eager for women to become “a little more hard-core, a little more androgynous, a little more butch.” Yes, gender play is fun, and trousers are a useful wardrobe default for the woman in business. But unless you are Thomas McGuane and find nothing sexier than a woman with crow’s feet, tight Wranglers and suede chaps, you will have to concede that, for flattering a woman’s body, nothing is quite like a dress.
Irwin Shaw covered all this is in his classic story “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses,” the tale that secured him a permanent place in anthologies if not exactly a perch on literary Olympus. And for all the creakiness of this warhorse about the fragile dynamics of love and desire, there remains in Shaw’s descriptions of the women on the streets of Manhattan, in their ripe young multitudes, something unexpectedly fresh and also recognizable.
Shaw wrote the story decades ago, in the era that directly preceded the feminist one that first killed off the dress, a time when women wore them all the time and not with irony …
Long Live the Dress (for Now)
… and then this comment on Guy’s piece …
Might as well throw some heterosexism in there too. And women wearing pants is “gender play”? I didn’t realize trousers were still a “man’s” piece of clothing.
…
The sad thing about this piece is that it won’t do anything but discourage women from wearing dresses this summer, despite some women’s love to wear them. (Ahem.) I guess they didn’t get the message that women wear their clothes for comfort and fashion, not someone else’s fancy.
NYT makes me never want to wear a dress again
(Before Vanessa’s time this. And though we probably should Goethe off this subject, there’s more … 
)
… and …
In today’s “Styles” section, Guy Trebay devotes a whole article to proving why Elle’s fashion-news director, Anne Slowey, could be wrong about the dress going out of style come September. Wishful thinking, he says, gathering quotes from trend forecasters, the fashion director of Barneys, and random dress-clad women on the street to make his case for the dress. And we must say he did so as compellingly as one can when covering such a topic, though it was kind of unfair he didn’t quote anyone who agreed with Slowey. Anyway, it felt like the perfect opportunity for the Cut’s first-ever point-counterpoint debate!
…
Is Anne Slowey Right About the Fate of Dresses?
And, not to neglect the guys, there’s this …
A few weeks ago, we told you about “Booty Pop Panties,” the padded underwear that makes your ass look bigger. Well, Kelly Ripa went nuts over them on Live With Regis and Kelly the other day so, not to be out-assed, Regis found a version of the undergarment for men called “Bottoms Up” and bandied them about on air today. Unlike the Booty Pop Panties, these appear to come with a padded back and a padded front. Here’s a product description:
• A defining centre back seam separates our butt pads creating an anatomically correct bottom for a more natural look.
• Our contoured front pouch, allows for comfort, style and support from the double layer of fabric…
• For first time optimum effect we suggest you put your jeans or pants on BEFORE you look in the mirror.
• The weight and fit of your pants compresses the pads — the most natural look is achieved with you pants on.
You can even purchase extra pads in “Quarterback,” “Halfback,” and “Fullback” sizes. Is this supposed to appeal to women? Because we think a nice cologne is a better route than sub-pant bulges.
Men Can Pad Their Nether Regions, Too
Moving on … from the Washington Blade today …
Equality Maryland is intensifying its efforts to protect a transgender rights law that may be in jeopardy.
Dan Furmansky, the organization’s executive director, said a review of signatures collected to overturn the Montgomery County law has been hastened so it can be completed by month’s end.
…
Legal battle over trans law intensifies in Montgomery Co.
… and, finally, from the Southern Voice …
On Friday, students at 6,000 schools around the country, including 130 here in Georgia, took part in the National Day of Silence — keeping quiet for all or part of the school day to protest the silence forced on gay people every day. One of those schools was my alma mater, Columbus High School.
Not too long ago, whenever someone asked me where my hometown of Columbus, Ga., is located, I would answer that it is “about 100 miles and 100 years south of Atlanta.”
It’s exciting to know that through the efforts of brave young people like those who joined in the Day of Silence, even towns like Columbus are changing for the better. And it’s amazing to think that some of the Columbus High students participating in the protest today were not even born in 1991, the year I graduated.
…
Would you have joined the Day of Silence?
NEAR THE WARM-UP POOL AT THE Missouri Grand Prix swim meet, in Columbia, a crop of Olympic hopefuls lolled around in practice suits and towels on a Saturday morning in February. Fully clothed among them stood some relics of Olympics past: Scott Goldblatt, who won a gold medal in the 2004 Games, wore an aqua sport coat and a striped tie and was doing on-air commentary for Swimnetwork.com; Mel Stewart, who won two golds and a bronze in 1992, wore the same goofy get-up, working as Goldblatt’s sidekick. Meanwhile, Dara Torres, who won the first of her nine Olympic medals in 1984, a year before Michael Phelps was born, stripped off her baggy T-shirt and sweat pants, revealing a breathtaking body in a magenta Speedo. She pulled on a cap marked with her initials and prepared to swim. Torres is now 41 and the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, Tessa Grace. She broke her first of three world records in 1982, at 14, and she has retired from swimming and come back three times, her latest effort built on an obsessive attention to her aging body.
Because the archetypal women in Daphne Guinness’s short film, ‘‘The Phenomenology of Body,’’ revolve on turntables, it is somehow easier to think of her as a D.J. than as a director. Because the chic images she assembled appear in some sense random, it seems appropriate to think of her as more a sampler than any kind of auteur. And because the story depicting women through the ages is, as its creator points out, not exactly linear and only accidentally feminist, it is easy to see in it hints of autobiography, the personal history of a slightly anachronistic sort of being, less actor than spectator, a woman upon whom the events of life impress themselves.