I am turning into a tv series watcher, and of course, a must see is "Girlboss" on Netflix. It was off to a slow start, with a so so script and characters that I had trouble liking. But slowly but surely, the show started to grow on me. I totally appreciate the way used clothes are the focus of the show. The whole debate around the appropriate life of a dress, to be preserved in a box with acid free tissue paper, or rather, to reuse it, repurpose it, in order to keep it going on a human being. The episode that featured a live chat among the purists, the vintage clothes orthodox sellers, was hilarious. There is a lot of imagination on television these days. I also love that the main characters are flawed, and that the world they live in is complicated.
To give an example of the tone and content of this series, I will invoke Season 1, episode 12, which opens with Sophia, the main character, attempting to launch her vintage clothes website. After finding a vintage Halston jumpsuit in the abandoned luggage section of the airport, she sees a woman in the street wearing a copy of the jumpsuit. Once inside the store...
And then she makes an impassioned speech (this happens frequently on this series) in which she says,
“Giant corporations steal from artists to sell watered down versions of authenticity, and then we just walk around - like sheep, in a jail of capitalism. I’m going to put an end to mass commodification of specialized goods. And no longer will we buy cheaply made clothes for extraordinary prices. "
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Meanwhile, I tried to share with mostly male athletes (I am a professor by trade) the role that clothes play in our daily lives. I failed. In retrospect, I wish I had made them think about the idea of the uniform, because, we all wear one if not explicitly, at least implicitly, to please your boss, your friend, your family, but also because you happen to be on a sports team. These male athletes had no desire to talk about the pleasure in dressing, or how identity interacts with the clothes we choose to wear on certain days, to reflect our mood, our desires, our fantasies or our realities.
I don't mean to sound sexist, but women are more into clothes than men are. My mother who turned 85 this month, has a fondness for clothes. We share clothes from time to time, I give her mine, she gives me hers, she has very good taste and a slightly bigger budget. She has few occasions to dress up these days. After decades of working in the art world in New York City, it's a bit difficult for her to accept her new slower, more domestic life. But when the occasions arise, she has something to look forward to. Clothes do give us that: something to think about that allows for an escape into patterns, colors, styles, "essayages" as we say in French. On occasion, especially in between seasons, I'll find myself playing dress up, figuring out what goes with what, preparing outfits ahead of time, so that I can quickly slip them on when I don't have much time.
Then there is my partner's ex-wife who is also more shut in these days. We invited her to a party we hosted, and she came so nicely dressed, I was blown away. It felt good to see her so nicely dressed. It made me happy that she also had an occasion to play dress up.
If I were to interpret her mood that day based on the clothes that she was wearing, I would say that she was happy. And I'm so glad that I was able to give her an occasion on which to express that happiness.
