On Fashion

If you’re a girl in New York and you don’t have bangs, you’re kind of in trouble.

From the Vice Global Trend report. The key themes seem to be skinny pants, black leggings, tweed. Beyond that it all just seems kind of weird and ugly.

Meanwhile, on the runways..

Valentino’s set looked like something out of the Playboy Club from the 1970s, with a broad marquetry runway leading up to a suggestive floor-to-ceiling “V,” and bits of Bette Davis dialogue from “All About Eve” piped into the jazzy music as a topless woman writhed on the floor. (Truth be told, the woman was a fur protester, and she was being held down by security at the time, but it all had a very sexy retro vibe.)

And finally, a bit of wisdom from the Times Magazine and Style editor to try to justify all of this:

To explain why I do love T, and why I was eager to launch it here –- maybe sometime in the future Stefano Tonchi, the editor of T, will answer readers' questions and give you his take -- I am going to float back up into the high ether again, and bring in one of my heroes (I don’t have many), the Czech playwright, dissident and eventual president Vaclav Havel. Among his voluminous writings is an essay I remember in which he defends the preservation of a number of villas in Prague, villas denounced by the Communists as the old palaces of the grand bourgeoisie. (Raze them for workers’ housing!) Havel writes warmly of the villas, and counsels his fellow citizens -– whom Communism delivered into block after block of drab, Soviet-style housing – to try to understand that much of the best of the West’s cultural legacy was produced by the wealthy and, at least originally, for the wealthy, and that should in no way undermine the truth that these objects or things are interesting and beautiful – interesting and beautiful, potentially, for everyone, even those who don’t own them.

I think T is interesting and beautiful, potentially, for everyone – even those who will never own a suitcase that cost a thousand bucks. I think fashion, like wine (which I do shop for, alas, from magazines, or, anyway, newsletters), is something you can learn more about and thus appreciate more, even if you feel a little silly saying so.

So there! *pets bangs lovingly*