"All the women of my generation, including Hillary Clinton, were wearing jeans in the 1960s. But where do you go from Woodstock?"

"How do you professionalize that look when those women start entering the work force? You professionalize it by wearing a feminized suit from Armani."

Said costume designer and historian Deborah Nadoolman Landis, quoted in "Giorgio Armani, Fashion’s Master of the Power Suit, Dies at 91/He created a male uniform whose feminized form won favor with women. An alliance with movie stars made his name all but synonymous with red-carpet dressing" (NYT).

Longtime readers of this blog may remember the time I bought an Armani suit. It was 2008, and I seriously believed it was going to be infinitely useful:

Here's the Giorgio Armani store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where a lovely saleswoman sees that I admire that jacket trimmed with fur and feathers and says something to me — "It's fox" — that prompts me to ask a question about sizes and the long-nurtured desire for the perfect pantsuit.

I have — a thousand times — wished I'd bought the quirky jacket instead of what I'd thought would be so practical. I'd have worn the jacket a hundred times a year since then —1700 times — and I have worn the suit exactly... never. And that's the argument in favor of impulse buying. 

Another sign that the Trump movement is extending far into the culture.

This NYT article about how people are wearing furs again: "What Happened to the Stigma of Wearing Fur? After years of protests and strides in fake skins, vintage furs are popping up all over."

The first paragraph uses the word "fur-a-palooza."

"Fur coat? It is said that nobody wants fur these days, but animals do. Rehabilitators, like those at Sacred Friends, in Norfolk, Virginia, cut up old coats and..."

"... use the scraps as little capes and stoles to keep sick animals warm... peta wants your pelts, too. The organization donates them to the homeless ('the only humans with any excuse to wear fur,' according to its Web site), and lately it has shipped fur garments to Afghanistan and Iraq for use by refugees.... Your old bras are welcomed with open arms at the Bra Recyclers, a Phoenix-based enterprise that has sent more than four million bras to homeless shelters, schools, foster programs, and other nonprofits all over the world. As Elaine Birks-Mitchell, the founder of the Bra Recyclers, explained to me over Zoom, bras are not just about fashion. For girls in developing countries, they make it possible to play sports and attend school without embarrassment."

From "A Guide to Getting Rid of Almost Everything/Once you’ve thanked and said goodbye to the items that do not spark joy, what can you do with them?" by Patricia Marx (The New Yorker).

"What do you do when the masses of minks that you hastily killed and buried because of covid-19 fears start rising up from the grave?..."

"The government had admitted that at least some of the minks killed improperly were also buried improperly. Two gravesites in Jutland, Denmark’s northern region and the home to most of its mink farm industry, have become points of concerns over risks that the decomposing animals could affect nearby water. Some dead minks have surfaced because the top soil above them was not heavy enough. The Danish press dubbed them 'Zombiemink.'... On Thursday, the Danish prime minister [Mette Frederikson] visited mink breeder Peter Hindbo at his now-empty mink farm near the city of Kolding. As she spoke to reporters at the farm, her voice wavered, and she fought back tears as she described the impact she had seen. Frederiksen said that the family of mink farmers had 'their life’s work shattered' in a very short period of time. 'It has been emotional for them, and … Sorry. It has for me too,' she told reporters." 

From "Danish government may exhume hundreds of thousands of dead minks and burn them" (WaPo).

Burying minks "improperly";

MEAWHILE: "Parliamentarians in Taiwan have thrown pig guts at each other before coming to blows over plans to allow US meat imports" (Guardian):

Denmark will kill its 15 million caged minks — and not save the furs — because it's found a mutated version of the coronavirus.

AP reports. 

The coronavirus evolves constantly and, to date, there is no evidence that any of the mutations pose an increased danger to people. But Danish authorities were not taking any chances. “Instead of waiting for evidence, it is better to act quickly,” said Tyra Grove Krause, head department at Statens Serum Institut, a government agency that maps the spread of the coronavirus in Denmark....

Instead of waiting for evidence, it is better to act quickly. A scary adage, but probably the right attitude for this specific problem. You can't individually test 15 million Danish minks and wait for the results. By the way, there are 5.8 human beings in Denmark, so there are nearly 3 minks per person. 

