leavitt has written for numerous publications, creating her own column, "the dm manual of style" for The Dartmouth as well as a fashion and art blog, "knot", for The Dartmouth Independent.
check out her new blog, causeway road: nostalgia is the new black._________________________
the dartmouth independent
"knot: fashion and art, all tied up"_________________________
REFLECTIONCarry-On Only
BY DYLAN LEAVITT
|
Oct 13, 2011 09:36 PM
Monte Carlo, 1890s. Your boat pulls into the harbor, and your staff begins unloading your luggage: trunks upon trunks of the latest Paris fashions, sure to dazzle the friends whom you must meet for lunch. It had been difficult to choose which bustle would most impress your new acquaintances—that duke and duchess of wherever—so you packed everything and more. Or, rather, your staff did. You are relieved to have your entire wardrobe with you across the sea. The worst problem is not having the right thing to wear.Back in the times of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth and Gwendolen Fairfax, it bordered on a crime for the wealthy and frivolous to not have enough clothing at their disposal. But as corsets loosened and shirt tails shrunk, so did the size of suitcases. Now, trunks have become coffee tables—how I long for you, vintage Louis Vuitton—and packing has become a burden. Suddenly oppressed with the task of moving its own belongings, the modern leisure class has learned to edit down traveling wardrobes to avoid making those extra trips to the fifth floor. For 21st century 20-somethings, increasingly nomadic lifestyles induce wardrobes to shrink even more. As items are packed and re-packed, thrown out and given away, the pared-down wardrobe becomes the entire collection—an extension of a young person's identity, evolving with them as they move and grow.My friend’s brother recently left for his freshman year of college. Islands of clothing sat next to empty boxes and duffle bags—a Pangaea of sorts fluctuating in his childhood bedroom. He asked us (with Lil Wayne in the background) what he should pack: what clothes, what books, a coffee maker, too? “Pack whatever clothes you like,” I said. “And the books? Bring your favorites.” But questions started seeping into my mind. What if there’s a formal? What if he needs a costume? Should he bring hiking gear? How about a suit? When he yelled that he was running out of boxes, I suggested that he pack in laundry baskets. Oh, how Lily Bart would have shuddered!When we don’t travel with all our possessions, packing becomes a therapy session of sorts, a time of self-analysis when we ask, “Do I really need to bring my Spongebob T-shirt?” (The answer: Yes.) At the same time, transience gives one opportunities for renewal and reinvention: leaving certain clothes behind suggests that the ones kept close are more aligned with your image of yourself. What you wear doesn’t define your identity, but it does serve as a projection of it.Leaving for college is the milestone that, for most higher education-bound young adults, provides the first opportunity for renewal. But as this quasi-independence gradually turns into that first post-graduate year, the impermanence of campus-living and vacation periods fades into a lifestyle similarly without serious attachments. Career paths force young adults to constantly reevaluate their finances, location, and aspirations, and when jobs require four days of travel a week, carry-on suitcases serve as the habitats of possessions. Our lives are perpetually nomadic ones, and what we choose to bring along the way serves as a reminder of past and future, eventually coming to constitute a place we call home.Clothing is as transient as our lifestyles, correlating with ever-changing circumstances and goals. Our travels are less predictable than those of our turn-of-the-century predecessors; our attire evolves as such when we transition from Teach for America to a publishing internship. At the same time, certain items hold their importance—my sequin-seduced, pink prom dress is packed away for another time when I need to have some frivolous fun. It's metamorphosis with memory, adaptation with homage to the past.Trunks aren't necessary for our kinds of gallant journeys today. We can improvise as we go along. And as I do, I'll shed some headbands and add some blouses. But for now, my wardrobe is more than an abridged version of my style; it is a puzzle of my hopes and fears, seen in houndstooth, neoprene, cotton, and gray flannel.* * * * *Dylan Hayley Leavitt '11 graduated this spring as a Film & Media Studies major and AMES minor. You can read more about her nack for nostalgia on her blog, Causeway Road, athttp://www.causewayroad.blogspot.com.
TDI INTERVIEW
Lisa Birnbach: The Rules of Prep
BY DYLAN LEAVITT
Oct 29, 2010 12:00 PM"Pleats are wrong. One wears the pants a little short―especially khakis,” instructs Lisa Birnbach’s Official Preppy Handbook (Workman Publishing, 1980). The plaid-bordered book that boasts comical drawings and photos of Lilly fanatics, Mummy and Daddy, “deviant behavior,” and (of course) the perfect Bloody, satirizes―almost too accurately―preppy life of 30 years ago. While brunching and boating are still mainstays of the preppy lifestyle today, things certainly have changed: for instance, now preppies can wear fleece (recycled plastic instead of wool? Who would’ve thought!). Birnbach collaborated with Chip Kidd to record these developments in her hilarious new bestseller, True Prep (Knopf, 2010).While on her book tour this fall, Birnbach took the time to delve into the nuances of prep life―from blue blazers to hipsters―with Knot. Many aspects of economics and education have changed since Birnbach published her first edition, but one thing hasn’t: people love to read rules―especially ones that enumerate stereotypes. The prep world has had to deal with some major changes in the 30 years since you wrote the original Preppy Handbook. With the advent of the internet, evolved education programs, and a very different economic environment, the preppy has had to adapt. How does True Prep reflect the new and old aspects of prep?Originally, we were just going to call the book something about 21st century preppy; it’s less catchy, but the whole point is that the world has changed and we’re trying to keep up. It’s not easy; if my mother didn’t work, I had to choose a different role model because I always worked. All the templates have changed and it’s an exciting time to be alive. But it’s also a very bewildering one. And people―I’ve noticed since writing the first book―really like rules because it gives them an answer to all these big questions. How does one do this? Where should I go for this? I hear from people at book signings that they want even more rules, besides all the ones in the book.Nowadays, many prep schools and colleges are making an effort to include students from diverse backgrounds―financially, culturally, and geographically speaking. So, is everyone who attends a prep school or competitive college still necessarily preppy? Has the meaning of "preppy" been altered?Here’s the headline at every prep school: we are not going to photograph a white population, even if 70% of our students are white. That will not be the story we want to tell everyone because we want to intrigue and woo members of other races to our school. A lot of smaller schools were still single sex 30 years ago; you could be an Exeter woman, but you couldn’t be a Deerfield woman 30 years ago. Prep is always changing and it will continue to change. The population that will enter boarding schools and graduate from them will be more diverse yet. And I guess that’s the point―unless you want to be the person standing at the door saying, “You can’t come in”―which I certainly don’t want to be―we’re going to see a new, bold group of people who are attracted to this way of education and this way of life. I’m not saying that everyone who goes to Exeter is a preppy, but in a technical sense, yes―it’s like saying you’re not but you are. You may feel like, “Oh, preppy is not at all who I am,” but if you’ve gone to prep school, you have the education, you have the polish, you have the background, you have the friends, maybe you have a new sport in your artillery, and technically speaking, you are a preppy. You can fight it, you can dye your hair, you can pierce yourself, you can tattoo yourself, you can move to another country, you can wear only Betsey Johnson dresses or Juicy Couture, but you’re fighting what you already have. And you might get tired of all that―that’s a lot of work, fighting it. I do think that by the time you have a kid, Miss I Went To Boarding School And I Hated It And I Hate My Parents And I Hate This American Culture And I’ve Lived In Guatemala For Seven Years And This Is My Daughter, I wonder if when you go with her for her admission tour, you’ll wonder if you know anybody there, because it’s a great, great thing to give your kids. A great advantage.How has the commodification of prep affected the lifestyle behind it? Since it’s easy to walk into a Ralph Lauren or Vineyard Vines store and buy items that symbolize preppiness, does that mean this lifestyle is more accessible now than it was 30 years ago?If you are in college, you’ve always grown up with a plentitude and abundance of clothes that you can wear if you're preppy, because since you were born, all of these companies have existed except Vineyard Vines (which is a more recent company). But for people who are older, especially for women, it was really hard to find clothes. If you really wanted to dress in a button-down shirt and a pair of khakis, it wasn’t that easy to find. There was always L.L. Bean, but when my mother was growing up, she had to wear Brooks Brothers clothes in the smallest sizes. Mentioning all of these companies shows just how easy it is to dress this way now. But it wasn’t always the case, particularly for women. Additionally, because fashion is returning to a classic American sportswear moment, it does seem like we’re all sort of seeing the same thing at the same time.I make a point throughout the book―and I’m making it while I’m on tour―to say that the clothing is basically the least of it, because the clothing hasn’t changed that much. The clothing story is still the clothing story. It’s still simple clothes, that are better-fitting and have more variety than they did 30 years ago. But the fashion didn’t create this new book―the fashion is more static than the actual world around us because everything else has changed dramatically. The clothing less so.In both the original Preppy Handbook and True Prep, you discuss the "Mummy" character and her role in the household. What does the aesthetic androgyny of preppy clothing say about gender equality in preppy lifestyles?Mummy’s didn’t really work 30 years ago. Mummy was tending the home, Mummy was playing tennis, Mummy was entertaining, Mummy was traveling, Mummy was taking naps after too many Bloody’s in the morning. The mother can very stealthily be in charge of things, or Mummy can be a sort of mad-cap, spoiled woman who’s never really been responsible for anything. I’ve tried to show that the spectrum of Mummy is a big spectrum―even bigger nowadays. She can be one of those women in the “Cook’s Night Out” picture who’s never even investigated her own pantry, who has staff for everything, and only really ever hangs out with her male trainer. Mummy could be somebody who is a barracuda in the boardroom and delegates child rearing to someone else. There’s every variation in between, but I do think a preppy woman can have a lot of power relative to others, particularly if one of the attractions of this woman is her trust fund―because then the power comes from her parents, which goes to her, and Daddy can be sort of an afterthought. Not that it’s a good thing, but it can be.There is a classic prep style associated with Dartmouth and other Ivy League colleges. I’ve noticed, however, that the hipster look has been trickling in lately. Some have joked that hipsters, rather than being true counter-culturalists, are actually ironic preps.It’s funny―I’ve never heard him say it, but I have a son who I think is a hipster, or at least he thinks he’s a hipster. As with a lot of hipsters, there’s a little bit of a posing thing going on: “I’m so cool, I invented vintage clothing,” or “I’m so cool, I invented this interesting pattern of facial hair,” or “I’m so cool, I listen to the coolest music.” Hipsters, of course, can be preppies being self-consciously ironic. So many of the hipsters I see are wearing very wrinkled shirts of any kind and boat shoes, usually Sperry topsiders. And so we say we’re in on the joke! Fine, whatever. There are lots of ways that it’s developmentally appropriate to experiment with your identity and your look, your preferences, when you’re a teenager―late teenager and in your early 20s. That’s part of why we go away to college. Am I going to become a poet? Am I going to experiment sexually? Am I going to experiment with drugs? Am I going to experiment by being a jock? It’s quite a luxury to be able to go away for four years and reinvent yourself. And so hipsters are one of the many iterations of identity you can try on. Hipster is usually a transitory phase in my experience and observation.Foreign consumers are interested in the preppy look, too. This isn’t a new phenomenon―the book Take Ivy (powerHouse, 1965), which is a collection of snapshots from around the Ivy League taken by Japanese photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida, was a big hit overseas. How do you think the foreign perspective has affected prepdom in the last 30 years?Take Ivy―the book I still have never held in my hand. They always interview me about it, I’ve been quoted about it, and I’ve been told I used it as a resource, but I’ve never actually seen it!Well, Take Ivy captures the Ivy League aesthetic of the 60s and