The Grumpy Owl

I thought about blogging about the Buy Design campaign and the photoshoot but I can’t remember much about the shoot and I don’t really understand the charity. It supplies poor people with new clothes? Some sort of sweaters for hobos initiative?

Frankly, I’m not sure I approve of that.

If paupers have new clothes, how am I supposed to tell who’s poorer than me? If they start giving Johnny Foodstamp nice new shoes, then everyone is just going to quit their jobs, run off and become poor.

Charity is an incentive for failure.

Anyway, this is a picture heavy post (all pictures are by Anna Lisa Sang) so I’m going to put it behind the jump.

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Tags: buy design, fashion, pink suit

pic nicked from here

When a ship is at sea for a long time, a bizarre species of crustacean, known as barnacles, affix themselves to the hull.  Although one barnacle does no damage, too many impair the ship’s speed and manoeuvrability.  When that happens, the ship must return to port to be cleaned, stripped and fixed.

As creatures set afloat in a sea of commerce, we too gather many little barnacles.  Passively acquired, protected by a rock hard shell of psychological attachment and glued to our lives by a mixture of laziness, passivity and fear, these creatures slow us down, stop us from moving and must be removed.

At times, we humans too must return to port.

pic nicked from here

Because of my mode of dress, my closet is perhaps more susceptible to barnacles than most.  Each suit, after all, requires a certain amount of supporting clothing.  Shirts, ties, various accessories and accoutrements.  When purchasing these, it’s quite common to find something else to buy.   And most of that is never actually used though it remains because one day, maybe, I’ll need it.

One day, maybe.

Well, one day maybe never comes.

I have tried, every spring, to strip off the barnacles but to leave the hull intact. And this has met with varying degrees of success.  Yet, not matter how through I am, every winter I find myself overwhelmed by clothes I never wear.  They clog up my closet, lay strewn over my floor, impair my speed and manoeuvrability while causing needless complication when getting dressed.  It’s a minor but constant psychic strain.

An utterly unnecessary one.

Other than my bespoke suits, I always wear the same few suits to work.  To introduce variance to these work clothes, I have tried adding.  More shirts, a variety of sweaters, different ties, even more shirts.  It has not worked.  The drag on my life is increased.  I cannot acquire my way out of this mess.  After all, I acquired my way into it.

Drastic measures are called for.

And drastic measures have been taken.

Today and yesterday I gathered every single item of clothing I own, other than underwear, socks, ties and bespoke, and bagged it.  It’s all in the garbage.

I have replaced all of that with three pairs of navy blue work pants and three pairs of navy blue work shirts from BIG B WORKWEAR.  I work three shifts a week.

These are now my work clothes.

When I’m not working, I own enough bespoke to be exclusively clad in that.

The entire middle of my closet has been removed.  No matter my sentimental attachment to any item, it has gone.  No matter how much money I once spent on it, it is now garbage.  No matter how much I once liked it, I murdered the fucker.

Purges are a ruthless business.

Sentimentality is deadly.

And I have been here before.  Every so often I find my progress impeded by old ideas, old items and old things.  I return to port and tear the ship up.  Rebuild it and start again.  There has been many Ryans over the years.  Punk, drunk and the one that you have gotten to know here.  The fellow who exclusively wears suits.

But that was never meant as the complete final version.

If you thought that, you haven’t really been listening to a word.

I’ve always been a quality over quantity sort of person.  But constricted as I am by limited finances and desirous of fine suits, I have had to acquire a great deal of not so fine suits.  Over time, as planned, my one-time front line of suits has become my bottom end work clothes.  I simply did not have the money to have both suits and work clothes.   I needed to do a sort of double duty.  Buy a suit, replace it with a better one and turn that old one over to the job.    Any money spent exclusively on work attire took away from this replacing of the top end.  It slowed me.

pic nicked from here

Over time, that bottom end decayed through wear and tear.  As they say in the maritime business, it became biofouled.  Quite literally, in some cases, frayed around the collar.  They needed to be replaced; not as suits but as work clothes.