The pelts of the mink will be destroyed and Danish fur farmers have said the cull, which is estimated to cost up to 5 billion kroner ($785 million), may spell the end of the industry in the country. 

Speaking of weasels, the NYT reports: "A nasal spray that blocks the absorption of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has completely protected ferrets it was tested on, according to a small study released on Thursday by an international team of scientists." It's the animals that might infect us that are useful for tests. 

The nasal spray science is interesting:

"The Hasidic Jewish community, in which men have a tradition of wearing fur hats or shtreimel, has also supported the fur industry, along with a group of African American ministers who described fur as a unique cultural symbol of achievement."

From "Fur is under attack. It’s not going down without a fight" by Robin Givhan (in WaPo).

Givhan quotes Kitty Block, president of the Humane Society of the United States: "I really take issue with the culture argument. Cruelty is not culture, and I think it’s kind of insulting."

Givhan adds: "Does culture have legal standing? Perhaps. Both California and New York have laws banning racial discrimination based on natural hairstyles."

If Hasidic Jewish men and African American ministers have a special cultural need for fur, should laws — like California's new law banning the sale of fur — be denounced as discrimination? Obviously, these laws are not intended to target Jewish men and successful African American ministers, so it's hard to picture a successful legal challenge.

It tends to be more effective to say that a law puts a burden on a religious practice, but the Hassidic shtreimel is perhaps not an obligation and as for African Americans and the outward display of success... well, you know what? I will get out of your way! Go ahead and argue that's religion.

But I doubt that Givhan means to hint that lawsuits against these anti-fur laws are plausible, only that the political push to get these laws passed can be met with a political argument that the urge to protect furry animals is outweighed by the interest in protecting the subjective preferences of people in minority groups that have experienced oppression.

"That is to say, the creative force who lands at the top of a heritage brand and reinvents it by identifying its sartorial semiology and then wresting it into the present with a healthy dose of disrespect and a dollop of pop culture."

"Not that he put it that way exactly. What he said was: 'Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore — and then you get something out of her.' This approach has become almost quotidian in the industry, but before Mr. Lagerfeld was hired at Chanel, when the brand was fading into staid irrelevance kept aloft on a raft of perfume and cosmetics, it was a new and startling idea. That he dared act on it, and then kept doing so with varying degrees of success for decades, transformed not only the fortunes of Chanel (now said to have revenues of over $4 billion a year) but also his own profile.... But he rejected the idea of fashion-as-art, and the designer-as-tortured genius. His goal was more opportunistic...  His personal proclivities were a constantly mutating collection of decades, people and disciplines. His one great fear was of being bored. His conversations (or monologues) could, in almost one breath, bounce from Anita Ekberg romping in the Trevi fountain, to how rich women in the 1920s slept under ermine sheets, and then to the Danish fairy tale illustrator Kay Nielsen. His one blind spot was his own mortality, which he refused to acknowledge. As he said... 'I don’t want to be real in other people’s lives. I want to be an apparition.'"

The NYT was ready to go big on the death of Karl Lagerfeld, which has finally arrived. The long obit is by Vanessa Friedman.



ADDED: From a 2015 post of mine, quoting "A Comprehensive List Of Everything Karl Lagerfeld Hates":

"I hate intellectual conversation with intellectuals because I only care about my opinion, but I like to read very abstract constructions of the mind.... I hate rich people when they try to be communists or socialists. I think it’s obscene.... I hate sloppy footwear. What I hate most is flip-flops. I am physically allergic to flip-flops.... And I hate to wear suspenders. I have the feeling I'm wearing a bra...."

Oh, how I wish more people would say interesting things!

The swearing in of Kyrsten Sinema — beautifully distinctive — I approve!

kyrsten sinema swearing-in is a mood pic.twitter.com/fS1hkVnnl4

— Paddingtweets (@DaneBernardo) January 3, 2019

So, my brilliant AZ fellow residents elected Dem Kyrsten Sinema to a 6-yr term in the U.S. Senate. Ms. Sinema has now demonstrated her bisexual lifestyle as well as her openly anti-religious stance during her swearing in ceremony. Another example of a Dem fooling the electorate. pic.twitter.com/latYtRsOIN

— Jim Loe (@JimLoe) January 4, 2019

Why not draw attention to yourself with fashion? I like this arrival with a splash so much nicer than the splash Mitt Romney chose to make, writing a peevish op-ed about Trump's "character" and preening as the unimpeachably serious adult in the chamber.