brings it overseas as an example of visual anthropology and fashion. Lots of blazers, varsity sweaters, and old architecture. But it also shows how the preppy lifestyle was intriguing from a foreign perspective then. Prep is certainly global. It reflects one of the major changes that has happened in the last 30 years, which is the connectivity we have through the internet contributing to the globalization of everything. My publisher asked me to start Tweeting, which I’ve done semi-reluctantly, and now I see that people reading my Tweets, live, all over the world. I’m thinking, why me? Why would a Brazilian or a Swedish person follow me? Well, I don’t know, but I think that the world has become much smaller and that which is American looks much better, particularly since George Bush left the White House. I suggested to a foreign journalist two weeks ago that because the present administration is regarded as an international one, other governments seem very excited to welcome the Obamas to their countries and, similarly, the American sporty look. I think President and Mrs. Kennedy are very much, to this day, considered international symbols of prep iconography. Now, the closest thing we have to them are Michelle and Barack Obama, who are welcomed with open arms internationally. I think that gives American-looking, classic sportswear an added caché overseas.I have many times seen somebody wearing something just a tiny bit out of the ordinary, but preppy―like a shade of green corduroy that’s just brighter than what I’ve seen in this country, or a wale of corduroy that’s a little different. I’ll just go up to the person and ask them where they got it. And in a heavily accented English, they say they might’ve gotten it in Japan, Italy, Germany, or Spain. It’s amazing―that was never the case before.When we think of preppy style, we think of certain iconic pieces like the navy blazer, the critter pants, and the button-downs. These staples are worn by both men and women. How do these clean styles fit in with contemporary culture in an age when Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian find themselves on magazine covers?I make some points in the book about women who dress really boyish; yes, it’s very much an antidote to the overly sexed-up way that many people dress. How many ads have you seen of men and women in jeans with their fly open? Or in the case of young men sometimes: I was leaving a subway in New York right behind some guy whose jeans were belted around his mid-thigh so you could see all of his underwear. I mean, at that point I have to ask myself, why wear pants? Why not go out in your boxers? There’s the sexification that’s gone on. Preppies don’t wear ankle bracelets with our khakis. We don’t have breast implants. We don’t wear fake tans. We don’t wear the “smoky eye” to breakfast. If I have to look at one other man who’s stretching his ear piercing with those things that are so disgusting... You know, it is sort of nice to see somebody clean now and again, isn’t it?And there’s a tattoo epidemic. I just came back from the West Coast; it’s epidemic. I saw a guy in Chicago whose arm was tattooed so much there was only a stripe of skin. And I’m thinking, why not just wear black clothing? It won’t hurt! So there is something sort of off, and there’s something that’s sort of self-abnegating in all of this; young people in particular are distorting or totally altering their looks in permanent ways that don’t seem―and I hate to sound like somebody else’s mother―but they don’t seem like sound ideas. They sound like something that would be funny at 19 or 22―but when you’re 37, you may not be happy that you have one black arm, or you may not be happy that you have two giant holes in your nose, or that you have those spaces so large that box cars could fit in your ears. I think we just need to sort of clean up.I don’t care what brand it is―it makes no difference to me. I just think there are some guidelines for looking better, cleaner, and nicer. If you see me walking down the street today, I’m wearing gray pants, a white shirt, and a purple sweater. I’m not imposing anything on you. If you see me walking down the street and half my body is tattooed, my hair is dyed black-red, and I have a big bull ring in my nostrils, that’s more aggressive. Preppies are very unaggressive! We like to blend in with our surroundings.
ARTIST INTERVIEWMochimochi Land: Knitting a Clever and Cute World
BY DYLAN LEAVITT
Nov 17, 2010 04:20 PMThe latest caption contest on the Mochimochi Land blog depicts a "Tiny Football" with the prompt, “What does this tiny football contemplate when it’s just been kicked in the mud?” The winning caption? “I really hope that cute pom pom didn’t see that.” Anna Hrachovec ’04 has been developing Mochimochi Land for the past four years, drawing from her interest in Japanese "kawaii" aesthetics, curiosity for characters and knack for knitting. After having been an exchange student in Japan in high school, researched her thesis of Japanese wartime cinema during a summer grant and studied in Japan on a Fulbright scholarship, Anna has poured her love of everything cute, quirky and curious into her fiber art and blog (which has tons of knitting tips, patterns andphotos). Anna showed her Mochimochi Land installation at gallery hanahou in New York this October and published a book, taking what started out as a side project and bringing it to the forefront as a dynamic, unexpected multimedia career. But honestly, who wouldn’t want to spend all their time surrounding themselves with these absolutely adorable characters?
A note to the football: If I did see you kicked in the mud, I wouldn’t laugh. I would dust you off and make you my new best friend.
How did you come up with the idea to make Mochimochi Land?
Early in my knitting career, I was following patterns and making hats and scarves for friends. I was getting tired of just knitting accessories and garments after a while and it felt like everyone already had them. I thought it would be fun to branch out to something a little different, so I came up with the idea for making toys for friends. I started by making a very blob-shaped monster and I really liked the simplicity of a lot of Japanese character design, so that’s really how I started out—using really simple knitting techniques and then finishing with minimalist details like the two black eyes. So I made a few gifts for some friends of mine and I was really hooked. I always liked stuffed animals, so it was fun to figure out how to make them myself. I let myself be passionate about it and I let myself experiment with whatever inspired me. I think that it really led to a lot that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I wouldn’t be doing art now if I didn’t say to myself “Wouldn’t it be cool if I just make this lemming and make it jump off cliffs?”
How did you work on developing your blog? How did the knitting community support you?
I think also just sharing what I was doing with other people online helped. I think some people really hesitate to put themselves out there until they feel like they have everything completely figured out and ready and I didn’t really do that—I was just doing it for fun and I think that was a natural way to build an audience.
I started posting some images online and my husband helped me start a blog. It was right around the same time when a lot of knitters were getting online with Etsy. Very quickly, I heard from a lot of other knitters who wanted to make what I was making, so I figured out that I could write up a pattern for them and start selling those as PDFs, downloads people could get really easily. It’s been gradually building for the past four years by selling patterns that way and interacting with the other knitters. This year, I had a book that was published and that was taking things to the next level, which was really exciting.
Congrats on the book! Speaking of sharing, I want to know more about the online photo competition. I can’t get over how charming the little situations people create are. How has it been going?
At the beginning when I started distributing my patterns, I started seeing photos that people would take of toys they’d made from my patterns. That was so exciting because I feel like with making a design, the creation becomes the knitter’s own object and they can do what they want with it. People have just done amazing, different kinds of modifications and twists on the patterns very quickly, especially with the toys. People love to make stories around them through pictures. I thought it’d be fun to do a little photo contest as a neat way to show their work, and now this is the fourth time I’ve done it. It’s just kind of fun to share photos and see what people do on their own with simple designs. And then, of course, it’s really fun to shop for cute outfits and then send it out to people.
What initially drew you to Japanese aesthetics?
I went to Japan before Dartmouth as a high school exchange student, and have traveled there numerous times since, so it was something I was interested in.
What inspired you to go on an exchange year in high school?
I guess it’s slightly embarrassing! I grew up in Oklahoma and my family had an exchange student from Japan come live with us for a year. She was really fun and I got along with her great even though I was a bit younger. What really made me want, or, demand that I go to Japan was her mother would send her these care packages and they were full of candy. I just loved the crazy packaging—it was all so colorful and beautiful and of course the candy came in all these exotic flavors that we didn’t have at home, so I was just like, “Wow, this seems like such a magical and wonderful place and I have to go there.”
Did you get inspired during that first trip? What drew you to making characters and figures of inanimate objects in Mochimochi Land?
There are so many creative designs to do with inanimate characters; I remember the first time I went to Japan and I found stationery that had illustrations of pill bottles on them with little pills. The pills were anthropomorphic and I just thought that was so awesome—you don’t find that in the United States. So I’ve always loved the idea of taking something that you would just not find to begin with and then making it into something with a personality. I think it’s pretty easy to make a cute animal and obviously people want to knit that, but I just think it’s fun to take something that you wouldn’t normally think is cute and put that twist on it. For example, I have these smokestacks from my book and they’re called “Cuter Polluters.” It’s fun to think about what the personality of a couch might be, or a rain cloud, and make that into a character.
Do you think that adults prefer to make your anthropomorphized objects?
I do think the adults get into it. I can make the most random thing and I’ll hear from somebody. I made a roll of toilet paper once as a joke—I put a pair of eyes on it, and I heard from like three different people saying, “Oh, I made this for my dad because he worked in a toilet paper manufacturing plant, it’s the perfect thing for him,” and so it seems like anything can be popular.
Why do you prefer to make miniatures? How does that affect the purpose of your pieces?
Lately, I have been making a whole lot of just really tiny things. When they’re so small, like an inch tall, they take no time to make. If you just shrink something, I think it’s instantly more appealing and interesting and people have been reacting positively to that.
Would you consider making larger toys and figures?
I do like making larger stuff, too, because obviously that means you can add more detail and experiment in more ways. For the show that I had in New York this October, it was a chance for me to make really bigger objects, like mountains. I mean, they’re not huge, they’re a couple feet tall, maybe, so I find the big stuff can be really intriguing and charming but it just takes more planning, time and money. I’ve been thinking my next thing is going to be making more giant objects.
How was making the transition from selling toys and patterns to having a show in gallery hanahou in New York this October?
It wasn’t a huge transition because from the beginning, I was feeling very experimental about the whole project. I was just making anything that inspired me. Pretty early on, I made a miniature landscape that had these little lemmings jumping off a cliff—it was exciting that I was able to do that sculpturally. The shows that have happened in gallery hanahou in the past few years that are more fiber or craft art are really popular, so I think more people are seeing a lot of potential in fiber arts. Crafters are picking up different things to do with yarn.
Do you see yourself sticking with knitting as your art, or do you see Mochimochi land moving toward different media?
I’ve done a few other crafts—I’ve designed with cross-stitch, which I also think is really cool, but in general I’ve actually been questioning this. I don’t know what’s next for me, or if I’m really going to just be all about knitting. I don’t have a background in fine arts and I feel like I don’t have a lot of skills in things like illustration, so I’m just going to see where it goes.
I look at your little creations and I immediately think of stop-motion animation!
It’s interesting for you to say that because that’s something I’m actually really interested in. I took some really basic classes in stop-motion in the spring, so I have the essentials down. I think it would be really fun to animate them. With the installation, I felt like I was, in a way, trying to create actions, emotions and interactions, so it seemed like a natural next thing for me. You’re totally thinking what I’m thinking.
Since this interview, Mochimochi Land has been featured in a Japanese commercial! Looks like animation was exactly the next step for Anna’s work.
