Fashion, stupidity and the superfluous

I suppose that one could say that the first two are synonymous, to a point.The third being a frequent corollary and companion to both. The reason for raising this topic is a recent short article that I noticed in today's edition of the weekend magazine supplément of what I consider to be regularly the best French daily newspaper, Le Monde. However this supplement, recently renamed M, has unfortunately become pretty much a fashion catalogue, the majority of it's pages, formely full of in-depth articles, now being polluted with totally uninteresting stuff about of "trends", "fashion icons" and other superflous crap. The newspaper istelf continues to be good, but this is pure decadence, and uninteresting decadence at that.

a past cover of the M magazine, which I consider to be unworthy of its parent newspaper Le Monde


Flicking through the pages of this latest edition, which is usually the most I feel inclined to do with this thing before stuffing it in the waste bin, I noticed a short piece on the recent rush by fashion victims in the USA to purchase the latest model of sneakers produced by the Nike brand under the Air Jordan logo. Put on sale on December 21st, this shoe apparently caused some idiots to queue up all night and then fight for places in the queue. I don't know what the price of this useless object is, and I don't care, but I find something quite revolting about people going to such extremes for soemthing so totally superfluous and, probably, over-priced. There may be good reasons for standing in queues, like getting food when you are starving, but doing so (and all night!) for something you don't need seems the ultimate in consumerism gone mad.

former basket player Michael Jordan with one of the shoes made by Nike that use his name and, probably, bring him even more money


Why does this get my goat? Maybe I just felt like a little rant. Who knows? I know that this is not the most serious sign of madness in this world, but it is definitely one of them and I hate it.

Fashion is plain stupid

I suppose that, at some point of my life, I have been a "victim" of fashion. In other words, that I have been persuaded to adopt clothing or whatever that happened to be a "trend" at that moment.

I feel less and less inclined in this direction. In fact I find myself increasingly appalled by and disgusted with the whole world that gravitates around what is now a major business that occupies a lot of written press and huge spaces in our towns.

 How many clothes do we really need? And who could possibly require or even use the increasing numbers of shops selling them. Walking around city centres almost anywhere in the world tody, it seems as if people have given up eating, or reading, or indulging in any other activities apart from looking at cloths, maybe trying them on oaccasionally, and, presumably, buying more and more. Otherwise I simply cannot figure out the proliferation of these shops, most of which sell look-alike garments anyway. It all seems totally futile and vacuous.

I felt this once again on a recent visit to what used to be a pleasant old Provençal city, Aix-en-Provence. And today I picked up a so-called serious French daily newspaper (Le Monde) only to read, on the front page, this lead to a full page article on the inside (my translation from French):

"Ladies, vinyl and sequins are the fashion of 2013 
.......Creators have chosen elegant, striking and sexy materials for this year's autumn/winter ladies fashion: vinyl, Lurex, sequins and gilded embroidery."

I hate the ubiquitous use of the term "creator" for almost anyone able to cut and paste. I also find it pretty hard to imagine who, apart from a few weird fetishists, could possibly find that either vinyl or Lurex or sequins are elegant or "sexy". They are more trashy than anything else to me. Whenever I see eminent people in the fashion world, I tend to think that they are, on the whole, a pretty strange lot and usually living in a world of their own that has little or nothing to do with everyday life for most of us. Maybe I am wrong, but take a look at Galliano and Lagerfeld, just for a start. Unfair? Maybe. One could possible call some of them "amusers", or "court jesters" (not Galliano, I agree, the guy is a nutcase). But "creators" ?

What is certain is the economic drive behind all this twaddle. That a major and usually serious daily like Le Monde should treat this rubbish in a sycophantic way just shows how dependant they are these days on advertising from the fashion world. Their weekly magazine, which used to be readable, has turned into a sort of fashion catalogue recently.

I decided to take a look at what Ambose Bierce the excellent author of the cynic's bible, The Devil's Dictionary (1911) had to say under his entry for Fashion. As usual, his definition is subtle and just a tad ambiguous:

FASHION, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.



A king there was who lost an eye
In some excess of passion;
And straight his courtiers all did try
To follow the new fashion.

Each dropped one eyelid when before
The throne he ventured, thinking
'Twould please the king. That monarch swore
He'd slay them all for winking.


What should they do? They were not hot
To hazard such disaster;
They dared not close an eye — dared not
See better than their master.


Seeing them lacrymose and glum,
A leech consoled the weepers:
He spread small rags with liquid gum
And covered half their peepers.


The court all wore the stuff, the flame
Of royal anger dying.
That's how court-plaster got its name
Unless I'm greatly lying.


—Naramy Oof

The champagne bath: ridiculous, shameful or just decadent?

If you want to know my answer to the rhetorical question posed in the title, it is emphatically "all 3".