My favorite part of this is not the right-to-bare arms, but the fur. I assume it's fake fur, but it reminds me of the first time I saw Sarah Palin.



And then there's the swearing in on a volume of the Supreme Court reporter (which volume? the one with Roe v. Wade?).

ADDED: I'm obviously not endorsing the text of tweet with the bare arms photograph. I think it's very stupid. And I don't even know what "her bisexual lifestyle" is supposed to refer to. Conservatives bristling at the sight of young women are making fools of themselves.

AND: And here's Marilyn Monroe in glasses and a bit of fur in "How to Marry a Millionaire":

"When she was performing, she didn’t slither out of her mink or her chinchilla as though she was doing a flirtatious little striptease for her audience’s pleasure."

"Instead, she discarded her fur coats as though she was shedding bothersome earthly shackles in order to commune directly with the Holy Spirit. The coat drop was a signal that Franklin... was ready to loose her full vocal power in a transformative sermon of gospel, soul and rhythm and blues. That voice was more lush and valuable than the coat. Still, she did not want to sweat out her coat. She threw it off. The coat was dismissed."

From "Aretha Franklin, secret style icon: With the drop of a fur coat, she proclaimed her worth" by Robin Givhan.

What about the usual criticism of wearing fur? Givhan refers to it but only in passing:

Franklin had earned [the furs], and they were worn with pride and pleasure and in spite of all PETA’s begging and bullying. So, so many furs. Worn against the cold and worn in the face of adversity. Worn with hauteur. Worn because she was a star, and furs are what stars wear.

In the comments at WaPo, I see:

Having a good singing voice is no justification for deplorable behavior. Flaunting big, gaudy fur coats is insensitive to the animal torture that it is.

And:

Does your "religion" or "church" have anything to say about torturing and killing other sentient beings?

And:

Aretha was able to wear fur because she was grandfathered (grandmothered?) in. Mad about a legendary black woman being allowed to do something no one else is allowed to do today, black or white? Tough. Watching that move was like watching living black and feminist history. Until the 1980s or so few people thought much about wearing fur. By the 2000s virtually no one in polite company wore fur any longer. Aretha was at heart an old fashioned church lady through and through. As Robin alludes to, those in the church community with enough means definitely wore furs and wore them proudly. Aretha pulling off her fur coat mid-performance was similar and perhaps even more powerful than James Brown shedding his coat (which in his performance was more a cartoon statement of need and desperation). Hers was a statement of shedding oppression and gaining freedom.

Another thing that happens in the comments — because it has to happen everywhere — is Trump. Someone drags in that Trump wrote that Franklin "worked for him" and others add things like "Trump is a cockroach" and Trump (unlike Franklin) "has made nothing and has shared nothing, his entire life," and — this is good, dark humor:

I think that what the Trumps did to those animals should be done to them. Satisfied?

Surrealistic Breakfast.

The photo — with the post title — feels (retroactively) inspired by the famous "Object" by Meret Oppenheim:

"In his boxer shorts, he ran out to the sidewalk on Bellagio Road — where, 56 years before, Zsa Zsa Gabor lost her house, saying: 'My three dark minks, my white mink, my sables, some really very nice little jewels are gone.'"

From "During a week of flames, upscale Bel-Air homes burn as fire roars through canyon" in the L.A. Times.

At Donald Trump's big pre-inauguration dinner — Melania isn't there, and neither is Ivanka.

Lots of photographs at The Daily Mail, which puts special emphasis on Kellyanne Conway:

The president-elect was seen stepping off his Trump jet at Reagan National Airport with Conway in tow at about 8pm. She was wearing a white gown and appeared to be carrying a fur coat.

The Daily Mail can be so dumb. In the photograph, the garment is obviously a stole, not a coat. Whether it's real or fake fur is unknown. It doesn't look very nice, so I'm going to assume it's fake fur and Conway is baiting anti-Trumpists to lambaste her for wearing fur.

The article says, "Melania Trump did not appear to have made the trip with her husband," and a commenter says: "Don't think we'll be seeing much more of her. Ivanka has taken on the role of first lady." But there's no sign of Ivanka at this event either.