_________________________
antiques roadshow online
_________________________
leavitt has written for numerous publications, creating her own column, "the dm manual of style" for The Dartmouth as well as a fashion and art blog, "knot", for The Dartmouth Independent.
check out her new blog, causeway road: nostalgia is the new black._________________________
the dartmouth independent
"knot: fashion and art, all tied up"_________________________
REFLECTIONCarry-On Only
BY DYLAN LEAVITT
|
Oct 13, 2011 09:36 PM
Monte Carlo, 1890s. Your boat pulls into the harbor, and your staff begins unloading your luggage: trunks upon trunks of the latest Paris fashions, sure to dazzle the friends whom you must meet for lunch. It had been difficult to choose which bustle would most impress your new acquaintances—that duke and duchess of wherever—so you packed everything and more. Or, rather, your staff did. You are relieved to have your entire wardrobe with you across the sea. The worst problem is not having the right thing to wear.Back in the times of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth and Gwendolen Fairfax, it bordered on a crime for the wealthy and frivolous to not have enough clothing at their disposal. But as corsets loosened and shirt tails shrunk, so did the size of suitcases. Now, trunks have become coffee tables—how I long for you, vintage Louis Vuitton—and packing has become a burden. Suddenly oppressed with the task of moving its own belongings, the modern leisure class has learned to edit down traveling wardrobes to avoid making those extra trips to the fifth floor. For 21st century 20-somethings, increasingly nomadic lifestyles induce wardrobes to shrink even more. As items are packed and re-packed, thrown out and given away, the pared-down wardrobe becomes the entire collection—an extension of a young person's identity, evolving with them as they move and grow.My friend’s brother recently left for his freshman year of college. Islands of clothing sat next to empty boxes and duffle bags—a Pangaea of sorts fluctuating in his childhood bedroom. He asked us (with Lil Wayne in the background) what he should pack: what clothes, what books, a coffee maker, too? “Pack whatever clothes you like,” I said. “And the books? Bring your favorites.” But questions started seeping into my mind. What if there’s a formal? What if he needs a costume? Should he bring hiking gear? How about a suit? When he yelled that he was running out of boxes, I suggested that he pack in laundry baskets. Oh, how Lily Bart would have shuddered!When we don’t travel with all our possessions, packing becomes a therapy session of sorts, a time of self-analysis when we ask, “Do I really need to bring my Spongebob T-shirt?” (The answer: Yes.) At the same time, transience gives one opportunities for renewal and reinvention: leaving certain clothes behind suggests that the ones kept close are more aligned with your image of yourself. What you wear doesn’t define your identity, but it does serve as a projection of it.Leaving for college is the milestone that, for most higher education-bound young adults, provides the first opportunity for renewal. But as this quasi-independence gradually turns into that first post-graduate year, the impermanence of campus-living and vacation periods fades into a lifestyle similarly without serious attachments. Career paths force young adults to constantly reevaluate their finances, location, and aspirations, and when jobs require four days of travel a week, carry-on suitcases serve as the habitats of possessions. Our lives are perpetually nomadic ones, and what we choose to bring along the way serves as a reminder of past and future, eventually coming to constitute a place we call home.Clothing is as transient as our lifestyles, correlating with ever-changing circumstances and goals. Our travels are less predictable than those of our turn-of-the-century predecessors; our attire evolves as such when we transition from Teach for America to a publishing internship. At the same time, certain items hold their importance—my sequin-seduced, pink prom dress is packed away for another time when I need to have some frivolous fun. It's metamorphosis with memory, adaptation with homage to the past.Trunks aren't necessary for our kinds of gallant journeys today. We can improvise as we go along. And as I do, I'll shed some headbands and add some blouses. But for now, my wardrobe is more than an abridged version of my style; it is a puzzle of my hopes and fears, seen in houndstooth, neoprene, cotton, and gray flannel.* * * * *Dylan Hayley Leavitt '11 graduated this spring as a Film & Media Studies major and AMES minor. You can read more about her nack for nostalgia on her blog, Causeway Road, athttp://www.causewayroad.blogspot.com.
TDI INTERVIEW
Lisa Birnbach: The Rules of Prep
BY DYLAN LEAVITT
Oct 29, 2010 12:00 PM"Pleats are wrong. One wears the pants a little short―especially khakis,” instructs Lisa Birnbach’s Official Preppy Handbook (Workman Publishing, 1980). The plaid-bordered book that boasts comical drawings and photos of Lilly fanatics, Mummy and Daddy, “deviant behavior,” and (of course) the perfect Bloody, satirizes―almost too accurately―preppy life of 30 years ago. While brunching and boating are still mainstays of the preppy lifestyle today, things certainly have changed: for instance, now preppies can wear fleece (recycled plastic instead of wool? Who would’ve thought!). Birnbach collaborated with Chip Kidd to record these developments in her hilarious new bestseller, True Prep (Knopf, 2010).While on her book tour this fall, Birnbach took the time to delve into the nuances of prep life―from blue blazers to hipsters―with Knot. Many aspects of economics and education have changed since Birnbach published her first edition, but one thing hasn’t: people love to read rules―especially ones that enumerate stereotypes. The prep world has had to deal with some major changes in the 30 years since you wrote the original Preppy Handbook. With the advent of the internet, evolved education programs, and a very different economic environment, the preppy has had to adapt. How does True Prep reflect the new and old aspects of prep?Originally, we were just going to call the book something about 21st century preppy; it’s less catchy, but the whole point is that the world has changed and we’re trying to keep up. It’s not easy; if my mother didn’t work, I had to choose a different role model because I always worked. All the templates have changed and it’s an exciting time to be alive. But it’s also a very bewildering one. And people―I’ve noticed since writing the first book―really like rules because it gives them an answer to all these big questions. How does one do this? Where should I go for this? I hear from people at book signings that they want even more rules, besides all the ones in the book.Nowadays, many prep schools and colleges are making an effort to include students from diverse backgrounds―financially, culturally, and geographically speaking. So, is everyone who attends a prep school or competitive college still necessarily preppy? Has the meaning of "preppy" been altered?Here’s the headline at every prep school: we are not going to photograph a white population, even if 70% of our students are white. That will not be the story we want to tell everyone because we want to intrigue and woo members of other races to our school. A lot of smaller schools were still single sex 30 years ago; you could be an Exeter woman, but you couldn’t be a Deerfield woman 30 years ago. Prep is always changing and it will continue to change. The population that will enter boarding schools and graduate from them will be more diverse yet. And I guess that’s the point―unless you want to be the person standing at the door saying, “You can’t come in”―which I certainly don’t want to be―we’re going to see a new, bold group of people who are attracted to this way of education and this way of life. I’m not saying that everyone who goes to Exeter is a preppy, but in a technical sense, yes―it’s like saying you’re not but you are. You may feel like, “Oh, preppy is not at all who I am,” but if you’ve gone to prep school, you have the education, you have the polish, you have the background, you have the friends, maybe you have a new sport in your artillery, and technically speaking, you are a preppy. You can fight it, you can dye your hair, you can pierce yourself, you can tattoo yourself, you can move to another country, you can wear only Betsey Johnson dresses or Juicy Couture, but you’re fighting what you already have. And you might get tired of all that―that’s a lot of work, fighting it. I do think that by the time you have a kid, Miss I Went To Boarding School And I Hated It And I Hate My Parents And I Hate This American Culture And I’ve Lived In Guatemala For Seven Years And This Is My Daughter, I wonder if when you go with her for her admission tour, you’ll wonder if you know anybody there, because it’s a great, great thing to give your kids. A great advantage.How has the commodification of prep affected the lifestyle behind it? Since it’s easy to walk into a Ralph Lauren or Vineyard Vines store and buy items that symbolize preppiness, does that mean this lifestyle is more accessible now than it was 30 years ago?If you are in college, you’ve always grown up with a plentitude and abundance of clothes that you can wear if you're preppy, because since you were born, all of these companies have existed except Vineyard Vines (which is a more recent company). But for people who are older, especially for women, it was really hard to find clothes. If you really wanted to dress in a button-down shirt and a pair of khakis, it wasn’t that easy to find. There was always L.L. Bean, but when my mother was growing up, she had to wear Brooks Brothers clothes in the smallest sizes. Mentioning all of these companies shows just how easy it is to dress this way now. But it wasn’t always the case, particularly for women. Additionally, because fashion is returning to a classic American sportswear moment, it does seem like we’re all sort of seeing the same thing at the same time.I make a point throughout the book―and I’m making it while I’m on tour―to say that the clothing is basically the least of it, because the clothing hasn’t changed that much. The clothing story is still the clothing story. It’s still simple clothes, that are better-fitting and have more variety than they did 30 years ago. But the fashion didn’t create this new book―the fashion is more static than the actual world around us because everything else has changed dramatically. The clothing less so.In both the original Preppy Handbook and True Prep, you discuss the "Mummy" character and her role in the household. What does the aesthetic androgyny of preppy clothing say about gender equality in preppy lifestyles?Mummy’s didn’t really work 30 years ago. Mummy was tending the home, Mummy was playing tennis, Mummy was entertaining, Mummy was traveling, Mummy was taking naps after too many Bloody’s in the morning. The mother can very stealthily be in charge of things, or Mummy can be a sort of mad-cap, spoiled woman who’s never really been responsible for anything. I’ve tried to show that the spectrum of Mummy is a big spectrum―even bigger nowadays. She can be one of those women in the “Cook’s Night Out” picture who’s never even investigated her own pantry, who has staff for everything, and only really ever hangs out with her male trainer. Mummy could be somebody who is a barracuda in the boardroom and delegates child rearing to someone else. There’s every variation in between, but I do think a preppy woman can have a lot of power relative to others, particularly if one of the attractions of this woman is her trust fund―because then the power comes from her parents, which goes to her, and Daddy can be sort of an afterthought. Not that it’s a good thing, but it can be.There is a classic prep style associated with Dartmouth and other Ivy League colleges. I’ve noticed, however, that the hipster look has been trickling in lately. Some have joked that hipsters, rather than being true counter-culturalists, are actually ironic preps.It’s funny―I’ve never heard him say it, but I have a son who I think is a hipster, or at least he thinks he’s a hipster. As with a lot of hipsters, there’s a little bit of a posing thing going on: “I’m so cool, I invented vintage clothing,” or “I’m so cool, I invented this interesting pattern of facial hair,” or “I’m so cool, I listen to the coolest music.” Hipsters, of course, can be preppies being self-consciously ironic. So many of the hipsters I see are wearing very wrinkled shirts of any kind and boat shoes, usually Sperry topsiders. And so we say we’re in on the joke! Fine, whatever. There are lots of ways that it’s developmentally appropriate to experiment with your identity and your look, your preferences, when you’re a teenager―late teenager and in your early 20s. That’s part of why we go away to college. Am I going to become a poet? Am I going to experiment sexually? Am I going to experiment with drugs? Am I going to experiment by being a jock? It’s quite a luxury to be able to go away for four years and reinvent yourself. And so hipsters are one of the many iterations of identity you can try on. Hipster is usually a transitory phase in my experience and observation.Foreign consumers are interested in the preppy look, too. This isn’t a new phenomenon―the book Take Ivy (powerHouse, 1965), which is a collection of snapshots from around the Ivy League taken by Japanese photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida, was a big hit overseas. How do you think the foreign perspective has affected prepdom in the last 30 years?Take Ivy―the book I still have never held in my hand. They always interview me about it, I’ve been quoted about it, and I’ve been told I used it as a resource, but I’ve never actually seen it!Well, Take Ivy captures the Ivy League aesthetic of the 60s and brings it overseas as an example of visual anthropology and fashion. Lots of blazers, varsity sweaters, and old architecture. But it also shows how the preppy lifestyle was intriguing from a foreign perspective then. Prep is certainly global. It reflects one of the major changes that has happened in the last 30 years, which is the connectivity we have through the internet contributing to the globalization of everything. My publisher asked me to start Tweeting, which I’ve done semi-reluctantly, and now I see that people reading my Tweets, live, all over the world. I’m thinking, why me? Why would a Brazilian or a Swedish person follow me? Well, I don’t know, but I think that the world has become much smaller and that which is American looks much better, particularly since George Bush left the White House. I suggested to a foreign journalist two weeks ago that because the present administration is regarded as an international one, other governments seem very excited to welcome the Obamas to their countries and, similarly, the American sporty look. I think President and Mrs. Kennedy are very much, to this day, considered international symbols of prep iconography. Now, the closest thing we have to them are Michelle and Barack Obama, who are welcomed with open arms internationally. I think that gives American-looking, classic sportswear an added caché overseas.I have many times seen somebody wearing something just a tiny bit out of the ordinary, but preppy―like a shade of green corduroy that’s just brighter than what I’ve seen in this country, or a wale of corduroy that’s a little different. I’ll just go up to the person and ask them where they got it. And in a heavily accented English, they say they might’ve gotten it in Japan, Italy, Germany, or Spain. It’s amazing―that was never the case before.When we think of preppy style, we think of certain iconic pieces like the navy blazer, the critter pants, and the button-downs. These staples are worn by both men and women. How do these clean styles fit in with contemporary culture in an age when Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian find themselves on magazine covers?I make some points in the book about women who dress really boyish; yes, it’s very much an antidote to the overly sexed-up way that many people dress. How many ads have you seen of men and women in jeans with their fly open? Or in the case of young men sometimes: I was leaving a subway in New York right behind some guy whose jeans were belted around his mid-thigh so you could see all of his underwear. I mean, at that point I have to ask myself, why wear pants? Why not go out in your boxers? There’s the sexification that’s gone on. Preppies don’t wear ankle bracelets with our khakis. We don’t have breast implants. We don’t wear fake tans. We don’t wear the “smoky eye” to breakfast. If I have to look at one other man who’s stretching his ear piercing with those things that are so disgusting... You know, it is sort of nice to see somebody clean now and again, isn’t it?And there’s a tattoo epidemic. I just came back from the West Coast; it’s epidemic. I saw a guy in Chicago whose arm was tattooed so much there was only a stripe of skin. And I’m thinking, why not just wear black clothing? It won’t hurt! So there is something sort of off, and there’s something that’s sort of self-abnegating in all of this; young people in particular are distorting or totally altering their looks in permanent ways that don’t seem―and I hate to sound like somebody else’s mother―but they don’t seem like sound ideas. They sound like something that would be funny at 19 or 22―but when you’re 37, you may not be happy that you have one black arm, or you may not be happy that you have two giant holes in your nose, or that you have those spaces so large that box cars could fit in your ears. I think we just need to sort of clean up.I don’t care what brand it is―it makes no difference to me. I just think there are some guidelines for looking better, cleaner, and nicer. If you see me walking down the street today, I’m wearing gray pants, a white shirt, and a purple sweater. I’m not imposing anything on you. If you see me walking down the street and half my body is tattooed, my hair is dyed black-red, and I have a big bull ring in my nostrils, that’s more aggressive. Preppies are very unaggressive! We like to blend in with our surroundings.