I could have bought other suits but that would have required a great deal of effort and money spent in an impractical pursuit.  A lot of time searching through second-hand shops. And just to have work clothes.  It is much better to simply buy work clothes that match my aesthetic of efficiency tempered with biology.

Once upon a time, when interviewed about my sense of style I said: “Function is beautiful and beauty is functional.” These are words I stand by.

I never wanted to be that fellow who wears suits.  Never wanted to be your dandy or your fop.  What I wanted was some beautiful suits and to find a sort of timelessness within them. That I had to constantly wear suits, was not a matter of taste but one of finances.  It was a part of a progress to a life more beholden to quality than to quantity.  Having a lot of suits is no article of pride.

I bought bespoke suits because they would lead to a greater efficiency in my closet.  This was my ten year plan and they have served this purpose admirably.  I can now honestly say that my collection of suits are about the best that my money can buy.  My wardrobe can still be increased [it will be: much more slowly] but it can only be improved on with a series of details invisible to even to myself.

To do that, I would have to be a millionaire.  I’m not a millionaire.  I’m not any sort of aire.

Lacking the money for a direct approach to the problem of making my bespoke suits better, I have used a trick that I learned in writing.

It sometimes appears that there’s a problem with a chapter when there is no problem with that chapter.  The problem is in a different place.  In another chapter.  And that’s what needs to be changed.

I can make my bespoke look better by not constantly wearing suits.  Rather than being an improvement on something that, to the uneducated eye, probably all looks the same anyway, it will be a stark contrast with BIG B WORKWEAR.

But not too stark of a contrast.  At opposite ends of the spectrum, we often find more similarities than differences.  To me, this workwear is simply another example of a suit.  Though lacking the bio-sartorial functions of a suit and tie, it is recommended by being stripped down to even greater simplicity.

To make a very old and oft wrong prediction, jumpsuits are the way of the future.

The whole history of menswear teaches that today’s ultra-simple work or sports wear is tomorrow’s formal clothing.  This was the insight of the lionized though misunderstood Beau Brummel.  Though extravagant by today’s standards, his clothing was, by the standards of the Regency, shockingly simple.  He understood better than most that the past is little more than a collection of barnacles.

So perhaps the B in BIG B WORKWEAR stands for BEAU.  Perhaps it stands for BROTHER.  But one thing it does not stand for is BARNACLE.  It’s the future.

Get used to it.

GalaxyDress: The biggest LED dress in the world debuts | DVICE.

When this becomes suit technology, the way will be paved for the second coming of Liberace.  It was foretold by the elders.

While sneakers have been naming their shoes after celebrities for quite some time, it now seems that dress shoes have caught onto this branding trick.  But, instead of being endorsed by a living athlete, their shoes are often named after some corpse who probably wouldn’t have been caught dead in them.  Driven by my typical mixture of curiosity and malice, I’ve decided to compare and contrast a couple of the shoes with the person they’re named after.  The Orwell and the Capone, two men who have as much in common with each other as these shoes do with them.

The Orwell

Made by Mr. Hare, this is quite a nice shoe.  But I have a hard time reconciling its sleek stingray design with the often frumpy and professorial appearance of George Orwell.  For all his virtues, Orwell was an unfortunately practical and careless dresser. His own shoes were boots and they were much too large for him.

Not to say that he completely  ignored footwear.  His most famous quote (“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”) is all about boots.   He also said:  “And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots . . .“   So while he did discuss footwear, it was always boots and usually associated with something like face-stamping or dying.

The Orwell doesn’t like a very good shoe for face stamping though it might be a decent shoe to die in.   The most important thing, however, is this:  The Orwell shoe is not a boot. It has nothing to do with Orwell.  And I doubt the man would want it named after him.

Executors / Capone

Unlike George Orwell,  Al Capone would have absolutely no problem with our era of branding nor would he mind having a pair of fancy shoes named after him.  But you’d have to ask him permission and you’d have to pay him.  A lot.  As it is, I doubt that any of these dead people are seeing a cent for the use of their name.  But I’m not sure.  After all, Fred Astaire’s estate got paid when he danced in a vacuum commercial.