Whether Ivanka or Melania will step into the made-up "First Lady" role, neither Melania nor Ivanka attended the big gala dinner, as far as I can tell, and the glammed up lady at Trump's side was Kellyanne Conway. Conway has a spouse too, but I don't see him there either. Here's why I think all of this is perfectly okay:

1. Trump was tending to donors. There were about "150 diplomats and 300 or so of Trump's biggest donors and VIPs." He flew down from NY to do the political theater, then got back on his plane and returned to NY. It was a quick business trip. Trump graciously and efficiently cranked through it.

2. Conway is Trump's female partner in this political business. She's up for the political talk and comfortable with the exposure, and she deserves the spotlight for all that she has done.

3. Melania and Ivanka are reserved for other occasions, perhaps more exclusive groups than the 300 top donors. Maybe these women are "reserved" in the other sense: private.

4. Melania and Ivanka may have minds of their own and a distaste for being shown off, especially to big donors, people who have bought access to power. If it is possible to buy access to these women, it's not as easy as being 300th on the list of top donors to a presidential campaign.

5. When they appear at inaugural events, Melania and Ivanka's looks will be subjected to extreme attention. Fashion designers have balked at dressing them, and while I'm sure they can overcome that trifling obstacle, they may want their first entrance on the presidential stage to be more beautiful and grand.

6. Melania and Ivanka may love Kellyanne Conway performing this part of the feminine role.

7. The Obamas have — or so it seems — loved parties. Some of that love may be because they have been loved. It's been relatively simple to show up in nice clothes and get perceived as fabulous by everyone in the press and the political establishment. The experience for the Trumps is completely different. Not only have they already had plenty of fancy parties in their lives — it's no big new thrill — but they don't have the hope the Obamas had of inspiring Americans to enjoy the parties vicariously. With the Obamas, many Americans could feel that the first African-American President and First Lady embodied our dream of progress. If they danced together in fancy clothes, they danced in our hearts: How good we are! Not in all hearts, of course, but in many hearts, and the Obamas knew this, and performed in the Theater of Racial Harmony with enthusiasm and grace.

8. The Trumps must follow the Obamas, and they must know very well that their political show is very different. They step into the roles as very rich people. They've already had plenty of parties — fancier parties — for decades. If they party in the public spotlight, they are rich people, enjoying their riches, excluding us. And there's probably little intrinsic pleasure for them. It's just another party, and, really, an inferior party, humoring donors and diplomats.

9. Upgrading Kellyanne Conway like this dilutes the perception that Ivanka is — in some weird, creepy way — the real First Lady. There are 3 important women, and they appear in different settings. It increases the perception that Melania is the First Lady. She's automatically the First Lady by being the President's wife, so what is the argument that she's lost that status? If Kellyanne and Ivanka both do appearances at Trump's side, Ivanka isn't special enough to oust Melania.

10. Trump the billionaire has successfully bonded with millions of working-class Americans. He's convincingly worn a trucker hat and spoken like a tough guy. Trump's wealth is built on branding, and he made his grand political success out of branding: He's a man of the people. He's told us that he had a great life, and he didn't need to do this, but he saw our need, and the left the pleasures and comforts of his billionaire life to do service for us, to make America great again. To preserve that message, he should not be seen to care about big parties. He's coming to Washington to work — for us — and not to enjoy himself.

11. The message described in #10 is consistent with what we will be seeing from Melania: She's staying in NYC to do her work, which is to care for her son and to support him as he finishes the school year. She's not a rich, self-centered lady eager to show off her beauty and her clothes in the public spotlight. She's modest and circumspect and, like so many of the Americans who voted for her husband, focused on doing a good job at the task in front of her — rearing a child.

"What is the difference between hair and fur?"

Answer: "Hair and fur are the same thing."

SA: Why is it then that, for example, my dog's fur is three inches long and it never seems to grow longer, while my own hair keeps growing and growing?

NS: Actually, a lot of types of human hair won't keep growing and growing. The normal length of the hair is an individual and species specific trait. So across the breadth of mammals, there are many norms for hair length, or fur length....

SA: Is a whisker a special kind of hair?