ARTIST INTERVIEWMochimochi Land: Knitting a Clever and Cute World
BY DYLAN LEAVITT
Nov 17, 2010 04:20 PMThe latest caption contest on the Mochimochi Land blog depicts a "Tiny Football" with the prompt, “What does this tiny football contemplate when it’s just been kicked in the mud?” The winning caption? “I really hope that cute pom pom didn’t see that.” Anna Hrachovec ’04 has been developing Mochimochi Land for the past four years, drawing from her interest in Japanese "kawaii" aesthetics, curiosity for characters and knack for knitting. After having been an exchange student in Japan in high school, researched her thesis of Japanese wartime cinema during a summer grant and studied in Japan on a Fulbright scholarship, Anna has poured her love of everything cute, quirky and curious into her fiber art and blog (which has tons of knitting tips, patterns andphotos). Anna showed her Mochimochi Land installation at gallery hanahou in New York this October and published a book, taking what started out as a side project and bringing it to the forefront as a dynamic, unexpected multimedia career. But honestly, who wouldn’t want to spend all their time surrounding themselves with these absolutely adorable characters?
A note to the football: If I did see you kicked in the mud, I wouldn’t laugh. I would dust you off and make you my new best friend.
How did you come up with the idea to make Mochimochi Land?
Early in my knitting career, I was following patterns and making hats and scarves for friends. I was getting tired of just knitting accessories and garments after a while and it felt like everyone already had them. I thought it would be fun to branch out to something a little different, so I came up with the idea for making toys for friends. I started by making a very blob-shaped monster and I really liked the simplicity of a lot of Japanese character design, so that’s really how I started out—using really simple knitting techniques and then finishing with minimalist details like the two black eyes. So I made a few gifts for some friends of mine and I was really hooked. I always liked stuffed animals, so it was fun to figure out how to make them myself. I let myself be passionate about it and I let myself experiment with whatever inspired me. I think that it really led to a lot that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I wouldn’t be doing art now if I didn’t say to myself “Wouldn’t it be cool if I just make this lemming and make it jump off cliffs?”
How did you work on developing your blog? How did the knitting community support you?
I think also just sharing what I was doing with other people online helped. I think some people really hesitate to put themselves out there until they feel like they have everything completely figured out and ready and I didn’t really do that—I was just doing it for fun and I think that was a natural way to build an audience.
I started posting some images online and my husband helped me start a blog. It was right around the same time when a lot of knitters were getting online with Etsy. Very quickly, I heard from a lot of other knitters who wanted to make what I was making, so I figured out that I could write up a pattern for them and start selling those as PDFs, downloads people could get really easily. It’s been gradually building for the past four years by selling patterns that way and interacting with the other knitters. This year, I had a book that was published and that was taking things to the next level, which was really exciting.
Congrats on the book! Speaking of sharing, I want to know more about the online photo competition. I can’t get over how charming the little situations people create are. How has it been going?
At the beginning when I started distributing my patterns, I started seeing photos that people would take of toys they’d made from my patterns. That was so exciting because I feel like with making a design, the creation becomes the knitter’s own object and they can do what they want with it. People have just done amazing, different kinds of modifications and twists on the patterns very quickly, especially with the toys. People love to make stories around them through pictures. I thought it’d be fun to do a little photo contest as a neat way to show their work, and now this is the fourth time I’ve done it. It’s just kind of fun to share photos and see what people do on their own with simple designs. And then, of course, it’s really fun to shop for cute outfits and then send it out to people.
What initially drew you to Japanese aesthetics?
I went to Japan before Dartmouth as a high school exchange student, and have traveled there numerous times since, so it was something I was interested in.
What inspired you to go on an exchange year in high school?
I guess it’s slightly embarrassing! I grew up in Oklahoma and my family had an exchange student from Japan come live with us for a year. She was really fun and I got along with her great even though I was a bit younger. What really made me want, or, demand that I go to Japan was her mother would send her these care packages and they were full of candy. I just loved the crazy packaging—it was all so colorful and beautiful and of course the candy came in all these exotic flavors that we didn’t have at home, so I was just like, “Wow, this seems like such a magical and wonderful place and I have to go there.”
Did you get inspired during that first trip? What drew you to making characters and figures of inanimate objects in Mochimochi Land?
There are so many creative designs to do with inanimate characters; I remember the first time I went to Japan and I found stationery that had illustrations of pill bottles on them with little pills. The pills were anthropomorphic and I just thought that was so awesome—you don’t find that in the United States. So I’ve always loved the idea of taking something that you would just not find to begin with and then making it into something with a personality. I think it’s pretty easy to make a cute animal and obviously people want to knit that, but I just think it’s fun to take something that you wouldn’t normally think is cute and put that twist on it. For example, I have these smokestacks from my book and they’re called “Cuter Polluters.” It’s fun to think about what the personality of a couch might be, or a rain cloud, and make that into a character.
Do you think that adults prefer to make your anthropomorphized objects?
I do think the adults get into it. I can make the most random thing and I’ll hear from somebody. I made a roll of toilet paper once as a joke—I put a pair of eyes on it, and I heard from like three different people saying, “Oh, I made this for my dad because he worked in a toilet paper manufacturing plant, it’s the perfect thing for him,” and so it seems like anything can be popular.
Why do you prefer to make miniatures? How does that affect the purpose of your pieces?
Lately, I have been making a whole lot of just really tiny things. When they’re so small, like an inch tall, they take no time to make. If you just shrink something, I think it’s instantly more appealing and interesting and people have been reacting positively to that.
Would you consider making larger toys and figures?
I do like making larger stuff, too, because obviously that means you can add more detail and experiment in more ways. For the show that I had in New York this October, it was a chance for me to make really bigger objects, like mountains. I mean, they’re not huge, they’re a couple feet tall, maybe, so I find the big stuff can be really intriguing and charming but it just takes more planning, time and money. I’ve been thinking my next thing is going to be making more giant objects.
How was making the transition from selling toys and patterns to having a show in gallery hanahou in New York this October?
It wasn’t a huge transition because from the beginning, I was feeling very experimental about the whole project. I was just making anything that inspired me. Pretty early on, I made a miniature landscape that had these little lemmings jumping off a cliff—it was exciting that I was able to do that sculpturally. The shows that have happened in gallery hanahou in the past few years that are more fiber or craft art are really popular, so I think more people are seeing a lot of potential in fiber arts. Crafters are picking up different things to do with yarn.
Do you see yourself sticking with knitting as your art, or do you see Mochimochi land moving toward different media?
I’ve done a few other crafts—I’ve designed with cross-stitch, which I also think is really cool, but in general I’ve actually been questioning this. I don’t know what’s next for me, or if I’m really going to just be all about knitting. I don’t have a background in fine arts and I feel like I don’t have a lot of skills in things like illustration, so I’m just going to see where it goes.
I look at your little creations and I immediately think of stop-motion animation!
It’s interesting for you to say that because that’s something I’m actually really interested in. I took some really basic classes in stop-motion in the spring, so I have the essentials down. I think it would be really fun to animate them. With the installation, I felt like I was, in a way, trying to create actions, emotions and interactions, so it seemed like a natural next thing for me. You’re totally thinking what I’m thinking.
Since this interview, Mochimochi Land has been featured in a Japanese commercial! Looks like animation was exactly the next step for Anna’s work.
