This awards season’s hottest accessory: perspective

348 and Maine street: Dressing to look homeless is distasteful, not humorous

There was a time in my life when I spent most of my energy trying to dress like an eccentric, using clothes to exclaim my difference and announce to the world that I was special. “Pay attention to me,” my style said. “You will pay attention to me.” My wardrobe reeked of desperation, or maybe I was just strange. Maybe I still am. Some would say that I still dress wildly and weirdly. Some days, at my most insecure, I deck myself out in my loudest clothing, hiding behind the neon sign of an insanely printed shirt or a scarf made of vintage saris. We all have those days. Most of us hide at home in sweatpants; I go out and beg to be seen.
On the whole my style has tamed. My clothes are simpler, and I care less what people think. However, it’s in a much different way than I claimed before. Sometimes I worry that I’ve become too conventional, that I’ve lost my nerve and verve in dressing. But I don’t think that’s it.
For better or worse, the way we dress speaks volumes. Unfortunately, much of what it says has to do with outdated ideas about class and gender and lots of other things, and it doesn’t help that the fashion industry is really, really shitty most of the time. Sometimes it is vapid, but sometimes it is dangerous in telling us what we are supposed to look like and who we are supposed to be.
I still think that style matters—matters very much. Every day we get to wake up and ask ourselves who we want to be, who we want to present to the world. I still care. I think we all are presenting some version of ourselves to the world with our clothes, and it’s empowering to be in control of that.
In light of all this, I am distrustful of any style that pretends not to say anything or not be in control of itself. I have noticed a pretty disturbing trend at this school—and elsewhere—which I will call homeless-chic. A certain set of well-off young people dress in unwashed, mismatched, old clothes. It is a look that tries to say “I don’t care at all.” But we all know that these people spend hours at vintage stores, and hours putting these ensembles together.
It’s not only false, it’s not only ugly, it’s also kind of offensive. It strikes me as a contemporary collegiate take on slumming. Having control over your style and the way the world perceives you is admittedly a luxury. So when you have that choice, and choose to fetishize those who don’t, it is a really questionable decision.
I don't know what this look is trying to say besides, “Isn't this ironic? I'm rich, but I look poor! Isn't that funny?” No. It really is not, so cut it out. Dressing ironically will never go out of style in certain circles, but there are some things we just do not do, even ironically. One could not get away with blackface ironically. I’m not sure if this issue is that different: one does not do “homeless” ironically.
Think about the message your clothes are putting into the world. In some ways your dress will always say: “This is who I am, this is who I want to be.” I can say with certainty you do not want to be homeless. Look at your life, look at your choices.

348 and Maine street: You’re still you when people are watching

Someone once said—the Internet is indecisive on who said it first—that true character is who you are when no one is watching. It’s one of those clichéd sayings that people turn into posters with hip fonts and photographs of mountains. It has not yet, to my knowledge, appeared on a Hallmark card, but only because I’m not sure it’s appropriate for any occasion I can think of, even though it does belong to that general family of phrases.
It’s also a phrase that I’ve always bristled at, though I’ve never been quite sure why. I first heard it from a gregarious great aunt, whom I love very much and who amuses me very much. Over the course of a family weekend, she kept repeating a story—not without a hint of righteousness—that she had found herself in the wee hours of one morning, alone in the house, polishing her silver and china, for no reason whatsoever. Of course, in each retelling, her punch line was that you really find out who you are when no one is looking.
I remember thinking, uncomprehending of the viciousness I felt, that doesn’t make you a good person. And I feel no less bothered, still, every time I hear such sentiments. Ultimately, I feel it’s judgmental and invasive. It invites, into those moments when we are alone, into our most private moments, a policing eye that sits in the corner and wonders aloud if you’re really a good person after all. I don’t think we need that in our lives—the world, unfortunately, is judgmental enough; why should we invite that to be with us when we are alone?
Behind my preaching here is, of course, the fact that my impulse never has been and probably will never be to polish the china for no reason when I am all alone. When no one is watching, I’m not sure I always like myself. I sit there, guilty of sloth, guilty of gluttony—guilty probably of all the sins. I say to myself, over and over: this is your character, this is who you really are, and it doesn’t matter what you present to the world, because here and now is the truth—you’re no good, you’re no good at all.
But it does matter very much what we present to the world, who we are with other people, who we are when everyone is watching and there’s nowhere to hide. I think, actually, that matters more. Or it’s worth more, to me anyway.
We have our darkest, ugliest hours alone, when no one is watching—and those hours are no truer, no more indicative of who we really are, than when we get up and get dressed and go into the world. There’s no such thing, for me, as who we really are. There’s no essential and secret identity lurking beneath the surface, sneaking out in the dark. We have the power—we must—to be who we say we are, to be who we want to be, to be who we present to the world. What this has to do with personal style and self-fashioning is everything—although I’m not sure I can adequately express why. But it’s something like this: self-presentation is as important, if not more important, than who we are “inside.” Personal style can be freeing from the idea that we are who we are when no one is watching and there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re not stuck with the self we find when we are alone, that’s not the truth—there is no truth. We’re all pretending, we have the pleasure and the freedom to make it up. And while I am not sure style alone can really silence voices of judgment and eliminate the moralizing forces that police us, from within and without, it can laugh at them and give them the finger. Somehow, this sums it up: Isabella Blow wore a silver lamé dress to her suicide. I’ll leave it at that.