NS: Yes, it is. There are many different kinds of modified hairs to which we give different names. A porcupines quills are greatly enlarged hairs. Whiskers are hairs that work as sensory receptors. There's a strange animal from the Old World called a pangolin, which has these scaly plates that cover most of its body those are modified hairs.

By Valerius Tygart - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.

"There she stood in drag/Just a-looking cool in astrakhan/She's looking so wiped out/And she said I looked like Peter Pan..."

That's a line from "Museum," a Donovan song on the "Sunshine Superman" album, remembered and pointed out by commenter Kevin Walsh in the post about astrakhan, "Thinking about fetal fur."

I must have heard those lines a hundred times without having any idea I was hearing a word that would be spelled "astrakhan," so I could even get to the point of wondering what it is. It's the fur of an unborn lamb. The woman looking cool in astrakhan had told him to meet her under the whale in the natural history museum and he was sad to have to go there, so I don't think he approved of the fetal fur. And the song's refrain is "But don't do it if you don't want to/I wouldn't do a thing like that."

Thinking about fetal fur.

Idly clicking, I encounter a lovely coat (for sale at Barney's):



It's made of "astrakhan fur." What's that? I look it up:

Astrakhan... is, properly speaking, the tightly curled fleece of the fetal or newborn karakul (also spelled caracul) lamb....

This may be the part where you are thinking “fetal or... wait, what!?!”.

Yes, the most desirable form of astrakhan is that from a lamb 15-30 days away from being born....

I've got a "wait, what?" of my own. Why are people more disturbed by using the fur of a never-born creature? Are people thinking it's better to kill a newborn lamb because at least the little lamb got some life? How does that fit with the (perhaps grudging) acceptance of abortion and complete rejection of infanticide?

Here's a NYT article from 2005:

Most astrakhan lambs, according to the fur industry, are killed within days or weeks of their birth because as they age, the quality of their wool quickly changes from tightly curled rows to a more coarse and wiry pelt. And some examples, called broadtail, often considered the most desirable, are the skins of unborn lambs.

"That's just a little too much," said the designer Carmen Marc Valvo, explaining why he draws the line at using fetal lambs.... Albert Kriemler, the designer of Akris, said he would never use broadtail from a lamb fetus... Several designers would not directly answer whether the furs they call astrakhan come from fetal lambs... Prada, which has frequently identified its product as broadtail, did not respond to numerous inquiries. A spokeswoman for Mr. Armani said the fur described as astrakhan in his fall collection is not fetal lamb....

Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys, acknowledged that many people are not aware of where astrakhan comes from. "This is not something that is usually discussed around fashion tables," Ms. Gilhart said. "Information is everything, and if people know the origins of what they are buying, I think they can actually make better decisions as to what to buy, what not to buy. On the other hand," she added, "buying fashion is an emotional act. If something is perceived as beautiful, sometimes all reasoning goes out the window."

Unquestioned in that article is the assumption that people are upset — or would be upset if they knew — by the use of fetal fur. Why isn't it — great, I can feel fine wearing fur because it's from a  fetus? I could imagine an abortion-rights supporter saying that what's wrong is that the ewe didn't want the abortion. It's a forced abortion. And in some fetus harvesting the ewe is killed. Presumably, the slaughtered ewe becomes meat, so it's not wasteful or gratuitous killing of a sheep. But I don't think the objection to fetus fur over born-lamb fur is about concern for the mother. She loses her baby either way. I'm just noticing the instinctive human disgust for the use of a fetus, even among those who accept the use of the baby animal. Discuss.

What's the deeper meaning of wearing a fur coat to sing "Natural Woman"?

"[Aretha] Franklin performed in her floor-length fur coat until stepping away from the piano to absolutely slay the final moments of her staple song, tossing her coat to the ground as the crowd jumped to its collective feet."

I lot can be said about this song. What does it mean not to feel "natural" as a woman? Are women unnatural without the man? If she only feels "like a natural woman," is that like the way Madonna felt "like a virgin." She wasn't a virgin, but she felt like one (for one reason or another).

So, it's already a puzzling song, subject to many interpretations. Okay: What does it mean to sing it in a fur coat?

And can you think of any other occasions when what the singer wore affected the meaning of the song? The first thing that crossed my mind was Marlene Dietrich singing "Give Me The Man" while dressed in a tuxedo. But I don't think that's a good answer.