The idea of bathing in champagne an old fantasy that has been lugged around for ages, but it came to my attention recently, thanks to the UK trade web site called Drinks Business, that a London hotel has revived the stupidly decadent practise of filling baths with champagne for customers who have more money than good sense.

I should also mention that I have already published a version of this story here in another blog for which I write, in French. This blog is called Les 5 du Vin, and I write an article for it every Monday, whilst my colleagues deal with the other days of the week. I should also add that we recently won a prize for this blog (The Wine Blog Trophy see here) at a wine trade fair in the Loire Valley (Le Salon des Vins de Loire), partly thanks to an article that I had written a few months ago on a wine bar situated in this region and called Café de la promenade.

The Cadogan Hotel, in London's Knightsbridge district, has a bit of a history in the field of decadence (if one wants to call it that). It was here that Oscar Wilde was arrested for sexual practices that were, at the time, considered as reprehensible. It was also here that the future English King Edward VII held trysts with the actress Lily Langtree. Given that the then Crown Prince, son of Queen Victoria, was known by some of his contemporaries as "Dirty Bertie", I can leave you to fill in the gaps.

According to Drinks Business, the Cadogan Hotel is offering its weathier clients to fill their baths with champagne, as from the 14th of February (Saint Valentine's day in case you missed it) and for the rest of this year.

For the modest sum of £4,000, someone will pour 122 bottles of a champagne celled Louis de Custine, vintage 1998, into the bath of your hotel room and even heat it to the desired temperature. I do not know whether you are allowed to add lemons and spices before drinking the stuff. If you like cold baths, probably not. What is certain is that you will need a good shower afterwards to avoid stinking like an empty wine vat, and probably feeling a little sticky from the added sugar that is part and parcel of most champagnes.

To add insult to possible injury you can even request a "bath butler" to come and serve you one of the six "gift" bottles of the same brand of champagne in which you are wallowing, accompanied by strawberries coated in chocolate (yuck!). We do not know if the bath butler is blindfolded to protect your intimacy on this wonderful occasion. Maybe he'd fall over and send the tray crashing into the bath, turning the great event into a blood bath!

I have never heard of Louis de Custine Champagne but I see that it retails for around £25 per bottle in the UK. Looks like thay may have a bit of stock on their hands. If bathing in an unknown brand of champers doesn't tickle your fancy, then the thoughtful people at the Cadogan Hotel have other solutions on hand. For £6,000 you could opt for vintage Perrier Jouet. For £8,000 you have the choice between vintage Veuve Clicquot and vintage Perrier Jouet Rosé (bathing in the pink!). But the ultimate has to be a bath of Dom Perignon 2002, for the incredibly modest sum of £25,000. If you can find nothing better to do with your pots of money than this, I have several suggestions for you, so please get in touch!

Not sure that the bath in this photo is big enough for 2. Or that I would want to take a both outdoors at this time of the year.

 

According to the hotel, at least one client has paid the requisite deposit for the top option with Dom Perignon in this contest of indecent stupidity in the show-off stakes.

After considerable research, I have manged to procure images of the projects sent in by agencies invited to compete to produce a poster campaign to advertise this great idea. Some of them seem to need a little education as to the geographical origins of champagne, as indeed as to the types of cork necessary to keep its bubbles in the bottle. Here they are.....

    

 

It is perhaps to be noted that the last image of these three shows that the Champagne bath fantasy was probably at the origin of the product known as bubble bath.

Enjoy your next bath!

Do you really want a tattoo?

I am not a great fan of tattoos. I know that making indelible marks on people's skin is an ancient practice and well respected in some cultures, particularly in Polynesia.

Tattoos found on Egyptian and Nubian mummies date from about 2000 B.C., and classical authors mention the use of tattoos in connection with ancient Greeks, ancient Germans, Gauls, Thracians and ancient Britons. Taking the above list, it should be said that all these people were renowned for their ferociously barbaric behaviour, with the possible (and highly debatable) exception of the Ancient Greeks who used tattooing simply as a means of identifying spies!

Tattooing was later rediscovered by Europeans when exploration brought them into contact with Polynesians and American Indians. The word tattoo comes from the Tahitian word tattau, which means "to mark," and was first mentioned in explorer James Cook’s records from his 1769 expedition to the South Pacific. Because tattoos were considered so exotic in European and U.S. societies, tattooed Indians and Polynesians drew crowds at circuses and fairs during the 18th and 19th centuries. English sailors adopted the practice and re-introduced it to Europe where even English kings and nobility apparently adopted it, probably to prove that they were as fierce as those against whom they fought.

In other words, there seems to me to be something very much linked to pretence and boasting about tattoos, and what I see today around me confirms me in this. Just go down to the local gym and look around! Or watch modern rugby.