_________________________
leavitt has written for numerous publications, creating her own column, "the dm manual of style" for The Dartmouth as well as a fashion and art blog, "knot", for The Dartmouth Independent.
check out her new blog, causeway road: nostalgia is the new black._________________________
the dartmouth independent
"knot: fashion and art, all tied up"_________________________
REFLECTIONCarry-On Only
BY DYLAN LEAVITT
|
Oct 13, 2011 09:36 PM
Monte Carlo, 1890s. Your boat pulls into the harbor, and your staff begins unloading your luggage: trunks upon trunks of the latest Paris fashions, sure to dazzle the friends whom you must meet for lunch. It had been difficult to choose which bustle would most impress your new acquaintances—that duke and duchess of wherever—so you packed everything and more. Or, rather, your staff did. You are relieved to have your entire wardrobe with you across the sea. The worst problem is not having the right thing to wear.Back in the times of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth and Gwendolen Fairfax, it bordered on a crime for the wealthy and frivolous to not have enough clothing at their disposal. But as corsets loosened and shirt tails shrunk, so did the size of suitcases. Now, trunks have become coffee tables—how I long for you, vintage Louis Vuitton—and packing has become a burden. Suddenly oppressed with the task of moving its own belongings, the modern leisure class has learned to edit down traveling wardrobes to avoid making those extra trips to the fifth floor. For 21st century 20-somethings, increasingly nomadic lifestyles induce wardrobes to shrink even more. As items are packed and re-packed, thrown out and given away, the pared-down wardrobe becomes the entire collection—an extension of a young person's identity, evolving with them as they move and grow.My friend’s brother recently left for his freshman year of college. Islands of clothing sat next to empty boxes and duffle bags—a Pangaea of sorts fluctuating in his childhood bedroom. He asked us (with Lil Wayne in the background) what he should pack: what clothes, what books, a coffee maker, too? “Pack whatever clothes you like,” I said. “And the books? Bring your favorites.” But questions started seeping into my mind. What if there’s a formal? What if he needs a costume? Should he bring hiking gear? How about a suit? When he yelled that he was running out of boxes, I suggested that he pack in laundry baskets. Oh, how Lily Bart would have shuddered!When we don’t travel with all our possessions, packing becomes a therapy session of sorts, a time of self-analysis when we ask, “Do I really need to bring my Spongebob T-shirt?” (The answer: Yes.) At the same time, transience gives one opportunities for renewal and reinvention: leaving certain clothes behind suggests that the ones kept close are more aligned with your image of yourself. What you wear doesn’t define your identity, but it does serve as a projection of it.Leaving for college is the milestone that, for most higher education-bound young adults, provides the first opportunity for renewal. But as this quasi-independence gradually turns into that first post-graduate year, the impermanence of campus-living and vacation periods fades into a lifestyle similarly without serious attachments. Career paths force young adults to constantly reevaluate their finances, location, and aspirations, and when jobs require four days of travel a week, carry-on suitcases serve as the habitats of possessions. Our lives are perpetually nomadic ones, and what we choose to bring along the way serves as a reminder of past and future, eventually coming to constitute a place we call home.Clothing is as transient as our lifestyles, correlating with ever-changing circumstances and goals. Our travels are less predictable than those of our turn-of-the-century predecessors; our attire evolves as such when we transition from Teach for America to a publishing internship. At the same time, certain items hold their importance—my sequin-seduced, pink prom dress is packed away for another time when I need to have some frivolous fun. It's metamorphosis with memory, adaptation with homage to the past.Trunks aren't necessary for our kinds of gallant journeys today. We can improvise as we go along. And as I do, I'll shed some headbands and add some blouses. But for now, my wardrobe is more than an abridged version of my style; it is a puzzle of my hopes and fears, seen in houndstooth, neoprene, cotton, and gray flannel.* * * * *Dylan Hayley Leavitt '11 graduated this spring as a Film & Media Studies major and AMES minor. You can read more about her nack for nostalgia on her blog, Causeway Road, athttp://www.causewayroad.blogspot.com.
TDI INTERVIEW
leavitt has written for numerous publications, creating her own column, "the dm manual of style" for The Dartmouth as well as a fashion and art blog, "knot", for The Dartmouth Independent.
check out her new blog, causeway road: nostalgia is the new black._________________________
the dartmouth independent
"knot: fashion and art, all tied up"
_________________________
REFLECTION
Carry-On Only
BY DYLAN LEAVITT
|Oct 13, 2011 09:36 PM
Monte Carlo, 1890s. Your boat pulls into the harbor, and your staff begins unloading your luggage: trunks upon trunks of the latest Paris fashions, sure to dazzle the friends whom you must meet for lunch. It had been difficult to choose which bustle would most impress your new acquaintances—that duke and duchess of wherever—so you packed everything and more. Or, rather, your staff did. You are relieved to have your entire wardrobe with you across the sea. The worst problem is not having the right thing to wear.
Back in the times of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth and Gwendolen Fairfax, it bordered on a crime for the wealthy and frivolous to not have enough clothing at their disposal. But as corsets loosened and shirt tails shrunk, so did the size of suitcases. Now, trunks have become coffee tables—how I long for you, vintage Louis Vuitton—and packing has become a burden. Suddenly oppressed with the task of moving its own belongings, the modern leisure class has learned to edit down traveling wardrobes to avoid making those extra trips to the fifth floor. For 21st century 20-somethings, increasingly nomadic lifestyles induce wardrobes to shrink even more. As items are packed and re-packed, thrown out and given away, the pared-down wardrobe becomes the entire collection—an extension of a young person's identity, evolving with them as they move and grow.
My friend’s brother recently left for his freshman year of college. Islands of clothing sat next to empty boxes and duffle bags—a Pangaea of sorts fluctuating in his childhood bedroom. He asked us (with Lil Wayne in the background) what he should pack: what clothes, what books, a coffee maker, too? “Pack whatever clothes you like,” I said. “And the books? Bring your favorites.” But questions started seeping into my mind. What if there’s a formal? What if he needs a costume? Should he bring hiking gear? How about a suit? When he yelled that he was running out of boxes, I suggested that he pack in laundry baskets. Oh, how Lily Bart would have shuddered!
When we don’t travel with all our possessions, packing becomes a therapy session of sorts, a time of self-analysis when we ask, “Do I really need to bring my Spongebob T-shirt?” (The answer: Yes.) At the same time, transience gives one opportunities for renewal and reinvention: leaving certain clothes behind suggests that the ones kept close are more aligned with your image of yourself. What you wear doesn’t define your identity, but it does serve as a projection of it.
Leaving for college is the milestone that, for most higher education-bound young adults, provides the first opportunity for renewal. But as this quasi-independence gradually turns into that first post-graduate year, the impermanence of campus-living and vacation periods fades into a lifestyle similarly without serious attachments. Career paths force young adults to constantly reevaluate their finances, location, and aspirations, and when jobs require four days of travel a week, carry-on suitcases serve as the habitats of possessions. Our lives are perpetually nomadic ones, and what we choose to bring along the way serves as a reminder of past and future, eventually coming to constitute a place we call home.
Clothing is as transient as our lifestyles, correlating with ever-changing circumstances and goals. Our travels are less predictable than those of our turn-of-the-century predecessors; our attire evolves as such when we transition from Teach for America to a publishing internship. At the same time, certain items hold their importance—my sequin-seduced, pink prom dress is packed away for another time when I need to have some frivolous fun. It's metamorphosis with memory, adaptation with homage to the past.
Trunks aren't necessary for our kinds of gallant journeys today. We can improvise as we go along. And as I do, I'll shed some headbands and add some blouses. But for now, my wardrobe is more than an abridged version of my style; it is a puzzle of my hopes and fears, seen in houndstooth, neoprene, cotton, and gray flannel.
* * * * *
Dylan Hayley Leavitt '11 graduated this spring as a Film & Media Studies major and AMES minor. You can read more about her nack for nostalgia on her blog, Causeway Road, athttp://www.causewayroad.blogspot.com.
Lisa Birnbach: The Rules of Prep
BY DYLAN LEAVITT
Oct 29, 2010 12:00 PM
"Pleats are wrong. One wears the pants a little short―especially khakis,” instructs Lisa Birnbach’s Official Preppy Handbook (Workman Publishing, 1980). The plaid-bordered book that boasts comical drawings and photos of Lilly fanatics, Mummy and Daddy, “deviant behavior,” and (of course) the perfect Bloody, satirizes―almost too accurately―preppy life of 30 years ago. While brunching and boating are still mainstays of the preppy lifestyle today, things certainly have changed: for instance, now preppies can wear fleece (recycled plastic instead of wool? Who would’ve thought!). Birnbach collaborated with Chip Kidd to record these developments in her hilarious new bestseller, True Prep (Knopf, 2010).
While on her book tour this fall, Birnbach took the time to delve into the nuances of prep life―from blue blazers to hipsters―with Knot. Many aspects of economics and education have changed since Birnbach published her first edition, but one thing hasn’t: people love to read rules―especially ones that enumerate stereotypes.
The prep world has had to deal with some major changes in the 30 years since you wrote the original Preppy Handbook. With the advent of the internet, evolved education programs, and a very different economic environment, the preppy has had to adapt. How does True Prep reflect the new and old aspects of prep?
Originally, we were just going to call the book something about 21st century preppy; it’s less catchy, but the whole point is that the world has changed and we’re trying to keep up. It’s not easy; if my mother didn’t work, I had to choose a different role model because I always worked. All the templates have changed and it’s an exciting time to be alive. But it’s also a very bewildering one. And people―I’ve noticed since writing the first book―really like rules because it gives them an answer to all these big questions. How does one do this? Where should I go for this? I hear from people at book signings that they want even more rules, besides all the ones in the book.
Nowadays, many prep schools and colleges are making an effort to include students from diverse backgrounds―financially, culturally, and geographically speaking. So, is everyone who attends a prep school or competitive college still necessarily preppy? Has the meaning of "preppy" been altered?
Here’s the headline at every prep school: we are not going to photograph a white population, even if 70% of our students are white. That will not be the story we want to tell everyone because we want to intrigue and woo members of other races to our school. A lot of smaller schools were still single sex 30 years ago; you could be an Exeter woman, but you couldn’t be a Deerfield woman 30 years ago. Prep is always changing and it will continue to change. The population that will enter boarding schools and graduate from them will be more diverse yet. And I guess that’s the point―unless you want to be the person standing at the door saying, “You can’t come in”―which I certainly don’t want to be―we’re going to see a new, bold group of people who are attracted to this way of education and this way of life. I’m not saying that everyone who goes to Exeter is a preppy, but in a technical sense, yes―it’s like saying you’re not but you are. You may feel like, “Oh, preppy is not at all who I am,” but if you’ve gone to prep school, you have the education, you have the polish, you have the background, you have the friends, maybe you have a new sport in your artillery, and technically speaking, you are a preppy. You can fight it, you can dye your hair, you can pierce yourself, you can tattoo yourself, you can move to another country, you can wear only Betsey Johnson dresses or Juicy Couture, but you’re fighting what you already have. And you might get tired of all that―that’s a lot of work, fighting it. I do think that by the time you have a kid, Miss I Went To Boarding School And I Hated It And I Hate My Parents And I Hate This American Culture And I’ve Lived In Guatemala For Seven Years And This Is My Daughter, I wonder if when you go with her for her admission tour, you’ll wonder if you know anybody there, because it’s a great, great thing to give your kids. A great advantage.
How has the commodification of prep affected the lifestyle behind it? Since it’s easy to walk into a Ralph Lauren or Vineyard Vines store and buy items that symbolize preppiness, does that mean this lifestyle is more accessible now than it was 30 years ago?
If you are in college, you’ve always grown up with a plentitude and abundance of clothes that you can wear if you're preppy, because since you were born, all of these companies have existed except Vineyard Vines (which is a more recent company). But for people who are older, especially for women, it was really hard to find clothes. If you really wanted to dress in a button-down shirt and a pair of khakis, it wasn’t that easy to find. There was always L.L. Bean, but when my mother was growing up, she had to wear Brooks Brothers clothes in the smallest sizes. Mentioning all of these companies shows just how easy it is to dress this way now. But it wasn’t always the case, particularly for women. Additionally, because fashion is returning to a classic American sportswear moment, it does seem like we’re all sort of seeing the same thing at the same time.
