A perfectly pitched critique.
I wish I could have figured out how to be this funny and pithy about the maddening lassitude of catalog models. It's not just J. Crew, but just about every women's fashion catalog I get in the mail. The models all look like they can barely stand up, like they're about to collapse or need to lean on something. Their mouths droop open and their eyes are glassy. They're the oppose of fierce (which is another fashion cliché, just not the one used in catalogs). Why does blithering weakness sell clothing?
Anyway, bundling this criticism into the simple notion that the models are drunk keeps it light and hilarious. I salute you Drunk J. Crew. (Via Daily Mail.)
October 18, 2014
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18 comments:
The very last one is hilarious. It says something like....
My sister is gonna pick me up in her Subaru ounback
That's not really your "sister"....is it?
I hurt from laughing. That was the funniest thing in years.
Those are my kind of women.
Weakness, or happiness?
You criticize those who see remorse in a dolphin, yet you anthropomorphize these mannequins with wild abandon.
"The models all look like they can barely stand up, like they're about to collapse or need to lean on something. Their mouths droop open and their eyes are glassy. They're the oppose of fierce (which is another fashion cliché, just not the one used in catalogs). Why does blithering weakness sell clothing?"
It's called "sensuality" and one way to get it is to get high before the shoot. This (along with experience) is why I'm so sure many white people are terrible lays:
Some people "got it" and some don't, and that white picket fence-thing is hopelessly out-of-touch, with knowing how to touch.
Just for reference, Keith Richards is sensual, spastic-assed Mick ain't - the lips are deceptive,...
Crack, it's like you're writing for Cosmo in the 70s with that "sensual" business.
Yeah. That was funny. I'm always facinated as to what constitues fashion and even more so how people think it should be sold.
Wasn't it about 25 years ago that the models all had a heroin chic vibe going on?
I sent that to my mother this morning after seeing it on Facebook. It's a good friends and family share. Everyone on the continuums: wholesome to debauched, old to young, kind to cretinous, faith-filled to faithless, etc, etc, etc. can get a "heh" from that one.
In my youth, if you wanted to show that someone was drunk (or high -- it meant the same thing in my youth), you'd represent his/her speech as sounding the way a drunk would talk. Here, the objective seems to be to represent how the drunk/high person would tweet -- it's misspellings rather than mispronunciations. Don't you find that interesting?
I wish all the girls and young women in catalogs and ads would just stand up, instead of looking like knock-kneed, pigeon-toed fillies. They don't look young--they look immature.
Toy
Ann,
Like I said, some people got it and some people don't
Ann,
That constant refrain of "don't care" doesn't speak well for how well one can touch,...
Or feel, I should say
Not caring is a failing,...
Just came here to say I agree about "Keef" v Mick.
And here I'd been thinking that "look" was just heroin-chic.
It's alcohol?
Brushed Mohair Boyfriend Sweatshirt
Upstate, a weekend away from college,
Your roommate’s sister joined our coterie –
What boys define as men. With foliage
For fashion, the sunlight fading early
Became her figure’s fugue – so perfect, picturesque
In autumn, earthy, delicately picaresque.
The camera, tomorrow says, can’t lie
About such marble skin. Her hair, a nest
Of robin’s wings – her emerald eyes rely
Upon arresting candor, prepossessed
As bees that flirt with failing thorn and dying rose –
But stuck in time, she strikes an adolescent pose.
Each minute, yesterday replies, construes
The truth of lies and strips from silks to flesh
What Madison Ave. only rues
But cannot refute. Context’s textile mesh
Imbeds in memory the silken worm of love,
But head cajoled the heart – till both could not believe
The evening air, so sharp and tang with leaves
In burning piles somewhere beyond the light
Of bonfires. Flame’s dancing logic still gives
Her face the look of truth while smoke and night
Still infiltrate her sweater’s cabled virgin wool:
It’s cold. She shivers, rubs her hands in twilit fall –
And suddenly she looked at you across
The flame. You’d nursed your whisky flask to death;
Your eyes surmount their diffidence and toss
A glance her way. October steals your breath –
But dropping hands, she lets her eyes return to earth.
You wonder now what mocking god had given birth
To time and seasons. Heading back to school,
You thought about what could have been. You saw
Her once again – a final time – the cool
Of autumn giving way to winter’s raw
Emotion. Bundled up, she walked the whitened quad,
Her eyes as green as ever – wink exchanged for nod
Your mutual admission fall had occurred
At all. You turned to watch her slip away
And vanish in the falling snow. It blurred
Her lines and failed to capture or portray
What, later, lyric colors testified through lens
To film – that time and seasons hold no circumstance
With beauty’s rising smoke that, metal-blue,
Had veiled the milky spray of stars back then
When whiskey, fall and fire were all you knew –
Her fickle fame and fey adrenaline
Were waiting for the future, undeveloped prints
That cozened marketplace collateral. But since
That time, her rites of spring draw out modesty
In pencil skirts; her winter duffle makes
Its quilt-lined obsequies; her summers free
For brief, bikini, thong…. But memory speaks
At last and turns the page to whiskey, fall and fire. You learn
For the first time: she’s autumn smoke, an ache, that burn
Of pure emotion, spilling now like ink
Across the colored capture, blotting out
The years, their shallow depth of field. (To think
You knew her once so young!) Without a doubt
Her eyes retain that fabled age of innocence –
What took J.Crew’s fall preview to experience.
Damn, sir. You wrote that?
I did! Thanks!
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