ADDED: "Her mouth was as wise as her eyes … and her voice was like her coat, rich and supple, and somehow full of secrets," wrote Patricia Highsmith in "The Price of Salt," which is now a big Oscar-begging movie called "Carol." The coat, a fur coat, looms large, as the costume designer Sandy Powell explained. It was "probably the most important item to get right."

"It’s those descriptions that don’t say what colour or shape it is or anything like a clue.” To interpret that impression of sexy, conspiratorial opulence, she says, she knew it had to be a blond mink, not brown, and not light or flashy.

Fur is big now and deeply meaningful.

"Ethical fur" — made from road-kill animals.

"It was a wasted resource and I decided after some deep thought that I could make a viable business out of this," says Pamela Paquin, of Petite Mort Fur.

"I started working with the Highway Department and animal control officers who would report them to me when they had an animal down. They took me seriously, thank God."

Now, when they hear of dead animals, they contact Paquin. She drives out to pick the animal up herself. And if it's possible, she skins the animal where she found it.

"I like to put the remains in the woods for other animals to have safely as a meal. It's like roadkill sushi, really, but it's in a safe place rather than having the scavengers go on the road and get hit as well."...

Each fur piece is adorned with a sterling silver badge that says what the animal was and where and when it was killed...

"The way it’s packaged in the store, it’s so real, and it’s so fresh, and you don’t see chickens with their feathers and blood all over them, and their expression, with their tongue hanging out."

It = raccoon.

Inspectors from the LA County Health Department visited the Metro Supermarket in Temple City on Tuesday, after being informed that the market was selling raccoons as food.

Employees at the market declined to appear on camera, but did show entire raccoons, frozen, bagged, and selling for $9.99 per pound. The employees say raccoon is considered a delicacy in China.

Well, is that so terrible? Maybe we meat-eaters ought to have to see the "expression" on the face of the being whose death we find acceptable for our needs and pleasures. And why shouldn't the consumer take possession of the fur? Eat enough raccoon, and you could have a nice fur coat.

"In these times of compassion when conformity’s in fashion...."

A Bob Dylan line arrived at this morning as a consequence of researching the word "fashion." That's the only time Bob Dylan ever used the word "fashion," in a song about Jesus. Meade recommends Lou Reed's version of the song:



Now, the reason I'm researching the word "fashion" is that yesterday — a propos of the rocket scientist's pinup-festooned shirt — I said: "In the broad span of human culture, fashion is more important than space travel." I didn't elaborate at the time, because it would have been a detour, and also because I thought it would be much more interesting and entertaining to see how much scorn I could incur for saying something that I knew was a cinch to defend.

Click on this blog's "fashion" tag and see all that is encompassed in this topic. I've found 618 occasions to discuss something that fits my conception of "fashion" over the past 10 years. Few subjects rival fashion. Law has 5000+ posts, but other than that. Dylan? 337. It's bigger than Dylan. The Beatles? Only 173. Are The Beatles bigger than Jesus?



Are The Beatles bigger than Jesus on this blog? No! The Jesus tag is used 301 times. So Jesus is bigger than The Beatles, but not bigger than Bob Dylan, according to the metric of blog tags.

Fashion is more important than space travel drew the predictable scorn — much of it in the this-is-why-women-can't-do-science mode — but there were some comments that took things in the direction I'd intended. Dustbunny said:

I like this site because it is smart, funny and littered with Dylan references.

Yes, it is!

Unlike a number of left wing or right wing sites Althouse plays with the stereotypes with which those sites proudly and quite stupidly adhere. I am going to think deeply about the influence of fashion throughout history, but I'm not convinced there is a great deal there except on an esoteric level. Fashion leads to variations on a theme, science lead to space exploration. I am a woman, I grew up reading Seventeen and Vogue, I studied art history and I concede that Coco Chanel was a badass who changed a small but recent block of history..Also I studied art because math was way too hard — l'stereotype c'est moi. Is this about the court at Versailles? sans-culottes vs the aristocrats?

And furious_a had already said:

Hmmm, maybe fashion precedes space travel. Since fashion is intrinsically foreign and requires travel to acquire. Demand for silk and spices drove the merchant adventurers of the Middle Ages to open trade routes to the Far East, after which Columbus and Magellan followed. Demand for furs drew trappers to the Trans-Mississippi West, after which Lewis & Clark followed.