I make a point throughout the book―and I’m making it while I’m on tour―to say that the clothing is basically the least of it, because the clothing hasn’t changed that much. The clothing story is still the clothing story. It’s still simple clothes, that are better-fitting and have more variety than they did 30 years ago. But the fashion didn’t create this new book―the fashion is more static than the actual world around us because everything else has changed dramatically. The clothing less so.
In both the original Preppy Handbook and True Prep, you discuss the "Mummy" character and her role in the household. What does the aesthetic androgyny of preppy clothing say about gender equality in preppy lifestyles?
Mummy’s didn’t really work 30 years ago. Mummy was tending the home, Mummy was playing tennis, Mummy was entertaining, Mummy was traveling, Mummy was taking naps after too many Bloody’s in the morning. The mother can very stealthily be in charge of things, or Mummy can be a sort of mad-cap, spoiled woman who’s never really been responsible for anything. I’ve tried to show that the spectrum of Mummy is a big spectrum―even bigger nowadays. She can be one of those women in the “Cook’s Night Out” picture who’s never even investigated her own pantry, who has staff for everything, and only really ever hangs out with her male trainer. Mummy could be somebody who is a barracuda in the boardroom and delegates child rearing to someone else. There’s every variation in between, but I do think a preppy woman can have a lot of power relative to others, particularly if one of the attractions of this woman is her trust fund―because then the power comes from her parents, which goes to her, and Daddy can be sort of an afterthought. Not that it’s a good thing, but it can be.
There is a classic prep style associated with Dartmouth and other Ivy League colleges. I’ve noticed, however, that the hipster look has been trickling in lately. Some have joked that hipsters, rather than being true counter-culturalists, are actually ironic preps.
It’s funny―I’ve never heard him say it, but I have a son who I think is a hipster, or at least he thinks he’s a hipster. As with a lot of hipsters, there’s a little bit of a posing thing going on: “I’m so cool, I invented vintage clothing,” or “I’m so cool, I invented this interesting pattern of facial hair,” or “I’m so cool, I listen to the coolest music.” Hipsters, of course, can be preppies being self-consciously ironic. So many of the hipsters I see are wearing very wrinkled shirts of any kind and boat shoes, usually Sperry topsiders. And so we say we’re in on the joke! Fine, whatever. There are lots of ways that it’s developmentally appropriate to experiment with your identity and your look, your preferences, when you’re a teenager―late teenager and in your early 20s. That’s part of why we go away to college. Am I going to become a poet? Am I going to experiment sexually? Am I going to experiment with drugs? Am I going to experiment by being a jock? It’s quite a luxury to be able to go away for four years and reinvent yourself. And so hipsters are one of the many iterations of identity you can try on. Hipster is usually a transitory phase in my experience and observation.
Foreign consumers are interested in the preppy look, too. This isn’t a new phenomenon―the book Take Ivy (powerHouse, 1965), which is a collection of snapshots from around the Ivy League taken by Japanese photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida, was a big hit overseas. How do you think the foreign perspective has affected prepdom in the last 30 years?
Take Ivy―the book I still have never held in my hand. They always interview me about it, I’ve been quoted about it, and I’ve been told I used it as a resource, but I’ve never actually seen it!
Well, Take Ivy captures the Ivy League aesthetic of the 60s and brings it overseas as an example of visual anthropology and fashion. Lots of blazers, varsity sweaters, and old architecture. But it also shows how the preppy lifestyle was intriguing from a foreign perspective then.
Prep is certainly global. It reflects one of the major changes that has happened in the last 30 years, which is the connectivity we have through the internet contributing to the globalization of everything. My publisher asked me to start Tweeting, which I’ve done semi-reluctantly, and now I see that people reading my Tweets, live, all over the world. I’m thinking, why me? Why would a Brazilian or a Swedish person follow me? Well, I don’t know, but I think that the world has become much smaller and that which is American looks much better, particularly since George Bush left the White House. I suggested to a foreign journalist two weeks ago that because the present administration is regarded as an international one, other governments seem very excited to welcome the Obamas to their countries and, similarly, the American sporty look. I think President and Mrs. Kennedy are very much, to this day, considered international symbols of prep iconography. Now, the closest thing we have to them are Michelle and Barack Obama, who are welcomed with open arms internationally. I think that gives American-looking, classic sportswear an added caché overseas.
I have many times seen somebody wearing something just a tiny bit out of the ordinary, but preppy―like a shade of green corduroy that’s just brighter than what I’ve seen in this country, or a wale of corduroy that’s a little different. I’ll just go up to the person and ask them where they got it. And in a heavily accented English, they say they might’ve gotten it in Japan, Italy, Germany, or Spain. It’s amazing―that was never the case before.
When we think of preppy style, we think of certain iconic pieces like the navy blazer, the critter pants, and the button-downs. These staples are worn by both men and women. How do these clean styles fit in with contemporary culture in an age when Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian find themselves on magazine covers?
I make some points in the book about women who dress really boyish; yes, it’s very much an antidote to the overly sexed-up way that many people dress. How many ads have you seen of men and women in jeans with their fly open? Or in the case of young men sometimes: I was leaving a subway in New York right behind some guy whose jeans were belted around his mid-thigh so you could see all of his underwear. I mean, at that point I have to ask myself, why wear pants? Why not go out in your boxers? There’s the sexification that’s gone on. Preppies don’t wear ankle bracelets with our khakis. We don’t have breast implants. We don’t wear fake tans. We don’t wear the “smoky eye” to breakfast. If I have to look at one other man who’s stretching his ear piercing with those things that are so disgusting... You know, it is sort of nice to see somebody clean now and again, isn’t it?
And there’s a tattoo epidemic. I just came back from the West Coast; it’s epidemic. I saw a guy in Chicago whose arm was tattooed so much there was only a stripe of skin. And I’m thinking, why not just wear black clothing? It won’t hurt! So there is something sort of off, and there’s something that’s sort of self-abnegating in all of this; young people in particular are distorting or totally altering their looks in permanent ways that don’t seem―and I hate to sound like somebody else’s mother―but they don’t seem like sound ideas. They sound like something that would be funny at 19 or 22―but when you’re 37, you may not be happy that you have one black arm, or you may not be happy that you have two giant holes in your nose, or that you have those spaces so large that box cars could fit in your ears. I think we just need to sort of clean up.
I don’t care what brand it is―it makes no difference to me. I just think there are some guidelines for looking better, cleaner, and nicer. If you see me walking down the street today, I’m wearing gray pants, a white shirt, and a purple sweater. I’m not imposing anything on you. If you see me walking down the street and half my body is tattooed, my hair is dyed black-red, and I have a big bull ring in my nostrils, that’s more aggressive. Preppies are very unaggressive! We like to blend in with our surroundings.
ARTIST INTERVIEW
Mochimochi Land: Knitting a Clever and Cute World
BY DYLAN LEAVITT
Nov 17, 2010 04:20 PM
The latest caption contest on the Mochimochi Land blog depicts a "Tiny Football" with the prompt, “What does this tiny football contemplate when it’s just been kicked in the mud?” The winning caption? “I really hope that cute pom pom didn’t see that.” Anna Hrachovec ’04 has been developing Mochimochi Land for the past four years, drawing from her interest in Japanese "kawaii" aesthetics, curiosity for characters and knack for knitting. After having been an exchange student in Japan in high school, researched her thesis of Japanese wartime cinema during a summer grant and studied in Japan on a Fulbright scholarship, Anna has poured her love of everything cute, quirky and curious into her fiber art and blog (which has tons of knitting tips, patterns andphotos). Anna showed her Mochimochi Land installation at gallery hanahou in New York this October and published a book, taking what started out as a side project and bringing it to the forefront as a dynamic, unexpected multimedia career. But honestly, who wouldn’t want to spend all their time surrounding themselves with these absolutely adorable characters?
A note to the football: If I did see you kicked in the mud, I wouldn’t laugh. I would dust you off and make you my new best friend.
How did you come up with the idea to make Mochimochi Land?
Early in my knitting career, I was following patterns and making hats and scarves for friends. I was getting tired of just knitting accessories and garments after a while and it felt like everyone already had them. I thought it would be fun to branch out to something a little different, so I came up with the idea for making toys for friends. I started by making a very blob-shaped monster and I really liked the simplicity of a lot of Japanese character design, so that’s really how I started out—using really simple knitting techniques and then finishing with minimalist details like the two black eyes. So I made a few gifts for some friends of mine and I was really hooked. I always liked stuffed animals, so it was fun to figure out how to make them myself. I let myself be passionate about it and I let myself experiment with whatever inspired me. I think that it really led to a lot that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I wouldn’t be doing art now if I didn’t say to myself “Wouldn’t it be cool if I just make this lemming and make it jump off cliffs?”
How did you work on developing your blog? How did the knitting community support you?
I think also just sharing what I was doing with other people online helped. I think some people really hesitate to put themselves out there until they feel like they have everything completely figured out and ready and I didn’t really do that—I was just doing it for fun and I think that was a natural way to build an audience.
I started posting some images online and my husband helped me start a blog. It was right around the same time when a lot of knitters were getting online with Etsy. Very quickly, I heard from a lot of other knitters who wanted to make what I was making, so I figured out that I could write up a pattern for them and start selling those as PDFs, downloads people could get really easily. It’s been gradually building for the past four years by selling patterns that way and interacting with the other knitters. This year, I had a book that was published and that was taking things to the next level, which was really exciting.
Congrats on the book! Speaking of sharing, I want to know more about the online photo competition. I can’t get over how charming the little situations people create are. How has it been going?
At the beginning when I started distributing my patterns, I started seeing photos that people would take of toys they’d made from my patterns. That was so exciting because I feel like with making a design, the creation becomes the knitter’s own object and they can do what they want with it. People have just done amazing, different kinds of modifications and twists on the patterns very quickly, especially with the toys. People love to make stories around them through pictures. I thought it’d be fun to do a little photo contest as a neat way to show their work, and now this is the fourth time I’ve done it. It’s just kind of fun to share photos and see what people do on their own with simple designs. And then, of course, it’s really fun to shop for cute outfits and then send it out to people.
What initially drew you to Japanese aesthetics?
I went to Japan before Dartmouth as a high school exchange student, and have traveled there numerous times since, so it was something I was interested in.
What inspired you to go on an exchange year in high school?
I guess it’s slightly embarrassing! I grew up in Oklahoma and my family had an exchange student from Japan come live with us for a year. She was really fun and I got along with her great even though I was a bit younger. What really made me want, or, demand that I go to Japan was her mother would send her these care packages and they were full of candy. I just loved the crazy packaging—it was all so colorful and beautiful and of course the candy came in all these exotic flavors that we didn’t have at home, so I was just like, “Wow, this seems like such a magical and wonderful place and I have to go there.”
Did you get inspired during that first trip? What drew you to making characters and figures of inanimate objects in Mochimochi Land?