348 and Maine street

This awards season’s hottest accessory: perspective

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Evan Horwitz

Columnist

February 13, 2015

It’s awards season! That means, of course, that the swanky people are getting glammed up (to mixed results) and gliding and sashaying up red carpets all across Los Angeles.

It also means that most of my day is consumed by practicing acceptance speeches in the mirror, which, by the way, is an inexhaustible exercise because there are so many kinds of speeches. Sometimes I’m totally surprised; sometimes I faint; sometimes I know I deserve it and say so (Kanye); sometimes I’m a perennial winner with an outrageously charming combination of aw-shucks and glamour (Meryl Streep).

But what does awards season, this season when it becomes commonplace to hear some famous face say nonchalantly that all she’s done today is gotten dressed and how she’s been doing her hair since three Tuesdays ago, mean to us? We aren’t gliding up red carpets, but stomping through the snow.

All day, when I’m not thanking the Academy, I hear Michael Caine from “Miss Congeniality” in my head saying, “Oh my God, I haven’t seen a walk like that since ‘Jurassic Park.’”

We don’t have all day to get ready for the world to see us, but have to get up and get out and get coffee and get to class. As for hair even if we had time to for Frédéric Fekkai to spend two weeks whipping our tangled tresses into some daring dos, it would be to no avail: hat hair is inevitable.

It would be easy for us to say, “Awards season has nothing to do with us. We’re not interested in dressing up; we’re just trying to survive the next blizzard.” And, to a degree, that’s right. We’re just trying to live our lives and learn things and have fun; we can’t spend much time thinking about keeping up appearances without getting seriously lost and confused.

Yet I think it is way too easy, for me anyway, to look at celebrities on various carpets and think that they look effortlessly fabulous and believe we are failing in some way if we are not ready for the red carpet or the runway or some camera that takes panoramas of our asses and toenails (or whatever goes on at E!).

I’ll readily admit that this might just be me and my delusions that I could be whisked away at any moment by Oprah in her helicopter and given some honorary award with a hefty cash prize and a movie deal and a book contract and a handsome husband.

But I think that there is a really difficult line that we straddle here between getting on with our lives and feeling like we are on display in some way. It is not unreasonable to think that on any given day, someone could take your picture and put it on the Internet.

Of course, having your photograph show up on your friend’s Instagram with 56 followers is not the same as having it show up on every pop culture website with millions of views and comments speculating what happened to your face. But it’s not entirely different, either.

It’s not fair for us, here, to put pressure on each other to always look good and beautiful and camera-ready. We don’t have glam-squads. We live here; we work here; we study here; we play here; we sleep here. Walking into the dining hall or walking into the Union should not feel like walking the red carpet. It does sometimes, and I know that’s not only me.

And yet I’ve been guilty as anyone, guiltiest probably, of saying that it’s important to put on beautiful clothes and look good. For me, that’s not necessarily a contradiction: you cannot help but feel better if you feel comfortable and confident and expressive in what you wear.

I’m sorry, but nobody is their best in sweatpants. That doesn’t mean that their best is in a suit or a dress. And that doesn’t mean that some days you wear sweatpants and some days a suit. Neither make you a better person, neither should induce shame or guilt, and I’d rather see someone dressed down who is comfortable with herself than someone dressed up who looks ill-at-ease in an itchy costume.

It’s never about what you wear; it’s how you wear it. Dress for yourself and wear what makes you feel most yourself.

For those of you who are really confused and need some serious style rules, try this: Take your worst clothes, the clothes you wouldn’t want to be caught dead in and simply give them to Goodwill or a similar charity of your choice. Or throw them away if you have no soul.

That way, the next time you feel exhausted and unable to make any effort to get dressed, you will be forced to put on something better, and will probably feel better. Or, as someone wise once said, go through your wardrobe and gather all your party clothes and get rid of everything else.

That way, life is always a party.

You still can refuse to have your picture taken, though. This is Maine and there are no glam squads and it’s cold. But also, if you’re smart, you should, like me, wear a tux or a gown under your clothes at all times in case Oprah comes to fetch you on short notice.

That’s all for now, I need to go practice my speeches.

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