And chickelit said:

Cave people and aboriginals have fashion and very little science (that we know of). So fashion is more basic somehow to human nature. Insofar as fashion is related to mating behavior, fashion is more important than science. You can't advance culture if you can't even reproduce.

Eventually, some people noticed that a lot depends on the scope of the term "fashion." Rusty said:

I suppose, Althouse, it would depend on how you define fashion, but in the grand sweep of human history nobody cares what pants Lee Harvey Oswald wore.

And yet, if Lee Harvey Oswald had not been wearing pants, he would never have assassinated John F. Kennedy. As Mark Twain said: "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." He also said: "Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy." And: "A policeman in plain clothes is a man; in his uniform he is ten. Clothes and title are the most potent thing, the most formidable influence, in the earth. They move the human race to willing and spontaneous respect for the judge, the general, the admiral, the bishop, the ambassador, the frivolous earl, the idiot duke, the sultan, the king, the emperor. No great title is efficient without clothes to support it."

Glad that someone had finally focused on the scope of the term, I banged out an answer late at night on my iPad, typing with one finger and therefore stating it bluntly:

By fashion, I mean to include all of the clothing that everyone wears. It's important for basic survival, comfort, and protection, and it's a powerful mode of expression for the wearer and the designer. It's intimately tied to the body and thus to our personal presentation. We see others almost always only with their clothes as part of their image, and it affects how we feel and think about them. Clothing is a big part of nearly everyone's life, a huge part of our visual world.

Having missed the issue of defining the term, Joe spoke words of anger:

Way to backtrack, Althouse. Fashion ≠ clothing except in the minds of elitist snobs. If you meant clothing, why the hell didn't you say "clothing"? And you wonder why most people think lawyers are arrogant dicks.

Oh? So now do I get to be a boy? Suddenly, I'm not one of those women who can't do science, nor am I one of those females who outperform males in language-based enterprises. My verbal achievement gets categorized as male, and suddenly, I am a dick. Well, at least I get to be an arrogant dick.

And arrogance brings me back to where this post started, because that Bob Dylan song quoted in the post title is "Foot of Pride." That song begins: "Like the lion tears the flesh off of a man/So can a woman who passes herself off as a male." I can only speculate what that might mean, even as I've only speculated about what Matt Taylor meant to say as he arrayed himself in a shirt patterned with bosom-y ladies. But I wasn't trying to pass myself off as male.

To the extent I applied lawyer-mind to the task of understanding Matt Taylor's fashion statement, I was sticking to the evidence I had: He wore a very loud, attention-getting shirt, and that implies that he intended a message and thus invited us to think and talk about it. I'm still wondering what he meant, why he took it back, and why taking it back made him cry. I wanted to understand. A commenter criticized me for knowing "very little about geek culture," but I never claimed to know. I was the one who didn't want to talk about Matt Taylor's shirt until I noticed the question: What was he thinking?

Anyway, fashion is a broad term in my book, which is this blog of 10 years. And I am not guilty of making it overbroad: As a word in the English language, it is far broader. The original meaning is "The action or process of making." The meaning related to clothing is: "A prevailing custom, a current usage; esp. one characteristic of a particular place or period of time...  with regard to apparel or personal adornment." That's from the OED, which has as one of it's oldest quotes for the clothing-related meaning, Shakespeare's 1616 line: "'Tis some odd humor pricks him to this fashion/Yet oftentimes he goes but mean-appareled."

Pricks? Are we to think of pricks in the sense of dicks? With Shakespeare, it's a good bet anything that could be a pun is an intentional pun. And I like to think that even with lesser beings, the expressions that could have deeper meaning really do.

I'm not talking through my hat when I say: You're talking through your shirt.



You can't wear that and claim you didn't mean to say anything.

So be more subtle if you want deniability.

Subtlety is my bag....

Dogs are not committing suicide on the "The Dog Suicide Bridge of Dunbartonshire."

"Since the 1960s, some 50 dogs have perished after leaping from the same spot on the bridge. Hundreds more have jumped but lived, some even returning for a second leap onto the jagged rocks 50 feet below."

What's really going on? Hint: It sounds like the title of a Doris Day movie.