There are so many creative designs to do with inanimate characters; I remember the first time I went to Japan and I found stationery that had illustrations of pill bottles on them with little pills. The pills were anthropomorphic and I just thought that was so awesome—you don’t find that in the United States. So I’ve always loved the idea of taking something that you would just not find to begin with and then making it into something with a personality. I think it’s pretty easy to make a cute animal and obviously people want to knit that, but I just think it’s fun to take something that you wouldn’t normally think is cute and put that twist on it. For example, I have these smokestacks from my book and they’re called “Cuter Polluters.” It’s fun to think about what the personality of a couch might be, or a rain cloud, and make that into a character.
Do you think that adults prefer to make your anthropomorphized objects?
I do think the adults get into it. I can make the most random thing and I’ll hear from somebody. I made a roll of toilet paper once as a joke—I put a pair of eyes on it, and I heard from like three different people saying, “Oh, I made this for my dad because he worked in a toilet paper manufacturing plant, it’s the perfect thing for him,” and so it seems like anything can be popular.
Why do you prefer to make miniatures? How does that affect the purpose of your pieces?
Lately, I have been making a whole lot of just really tiny things. When they’re so small, like an inch tall, they take no time to make. If you just shrink something, I think it’s instantly more appealing and interesting and people have been reacting positively to that.
Would you consider making larger toys and figures?
I do like making larger stuff, too, because obviously that means you can add more detail and experiment in more ways. For the show that I had in New York this October, it was a chance for me to make really bigger objects, like mountains. I mean, they’re not huge, they’re a couple feet tall, maybe, so I find the big stuff can be really intriguing and charming but it just takes more planning, time and money. I’ve been thinking my next thing is going to be making more giant objects.
How was making the transition from selling toys and patterns to having a show in gallery hanahou in New York this October?
It wasn’t a huge transition because from the beginning, I was feeling very experimental about the whole project. I was just making anything that inspired me. Pretty early on, I made a miniature landscape that had these little lemmings jumping off a cliff—it was exciting that I was able to do that sculpturally. The shows that have happened in gallery hanahou in the past few years that are more fiber or craft art are really popular, so I think more people are seeing a lot of potential in fiber arts. Crafters are picking up different things to do with yarn.
Do you see yourself sticking with knitting as your art, or do you see Mochimochi land moving toward different media?
I’ve done a few other crafts—I’ve designed with cross-stitch, which I also think is really cool, but in general I’ve actually been questioning this. I don’t know what’s next for me, or if I’m really going to just be all about knitting. I don’t have a background in fine arts and I feel like I don’t have a lot of skills in things like illustration, so I’m just going to see where it goes.
I look at your little creations and I immediately think of stop-motion animation!
It’s interesting for you to say that because that’s something I’m actually really interested in. I took some really basic classes in stop-motion in the spring, so I have the essentials down. I think it would be really fun to animate them. With the installation, I felt like I was, in a way, trying to create actions, emotions and interactions, so it seemed like a natural next thing for me. You’re totally thinking what I’m thinking.
Since this interview, Mochimochi Land has been featured in a Japanese commercial! Looks like animation was exactly the next step for Anna’s work.
antiques roadshow online
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Tips of the Trade
Collecting Vintage Clothing
POSTED: 6.07.2010
A 1980s couture party dress by Valentino.
Valentino's very simple couture label.
A silk jersey evening gown, ca. 1973, by the Parisian couture designer Madame Grès. Established in Paris in the 1940s, Madame Grès produced classic and elegant couture designs for famous women like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Grès was known for sculpting fabric directly on model's bodies, making each dress a unique piece of art.
The Madame Grès gown has a built-in corset.Vintage, second-hand, used. These words are now practically interchangeable, as collecting clothes from yesteryear has become a part of mainstream fashion. "It's come to mean to the generation of 20-somethings garments which are pre-owned," says ROADSHOW appraiser Karen Augusta, of Augusta Auctions. "Vintage, to me, means that the clothing is at least 30 years old and wearable; antique clothing to me is a piece that predates the 1940. To call a piece vintage, use the 30-year rule: anything newer is used clothing."Fellow ROADSHOW appraiser Beth Szescila says she sees "vintage" as a sort of marketing term: "It sounds much more elegant and appealing than 'old clothing.'" Today, even the acid-wash jeans that you probably threw out yesterday are deemed vintage. "Today's vintage clothing shows are very different in appearance than they were in the late 1970s through the mid 1990s," Augusta says, "In the mid-to-late 1990s, I started seeing more contemporary pieces."Study before you buy. Knowledge can save you from expensive mistakesVintage clothing can be found in numerous locales and in countless conditions; it may have been worn, or it may be from "dead stock", which refers to clothing from another era that was never sold and may have its original packaging. "If the clothing has been used, it needs to be in very good condition to appeal to collectors" Szescila says.Understanding couture
Couture is another fancy fashion term whose definition has become hazy in recent years. "The public thinks couture is very expensive and by a famous designer," Augusta says. And those things are true, but the full meaning of the term goes beyond high price tags and glitzy brand names. Couture is clothing made to measure for one client by a designer who has been formally accepted into the French couture world. "These garments were made by fashion houses in Paris with at least 15 employees and were very, very expensive, well out of the price range of all but the very wealthy," Szescila says. Today, she notes, there are only 10 officially sanctioned haute couture fashion houses in existence.It's nearly impossible to find couture by Madame Grés and other similar designers in regular vintage shops because the dresses themselves are so rare. Plus, many couture pieces lack labels, or if they are labeled, the text may be simpler than designers' typical labels. "If a dress is couture, its label will be marked with a model number that is archived by the design house," Augusta points out. "By looking it up, the couture house can determine when it was made and often for whom it was made." If there isn't a label and model number, often the interior construction will tell if the piece is couture or not. Some designers always lined their clothing in chiffon, or had a hand-stitched satin binding on seam's edges. For example, evening dresses made by Christian Dior in the mid-20th century all had handmade, built-in corsets.What to look for ...
Keep an eye out for pieces by recent designers who are near the end of their careers but still have a strong public following. Browse the racks for garments by Yves Saint Laurent, even his less expensive prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) Rive Gauche line, and also pieces by Valentino.Search for a piece that is an iconic symbol of its particular decade, ones that as soon as you see it, you immediately know the era it belongs to. Augusta says, "When you think of the 1950s as saddle shoes and circle skirts, those items didn't have designer names, but they are iconic pieces of the decade." The designs of a Versace or Thierry Mugler dress exemplify the 80s disco era. English "mod" clothes from the 60s and 70s are wise to collect, especially clothing by British designers like Vivienne Westwood, noted for her original punk aesthetic, and Thea Porter or Bill Gibb, both 1970s designers who captured the look of the hippie era. "At auction one can still find collectible, affordable garments; in another 10 to 20 years their values could easily soar," Augusta says.Other very popular designers are not quite as collectible. Despite elegance and fine craftsmanship, certain vintage clothes are destined to remain comparably inexpensive. "Garments by Giorgio Armani, other than his Armani Privé label, or by Ralph Lauren, are beautiful, but they aren't seriously investment-worthy," Augusta says.Szescila notes that sales of designer clothing from the 1980s are just beginning to pick up. "Such clothing must not look dowdy or like it was made for an elderly woman," she says "many young women today enjoy wearing vintage clothing, so it needs to be youthful and somewhat sexy."Beware online
It's a gamble to purchase vintage clothing online — especially if it claims to be couture — from someone you don't know. Images can deceive, and it's impossible to be sure of condition, fabric, and construction unless you can personally inspect the garment. "Ebay is very risky," Augusta says. "I've seen people selling things that are not what they say they are, either because they don't know or sometimes because they're just hoping for a quick sale."Celebrities and college students alike have been drawn to vintage stores across the nation, ranging from highly culled boutique collections to local Goodwill shops. Not that long ago, thrift shopping was looked down upon by the mainstream public. It was a counter-culture practice that now is an acceptable, cool, and green way to shop. Anyone can walk into a local thrift store and pay pennies for an old microfiber shirt — or spend thousands of dollars on a rare couture piece at auction or a dealer's shop. It's the ability and knowledge to recognize that special garment and purchase it for a smart price — it's finding that beautiful item for a great price that separates the experts from the novices. It's all in the touch.Rules of Thumb ...Before buying a vintage garment:- Study before you buy. Knowledge can save you from expensive mistakes!
- Learn how to determine true high-quality fabrics and construction, and accurate age. Museum clothing exhibits are excellent teachers and often vintage clothing dealers are willing to share their expertise
- Check for missing beads or buttons, holes, stains and alterations
- Make sure the label is original; some less-than-honest dealers will stitch designer labels into non-designer clothes.
To preserve your vintage garment:- Air it out after purchase
- Do up all zippers, buttons and closings
- If you have a vintage garment dry-cleaned, be sure to choose someone who specializes in delicate or antique textiles
- Store garments away from sunlight, in a cool, dry place to avoid fading and fiber damage
- Use padded hangers and muslin covers for sturdy garments
- Use flat storage for fragile and beaded garments
- If an item is folded, it should be refolded differently every 6 months, since folded areas of fabric are weakened due to added stress
- Do not store garments in plastic, to avoid mold and mildew
- To avoid chemical damage when flat-storing garments, use acid-free paper between layers and store in an acid-free box. If acid-free materials are unavailable, cotton or linen sheets also work well
Check out a selection of vintage and antique garments (some famous!) in ourROADSHOW Video Archive » 
All images courtesy of Karen Augusta
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POSTED: 6.07.2010
A 1980s couture party dress by Valentino.
Valentino's very simple couture label.
A silk jersey evening gown, ca. 1973, by the Parisian couture designer Madame Grès. Established in Paris in the 1940s, Madame Grès produced classic and elegant couture designs for famous women like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Grès was known for sculpting fabric directly on model's bodies, making each dress a unique piece of art.
The Madame Grès gown has a built-in corset.
Vintage, second-hand, used. These words are now practically interchangeable, as collecting clothes from yesteryear has become a part of mainstream fashion. "It's come to mean to the generation of 20-somethings garments which are pre-owned," says ROADSHOW appraiser Karen Augusta, of Augusta Auctions. "Vintage, to me, means that the clothing is at least 30 years old and wearable; antique clothing to me is a piece that predates the 1940. To call a piece vintage, use the 30-year rule: anything newer is used clothing."
Fellow ROADSHOW appraiser Beth Szescila says she sees "vintage" as a sort of marketing term: "It sounds much more elegant and appealing than 'old clothing.'" Today, even the acid-wash jeans that you probably threw out yesterday are deemed vintage. "Today's vintage clothing shows are very different in appearance than they were in the late 1970s through the mid 1990s," Augusta says, "In the mid-to-late 1990s, I started seeing more contemporary pieces."
Study before you buy. Knowledge can save you from expensive mistakes
Vintage clothing can be found in numerous locales and in countless conditions; it may have been worn, or it may be from "dead stock", which refers to clothing from another era that was never sold and may have its original packaging. "If the clothing has been used, it needs to be in very good condition to appeal to collectors" Szescila says.
Understanding couture
Couture is another fancy fashion term whose definition has become hazy in recent years. "The public thinks couture is very expensive and by a famous designer," Augusta says. And those things are true, but the full meaning of the term goes beyond high price tags and glitzy brand names. Couture is clothing made to measure for one client by a designer who has been formally accepted into the French couture world. "These garments were made by fashion houses in Paris with at least 15 employees and were very, very expensive, well out of the price range of all but the very wealthy," Szescila says. Today, she notes, there are only 10 officially sanctioned haute couture fashion houses in existence.