Al Capone would have a problem with not getting paid.

Like George Orwell, the shoes that are named for Al Capone are nice but bear little resemblance to anything he would wear.  Al Capone was buried in a pair of black and white spats, which were popular with the gangsters of his day, and, should he have lived in this era, he probably would have favoured some sort of fancy, diamond studded sneaker.

These guys were more about bling than good taste.  They  just had the good fortune to be working at the height of American menswear.  Capone was known to be dressed in “a sumptuous blue suit, accented by a white silk hankie, pearl gray spats and diamond studded platinum watch chain.” I somehow think a pair of Fluevogs just wouldn’t cut it.

These days, neither would spats.

YouTube – Winkers tm a 4.

Via

Winkers are pants that make your ass wink at people with the misfortune to walk behind you.  At 2:25 in the vid, there’s an owl pair of Winkers.  I like owls so much that I might even like that.  That is, if the forehead did not look like a giant shit stain.  Anyway, rush out to buy your Winkers or make your own at home.  Just try to avoid brown.

Having failed so abysmally at the car-making business,  General Motors is getting into the man-odour business.

They’re releasing a line of deodorants, body-washes and colognes to celebrate the anniversary of the Cadillac.  Called Cadillac, these will not smell  like anything one associates with cars.  (Gasoline, stinking children and burning flesh.)  Rather, the line will smell of grapefruit, chamomile, tarragon, cinnamon, geraniums, incense and sweet spice.

Many people have pointed to this scheme as an indication of how desperate and stupid General Motors has become.  I disagree with that opinion.  GM is not seriously getting into man-odour.  Rather, this is a simple commemorative product.  This sort of thing is done all the time. I remember when Porshe lent its name to a pipe.  It’s always been a bad idea.  For everyone.

But GM does have problems and this line of fragrances makes them abundantly clear.  There was a time when just the word Cadillac conjured up images of high quality and luxury.  If you called anything the Cadillac of something you were complimenting it.  Now that word only conjures failure, desperation and stupidity.  “Eau de Hobo” or “Weeping Welfare Mom” might have a better chance on the market.

On the bright side, soon to be jobless GM employees can always drink the colonge.  At $73 a bottle, it’s the Cadillac of rubby booze options.   Tastes like grapefruit.

The Japanese Robot Fashion model, HRP-4C, has taken her first walk on the runway.  As a bride.    Predictably, everyone is like: “How creepy!  A robot bride?!  The Japanese are crazy and want to marry robots!  Let’s never go to war with them again.”

I have a slightly more prosaic explanation.

My guess is that they chose a wedding gown for the same reasons many a rushed bride has:  It covers the shape of HRP-4C’s body.  I’m not saying the robot is pregnant -for now, that’s crazy talk– but she might as well be.

She has a strange body.  Aside from a Burqa, a wedding gown is just about the only thing that could make her look normal.  What would you dress her in?  A form fitting skirt?  How’d that look?

A further clue to this is that the song she’s walking to.  “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson.  In this obscure pop ditty, some fellow denies parentage of a boy-child.  “Papa was a Rolling Stone” would have been also been an appropriate, if less timely choice, though, sadly, it would have dodged the meta-question of fake brides and human modification.

And, God knows, would anyone even be surprised if it turned out HRP-4C was pregnant with Michael Jackson’s baby?  I figure that would register pretty low on the crazy scale he set.  Somewhere above Bubbles and below dangling his so-called kid off a balcony.

Style Coalition -.

I love this video.  It conflates shopping with a social duty.

Instead of shopping because you need or want something, it advocates shopping itself as a pass time.  It doesn’t matter if you can’t afford it and don’t need it.   Shit, you might not even want it.  But designers are depending on you!  You should go shopping anyway.  Already have 45 pairs of shoes?  Buy another!

I wouldn’t say go shopping or don’t go shopping.  I’d say, if you want something and you can afford it, sure, go buy it.