Now, if you are still unsure about whether you want to take the plunge or not, take a look at this chart. Like a couple of other images that I have used on this blog in the past, I found it on the excellent Spanish collective blog called 8negro (see link in the list of blogs I enjoy in the margin). I don't know who designed it, but it is pretty smart. You will see that there are many more reasons not to get tattood than the opposite.

Overcrowded exhibitions

I love looking at paintings and other stuff in galleries or museums. Anyone who reads this blog regularly will realise that. But I do dislike very crowded places, and this includes museums. Hence the growing popularity of major exhibitions has made me avoid going to most of them simply on account of the sheer numbers of other human beings that throng to these shows.

I am not about to take a totally elitist stance on this issue (or maybe I am, after second thoughts), but I find it quite insufferable to either stand in a queue for hours, or, even worse, to be amongst a pack of humans inching past paintings that one cannot even stop and contemplate at one's leisure without having some idiot's hat floating in front of your eyes (hats should be banned indoors anyway), or having hot breath poured down one's neck, or hearing ridiculously banal comments all the time, not to mention the life stories of one's immediate and unchosen neighbours.

What makes matters even worse is that clearly 50% of the people there should be somewhere else anyway, because they don't even try to look at the paintings. They are far more intent in reading the captions places alongside. I suppose it must reassure them to know the name of the painting and where it is usually hung. Maybe even to read the name of the artist, although they should know that by heart since they have actually paid to come to see an exhibition of this person's work. Perhaps they would spend even more time looking at the captions if the current value of the painting was added. I think that some day I will sat up an exhibition with empty frames and just the captions alongside. It might well be a huge success.

Why don't all these people just buy a catalogue and flick through the pages? This would probably halve the numbers of unseeing lookers in museums and shows and let the rest of us spend the time we want in front of pictures without being pushed, shoved, blocked, trampled and generally considered as cattle by the organisers.  

The Mexican wave, or "olà"

I get increasingly annoyed by the silly practice of people jumping up and down in masses while throwing their arms in the air when they are in rugby stadiums. Apparently they also do this in other public sports arenas like soccer stadiums, but I never watch soccer. I have yet to see this plague hit cricket stadiums, but it may have done so.

The so-called "Mexican wave", or "olà", is seemingly carried out for no particular reason linked to the course of the game in progress, as it takes place quite irrespective of whether either side on the field have scored a try or marked other points or even have just conducted a spectacular or beautiful action. If this were the case, I would be more understanding! In fact I am fairly sure that most of those involved are not even particularly interested in watching the game that they have paid money to come and enjoy, preferring instead to indulge in this stupid collective habit and then booing and hissing at anyone who decides not to participate in this weird ritual.

For those who are not at all sure what I am talking about, here is a definition of the "Mexican wave" to be found in Wikipedia.

The wave (US) or the Mexican wave (British) is an example of metachronal rhythm achieved in a packed stadium when successive groups of spectators briefly stand and raise their arms. Each spectator is required to rise at the same time as those straight in front and behind, and slightly after the person immediately to either the right (for a clockwise wave) or the left (for a counterclockwise wave). Immediately upon stretching to full height, the spectator returns to the usual seated position. The result is a "wave" of standing spectators that travels through the crowd, even though individual spectators never move away from their seats. In many large arenas the crowd is seated in a contiguous circuit all the way around the field, and so the wave is able to travel continuously around the arena.

Now anyone reading this might well say to me "so who are you to criticize a sports crowd for having a bit of fun?" And they would be right, up to a point. After all, it is only a game and these people are not bashing each other senseless like football hooligans tend to do when they get together. But I am more than a little suspicious of mass crowd behaviour, its side effects and its sorry consequences in some cases. I am also, I think legitimately, annoyed when this piece of sheep-like jumping to one's feet prevents me from seeing what is going on on the field at various points during the game. After all, it may be just the moment when somebody is scoring the try of the century. So, please, just SIT DOWN and enjoy the game.

Karl Lagerfeld

I know that its not fair to hold a dislike for someone whom you do not even know, but this has to be taken just at its "face value", which is all about image. Quite suitable given the extent to which this man's image is cultivated by himself!

I don"t know what I find most objectionable about Lagerfeldt's image (that is his real name, by the way). His apparent pretentiousness, his permanent sunglasses worn everywhere, his ridiculous high stiff collars, his silly mittens, or his powdered white hair in a pigtail. Just about everything about him seems contrived. What makes this image worse is its rigidity, as it never seems to evolve.

Of course, saying that a person entirely involved with fashion is "contrived" may seem to be stating the obvious. With maybe the odd exception, I have little respect for, end even less interest in the fashion world, which strikes me as being 90% artificial. But this guy really takes the biscuit for the most artificial of all!   

And I do not like his photography either.