Couture is another fancy fashion term whose definition has become hazy in recent years. "The public thinks couture is very expensive and by a famous designer," Augusta says. And those things are true, but the full meaning of the term goes beyond high price tags and glitzy brand names. Couture is clothing made to measure for one client by a designer who has been formally accepted into the French couture world. "These garments were made by fashion houses in Paris with at least 15 employees and were very, very expensive, well out of the price range of all but the very wealthy," Szescila says. Today, she notes, there are only 10 officially sanctioned haute couture fashion houses in existence.
It's nearly impossible to find couture by Madame Grés and other similar designers in regular vintage shops because the dresses themselves are so rare. Plus, many couture pieces lack labels, or if they are labeled, the text may be simpler than designers' typical labels. "If a dress is couture, its label will be marked with a model number that is archived by the design house," Augusta points out. "By looking it up, the couture house can determine when it was made and often for whom it was made." If there isn't a label and model number, often the interior construction will tell if the piece is couture or not. Some designers always lined their clothing in chiffon, or had a hand-stitched satin binding on seam's edges. For example, evening dresses made by Christian Dior in the mid-20th century all had handmade, built-in corsets.
What to look for ...
Keep an eye out for pieces by recent designers who are near the end of their careers but still have a strong public following. Browse the racks for garments by Yves Saint Laurent, even his less expensive prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) Rive Gauche line, and also pieces by Valentino.
Keep an eye out for pieces by recent designers who are near the end of their careers but still have a strong public following. Browse the racks for garments by Yves Saint Laurent, even his less expensive prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) Rive Gauche line, and also pieces by Valentino.
Search for a piece that is an iconic symbol of its particular decade, ones that as soon as you see it, you immediately know the era it belongs to. Augusta says, "When you think of the 1950s as saddle shoes and circle skirts, those items didn't have designer names, but they are iconic pieces of the decade." The designs of a Versace or Thierry Mugler dress exemplify the 80s disco era. English "mod" clothes from the 60s and 70s are wise to collect, especially clothing by British designers like Vivienne Westwood, noted for her original punk aesthetic, and Thea Porter or Bill Gibb, both 1970s designers who captured the look of the hippie era. "At auction one can still find collectible, affordable garments; in another 10 to 20 years their values could easily soar," Augusta says.
Other very popular designers are not quite as collectible. Despite elegance and fine craftsmanship, certain vintage clothes are destined to remain comparably inexpensive. "Garments by Giorgio Armani, other than his Armani Privé label, or by Ralph Lauren, are beautiful, but they aren't seriously investment-worthy," Augusta says.
Szescila notes that sales of designer clothing from the 1980s are just beginning to pick up. "Such clothing must not look dowdy or like it was made for an elderly woman," she says "many young women today enjoy wearing vintage clothing, so it needs to be youthful and somewhat sexy."
Beware online
It's a gamble to purchase vintage clothing online — especially if it claims to be couture — from someone you don't know. Images can deceive, and it's impossible to be sure of condition, fabric, and construction unless you can personally inspect the garment. "Ebay is very risky," Augusta says. "I've seen people selling things that are not what they say they are, either because they don't know or sometimes because they're just hoping for a quick sale."
It's a gamble to purchase vintage clothing online — especially if it claims to be couture — from someone you don't know. Images can deceive, and it's impossible to be sure of condition, fabric, and construction unless you can personally inspect the garment. "Ebay is very risky," Augusta says. "I've seen people selling things that are not what they say they are, either because they don't know or sometimes because they're just hoping for a quick sale."
Celebrities and college students alike have been drawn to vintage stores across the nation, ranging from highly culled boutique collections to local Goodwill shops. Not that long ago, thrift shopping was looked down upon by the mainstream public. It was a counter-culture practice that now is an acceptable, cool, and green way to shop. Anyone can walk into a local thrift store and pay pennies for an old microfiber shirt — or spend thousands of dollars on a rare couture piece at auction or a dealer's shop. It's the ability and knowledge to recognize that special garment and purchase it for a smart price — it's finding that beautiful item for a great price that separates the experts from the novices. It's all in the touch.
Rules of Thumb ...
Before buying a vintage garment:
- Study before you buy. Knowledge can save you from expensive mistakes!
- Learn how to determine true high-quality fabrics and construction, and accurate age. Museum clothing exhibits are excellent teachers and often vintage clothing dealers are willing to share their expertise
- Check for missing beads or buttons, holes, stains and alterations
- Make sure the label is original; some less-than-honest dealers will stitch designer labels into non-designer clothes.
To preserve your vintage garment:
- Air it out after purchase
- Do up all zippers, buttons and closings
- If you have a vintage garment dry-cleaned, be sure to choose someone who specializes in delicate or antique textiles
- Store garments away from sunlight, in a cool, dry place to avoid fading and fiber damage
- Use padded hangers and muslin covers for sturdy garments
- Use flat storage for fragile and beaded garments
- If an item is folded, it should be refolded differently every 6 months, since folded areas of fabric are weakened due to added stress
- Do not store garments in plastic, to avoid mold and mildew
- To avoid chemical damage when flat-storing garments, use acid-free paper between layers and store in an acid-free box. If acid-free materials are unavailable, cotton or linen sheets also work well
Check out a selection of vintage and antique garments (some famous!) in ourROADSHOW Video Archive »
All images courtesy of Karen Augusta
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the dartmouth
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Greetings from… Toulouse
By Dylan Leavitt
Published on Friday, February 27, 2009
"This is a joke, right?" my friend said, as we held up a pair of bright green skinny jeans at a store in Toulouse. They looked like they would fit my arm. Maybe.
Let me tell you: shopping in France and dealing with European sizing is pretty hilarious. The tags actually says "America: Small, France: Medium."
Reflected in their clothing sizes is the fact that French people, on the whole, are skinnier than Americans -- girls walk in front of me, and when they turn around, I'm shocked to see they're my mom's age. There are books about "French diets" and "secrets" the French have to keeping thin. I think they're all a load of crap.
A saleswoman told me that the French are skinnier because they eat more vegetables than Americans. That is completely false. As if we don't eat them -- go to Collis after 12's and just try to elbow your way around the salad bar.
In fact, in France they eat more bread and butter with their food. Baguettes are bought each day to sop up sauces, and we never have leftovers at my host family's house.
My host parents tell me, "Dylan, you don't want any more food because you don't want to get fat? This won't make you fat!" as they pass me the buttery, cheesy, creamy, delicious potatoes gratin for the third time.
They then describe with disbelief how another student they hosted gained 15 pounds while she was staying with them. Really?
And with pastry shops on every corner, what visitor could resist? It's just not fair. The French really should get fat, but they just don't.
It's not like they even jog to keep in shape. I've seen no more than five runners since arriving, and they look quite silly, flailing their arms and kicking their feet to the side in their Capri-length running tights. The only people who actually work out here are those on sports teams. There aren't many dedicated runners like the ones we see getting facetime on the Green.
Therefore, I believe the French stay skinny for four reasons: genetics, smoking, an aversion to snacking and wine. First, there has to be some kind of gene that allows people to eat sugar and fat all day long without gaining weight. DHMC, if you can find that gene, you read about it here first.
In terms of meals, my host family has coffee and cigarettes for breakfast, a big, hearty two-hour lunch (paté and mayonnaise are staples), and a final meal around 8 p.m.
While the food they eat is very rich, it's unprocessed, and they only eat it at those specific times. Instead of snacking, they smoke cigarettes.
The French also don't drink beer as often as people in America. Rather, they enjoy their Pastis aperitifs and glasses of white and red wine, both of which are much better for one's santé than a Keystone Light -- the "light" part is just plain silly if you're drinking 10 of them, anyway. Finally, the French don't obsess about staying thin as much as Americans do. In a Parisian supermarket, I only saw two low-calories items: Oreos and Coca-Cola. Not particularly French foods to begin with.
So what can the French teach us about staying skinny? Eat real food, drink good wine and hope that your metabolism can hold up for that last bit of foie gras.
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The DM Manual of Style
By Dylan Leavitt, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Friday, May 9, 2008
Who knew that Crayola blue denim could be so raunchy? "Kristin in Slim Slacks" is putting on quite a show for a disheveled photographer who takes pictures of her highly sexualized body. Women in hot pants, tube socks and Members Only-style jackets dance around with a shirtless, hairy, jiggly rando who, according to the caption, is named Jonny. A woman practically moons the photographer. This isn't soft-core internet porn. No, my friends, it's the erotic advertising for American Apparel, patting itself on the back on the way to the bank as consumers these days, including Dartmouth students, buy it all up.
By showing explicit images of bodies, American Apparel conditions young people to be comfortable with the naked form, independent of shape and gender. Clearly confident models perpetuate the unisex culture American Apparel is crafting; their unquestioning pleasure in exposing themselves confronts shoppers with a lifestyle of both sexual neutrality and openness.
American Apparel has clothes that range from frumpy to flair, and everything is made of one of three materials: jersey, spandex, or polyester microfiber. There are countless high-waisted skirts, hot pants and V-neck T-shirts that come in any color. You must have noticed their heinous leggings -- bright lamé, anyone? -- strutting through classrooms, libraries and the gym. American Apparel clothes sometimes make you wonder if people are actually serious when wearing the brand's prized pieces.
Although the materials certainly aren't luxurious, and the actual styles aren't all that original -- many are '70s and '80s revivals with a little bit of 21st century mix 'n' match thrown in -- I still open my new issues of Nylon and British Glamour to see look after look sprinkled with the stuff. Why has American Apparel, a brand mostly of basics, become ubiquitous?
Their advertisements are everywhere online, including Facebook, in which average-looking women (not emaciated Kate Moss types) wear spandex dresses, little makeup and disheveled hair while posing in front of plain, white backgrounds -- such realism implies that any woman can wear American Apparel clothing. The popularity of the brand rides on the fact that their products can be worn by anybody and the prices are pretty low.
But, as has been said many times before about fashion, buying a particular brand can be equivalent to buying into a type of lifestyle. And the lifestyle American Apparel presents to its consumers is one of casual eroticism. The brand manages to sexualize a plain T-shirt by photographing a woman in bed wearing it with a pair of boy-briefs. A slouchy sweatshirt becomes suggestive when worn only with red hot pants.
While sexy-but-unisex clothing is generally presented in the form of a girlfriend wearing her boyfriend's T-shirt, American Apparel takes gender neutrality to a different level. For this brand, wearing unisex clothing perpetuates androgyny that pervades runways and our own culture. Women used to wear hoop skirts and bustles while men wore pants. Nowadays it seems like women's clothes can be easily interchanged for men's. Wearing each other's underwear may just be the next step toward a unisex culture. Maybe American Apparel has found its niche in those young adults who (perhaps subconsciously) want to defy social norms.
The future of mass culture is full of jersey and microfiber. When I go out and see two girls wearing the same black and white spandex minidress at a frat, I know that American Apparel has created a trend. When I see the same V-neck T-shirt on both a guy and a girl, I am reminded that the college student's love affair with these clothes is powerful. American Apparel's ability to surpass gender boundaries proves that its popularity will last for a while. Perhaps it's the androgynous quality of American Apparel that makes the company find it necessary to expose their models: How else would we know his or her gender? Which raises another question: Why does that matter?
Dylan is a staff writer for The Mirror.