I’m just not sure that women sublimating television induced sexual frustration and photo-shop self-esteem issues into shoe purchases in a futile attempt to fill that ever increasing emptiness on their insides, endlessly consuming the products of slave labour so that they can have something to do in the afternoon, their greed and vanity compelling them to pay usurious interest rates on credit cards, though which they mortgage their future, destabilize the economy and remove us all from any sort of reality, all to support the career of a designers, as if a fashion career is some sort of GM-esque charity,  really constitutes a duty.

So yeah.  Don’t shop.  Or do.  But you don’t owe these designers jack-shit.  And you can live without them.

pic nicked from here

Life as a pattern-seeking egomaniac can lead to paranoia.  And I’m willing to entertain the idea that I’m paranoid.  I’ll entertain any idea.  For an evening or so.  After that, they should go home.  The ideas I live with already take up enough space, eat all my food and don’t pay the rent.

So, while entertaining the idea that I’m paranoid, even preparing it a cup of tea and putting on some soft music, I must confess that I’ve been seduced by another.

For when I see that upon the website of one of Toronto’s shoddier free weeklies, NOW Magazine –a newspaper that will espouse feminism then try to sell you a foreign sex slave in its back pages–  there has appeared an article entitled From the Desk of the Grumpy Garmento,  in which the author, whom I’ve met and found to be a  a pleasant fellow, has decided to take a “curmudgeonlier route” than is normal in the discussions about Fashion Week, even I, dear reader, raise an eyebrow and wonder:  So ‘The Grumpy Something’ looks at fashion week from a curmedgeony angle; Wherever do they come up with these crazy ideas?

It is an eternal testament to my good nature that I take this sort of thing not as a bite upon my style but, rather, as a tip of the cap.  A simple homage, if you will.

But what a pale homage!  When toasting the great, you should raise your glass high.  Sadly, the author of the post, The Grumpy Something or Other, spilled his drink before it even reached his shoulder.  Although I’m unsure what passes for a curmudgeon in the world of fashion, I certainly hope this Garemento is not it.

After listing the items that he hopes to never see reported on again, enjoining the shocked reader to “Get over it” he informs us that no one need ever mention again that fashion week’s organizers are evil.

“They are not. Robin Kay and company do a good job with minimal government support, disinterested media and designers who think someone should be paying THEM to put on a runway show.”

Now, if someone could just explain to me why I should, through government, pay ANY OF THESE PEOPLE a single cent to put on a fashion show, I’d be happy.

During any time but especially during a recession that will cost many their jobs and strain our resources, even “minimally” government sponsored events and/or programs must be looked at anew.  Programs and events that are of highly questionable value will have to go. Lest we forget — minimum support is none.

We simply cannot afford to silence critical discussion of the organizers of these events or the dubious value of the events.  A reporter that claims it’s time for that conversation to end, who claims that Robin Kay and others do a good job while admitting that Fashion Week is too late to lead to any sales, cannot be taken seriously.  But he’s right about the disinterested media.

His time, for example might be better spent wondering why a corporate event –it is LG Fashion Week, not Toronto Fashion Week– has so many “volunteers.”  He might find that interesting.  I do.

If you work for free for a corporation, you are not a volunteer, you are a scab.  This is the wisdom of our forefathers.  Getting paid for work is a hard-won right and not something to be tossed aside to look at bright lights and pretty dresses.

Call me old fashioned, grumpy or a curmudgeon but I believe there is a difference between the non-profit and the unprofitable.  Not getting paid to bring food to the old and infirm is volunteering.  Not getting paid to seat the A-List at a fashion show is bullshit.  The people who organize something like that are evil.

But let’s talk evil.  Not just the fat placidity that is Fashion Week.  Let’s keep some perspective and talk about actual fucking evil.

LG, Fashion Week’s main sponsor violates even Chinese labour laws by forcing 100 hours per month of mandatory overtime in their sweatshops. Their products are made out of “conflict materials.”  Their money finances a war in the Congo where rape is used as a tactic by armed gangs against civilians. Forced labour, torture, child soldiers, extortion murder and rape: That’s part of what LG does.

When they’re not throwing a fashion show.

Some people might be bored by the organizers of Fashion Week being called evil.  Some people might think that the conversation is over.  But I’m not some people. I’m Ryan Oakley, The Grumpy Owl, and I’m still waiting for that conversation to begin.

All of these people are innocent until proven guilty. Their clothes are another story.

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LOVE INC. (Runway Show by Andy The-Anh) from Ryan Oakley on Vimeo.

Toronto Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2009

Andy The-Anh Runway Show

Music by Kraftwerk and PiL

Vid by Ryan Oakley

Tags: Uncategorized

I’ve been blogging about robots for a few years now and I’ve seen some dumb ideas.  But this fashion model robot has got to be near the very top.

For starters, most fashion models aren’t exactly paid for their services.  I know you have your big famous ones who make a fortune.  And I know you’ll be one of those because all you have to do is dream big and work hard, but, usually, models are just deluded.  Usually, they pay an agency to go nowhere.

So this isn’t even like replacing a worker with a robot.  It’s like replacing a paying customer with a robot.  And robots have no money.  They’re broke!

I don’t have any charts or graphs handy but I’m willing to bet that most of our cultural nonsense is funded by people paying to have their dreams eaten.  Fashion is no exception.  You can’t just take the models out of the equation.  You’d be putting some cynic at an agency out of a job.  It’s awful.

And, if they were going to make a fashion model robot, why would they make a short, fat one with man hands?  One that can’t even wear clothes.  A model doesn’t exactly have to do much.  But being short, fat and having man-hands is not part of the very little they have to do.  Wearing clothes typically is.

But look how quickly and closely HRP-4C is following the normal trajectory of a model.  After her single, unpaid runway show her main purpose will be “to attract attention at shopping malls or amusement parks, along with serving other roles in the entertainment industry.”

Other roles?  Sure.  I’ll believe that when I see it.

The long term goal is to make her into a chore-bot.  As for now, she’s incapable.  So fashion model it is.  Until she learns to actually do something.

Just the other day, Bruno, who was a Californian stray but is now a Canadian house-kitty, escaped into the night. Being a mysterious figure and a Sacramento celebrity, I assumed he was embarking on some fantastic adventure.

A few hours later, he returned.  Upon his white neck was a spot of bright red blood.  Offering no explanation, he just found a good place to lick himself and fell asleep.  Interesting, I thought.  That’s how I used to behave.

But that splash of blood reminded me of a tie. This realization brought me back to some first principles of clothing, derived not from culture but nature itself.

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pic nicked from here

I have an upcoming appointment with my tailor.  Though I am, as usual, giddy as a schoolgirl, my mind has turned to a different type of suit.  The used suit.

Though I will never call them “vintage” –that’s pretentious bullshit– I have a deep and abiding love of the used suit.  They’re affordable, can look great and offer an entry point into the sartorial for those who want to know more but can’t invest hundreds, let alone thousands, of dollars finding out.

There is absolutely no shame in owning, wearing or loving a used suit.  There is only shame in owning, wearing or loving an ugly suit.  Beauty is beyond money.

You might not guess it but I’m deeply frugal.  I will spend $2000 on a suit but I usually spend $25.  Curiously enough, the cheapest suits have been bespoke and the most expensive suits have been used.

And I see you there, thinking cheap means bad and expensive means good.  Well, clear that bourgeois nonsense from your mind, old chum.  We’re not speaking that language.  We’ll leave that language to the vulgar.

When I say expensive, I mean that I bought a suit, didn’t like it and never wore it.   Flushing even ten dollars on something that you dislike and never use is expensive.  Spending a fortune on something you love and use is good value.  It’s cheap.  Good bespoke is cheap.  Bad used is expensive.

Even so, I work for a humble wage in a menial job and no matter how careful I am, I’ll never be able to afford more than one or two bespoke suits a year.  Yet I must get dressed.  To do so, I first learned how to steal a used suit, then I learned how to buy one; A task more difficult than having a suit built from scratch.

For you lucky sons of bitches who are about to read past the jump, I’m about to drop some hard-won knowledge on you.

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Clothing: Amie Scott

Video: Ryan Oakley

Music: “Shrink Wrap” by This Heat

Starring: Melisande Leduc and Dave Tom.