Thursday, 5/1/97 Wearing your identity on your sleeve Words on
clothes we wear reveal a lot about who we are, what we like
This guy called Colley Cibber said: "As good be out of the world
as out of the fashion." I have no idea who he is or what it means,
but I fancy starting my articles with obscure quotes from obscure
dead folk. It’s … fashionable. You’ll note the word "fashion" in
the Cibber quote, as well as in the title of this article. I sense
a theme in the making. I was at one of those tony (CQ) parties, a
charity soiree at some swank venue to benefit the emergent cause of
the week; I believe it may have been one of those "Save the
_______" affairs, but what exactly we all were to have been so
assiduously saving I don’t recall … it was either some ill-fated
species that unwisely decided to evolve in a habitat destined
millions of years later to become malignant with urban sprawl, or
the preservation of some idiotic sacred cow tax-deduction that
promised to protect the livelihood of British coach-builders in
Crewe, England by cutting the excise tax on Bentleys and Rolls
Royces. Had it ever occurred to these creme de la crap (CQ)
fund-raiser attendees that if they were to simply donate what they
spent on these functions–let’s see, that’s five hundred per plate
(foie gras avec pommes, jarret de veau, and creme brulee) (CQ the
whole menu), three-fifty for the limo, two bills for hair and
nails, and let’s not forget to mention the fifteen hundred for that
really cute, little black silk Donna Karan (CQ) Collection number
they had at Neiman’s (CQ) –and just have a weenie-roasting,
water-balloon-tossing, three-legged-racing, pinata-smashing hoedown
(CQ) at the park, the charity could raise enough money to save
anything from extinction, even Newt Gingrich’s reputation. In any
event, this woman approaches me and says in her best "Hi, what do
you drive?" affectation for a voice: "Nice tie, whose is it?" I
ponder her question for a second, then another second then another.
I hit the mental instant replay button to make sure she hadn’t just
said "Biker pie, stew kiss it," or something equally
incomprehensible. I wonder if I appear to be the kind o’ guy who
purchases his dress wear accessories at police auctions, or if she
thinks that frisking my tie will reveal someone else’s summer camp
laundry label stitched within its lining. She has me. I didn’t know
what on God’s sartorially challenged earth she’s talking about. So
I say the only thing that seems to make any sense at all, albeit
without an ounce of assertiveness, almost like I’m guessing at a
Final Jeopardy answer posed in Gaelic: "It’s … mine?" She belts
out one of those patronizing "Oh that’s rich, you clever boy, you
couldn’t really be that naive, could you?" laughs. I feel pleased
with my self, but in that nauseated
I-must-have-huge-chunks-of-food-stuck-in-my-teeth way. I know I had
just said something hysterically funny, but have no idea what or
why. She clarifies: "No, (fool) who is the designer?" I laugh right
back at her like I’m in on the joke instead of being it. I turn the
tie over and read the label. It says "Bijan." So I say "Bijan," but
pronounce it like "pigeon" with a ‘b.’ (I have since been told that
its proper pronunciation is more like "begone" (CQ) with a ‘j’
where the ‘g’ goes.) She laughs again, harder this time, like I’m
so damned funny. Hardy-Har-Har. I was young, I was uninitiated. I
had just assumed that "bigeon" (CQ) or "bejohn" (CQ) or however you
say it was just one of those affected sounding European pseudo
designers, like Georgio Armunchi (CQ) or Gianni Versplotchi (CQ),
or whatever they sell at Target (rhymes with parquet) trying to
sound all chic by way of quasi-homophony. And why should I care
anyway? I found the tie hanging on a hook in a closet of ground
floor room at a Best Western hotel in Grand Falls, Idaho. Grand
Falls is where vacuum-packed bricks of freeze-dried instant
hashed-brown potatoes are born by the thousand every hour of every
day. What a Bijan tie was doing there, I have no idea. What I was
doing there … I have no idea. But I thought the tie was pretty. I
kept it. Of course, I didn’t know then that Bijan is an incredibly
exclusive, by-appointment-only, don’t-you-dare-come-in-here,
tourist’s palm and nose prints on the window, valet parking for
your Gulfstream, boutique on Rodeo (ro-DAY-oh) Drive in Beverly
Hills. It’s famous for $100,000 luggage and gold-plated hand guns.
Ties run three hundred and sixty bucks or something obnoxious like
that. Four pieces of high fashion neck-ware or sixteen units of
higher education with parking. Hmmmmm… Anyway, once she had
determined that I was the kind of guy who was being either really
nonchalant or really dense about the fact that he was sporting a
strip of cloth around his neck worth more than the average working
stiff’s weekly gross, she turned on the tractor beams and I kid you
not, she wouldn’t leave me alone. We ended up getting married and
putting 10% down on a little condo in Northridge … not. Moral:
what we wear says a lot about us. No big surprise here. Whether we
like it or not, whether its right or wrong, we project an identity
related message every time we venture out into Societyland. (CQ) In
some cases, what we wear may end up saying something other or more
than whatever message it is we knowingly wish to convey through our
"fashion statements." Look at yourself. What do the words on your
clothes mean? What do you think they mean to someone else? How much
flesh are you showing? How much flesh are you hiding? What would a
master sleuth deduce about you based on your stylistic preferences?
Don’t pretend like you don’t have any, even a slob has stylistic
preferences. Do they say, to name a few possibilities, "I’m down
with all that?," or "I’m athletic?," or "I’m anti-social?," or "I
have lovely breasts?" Granted, we students usually don’t go the
Bijan route, at least not on campus. Generally speaking, we can’t
afford it. But we can afford tee-shirts. Gotta have ’em. And you
gotta have a back-pack. And you gotta have shoes, athletic shoes to
be precise, just in case a spontaneous track meet breaks out on
Bruin Walk. And we need hats. It’s that stinking ozone hole thing.
And we can’t exactly all go around looking the same, like a mass of
monochromatic, barbiturate-laced punch swilling, web mastering,
castrati (CQ) from Heaven’s Gate, can we? (You may have noticed
they were all wearing Nikes; puts a whole new spin on "Just Do It,"
n’est ce pas?) We have our own way. We need words on our clothes,
words that reveal important things about us like what chichi (CQ)
micro-brew we like to drink, or the acronymous (CQ) name of the
school we attend. One particularly overt message we project with
our on-campus dishabille (CQ) is the name of the company that
purportedly manufactures whatever it is we happen to be wearing at
the moment. "Nice tee-shirt, whose is it?" Take this test: I buy a
Calvin Klein tee-shirt. Guess what it says on front, "Save Mono
Lake"? No. I buy a Guess? shirt. Guess what it says on the front,
"Guess?"? I guess. Would you buy an Adidas tee-shirt that didn’t
clearly indicate that it was an Adidas shirt? I guess not. Now for
the big question: What costs more, a plain white tee-shirt or a
plain white tee-shirt with the word Reebok on it? Answer: the
Reebok shirt costs more. So, we deduce that we are willing to spend
more on a shirt because it has a company’s logo on it. But it has
to be the right company. It can’t be "Pat’s Chevron, 29 Palms,
California." It’s got to be … fashionable. Manufacturers know
this, so they put their names everywhere they can. I am, on rare
occasion, surprised to find a consumer product that doesn’t have
its manufacturer’s logo boldly plastered somewhere upon it for all
in attendance to see. In fact, when they don’t use every square
inch to advertise I start to wonder. Like what’s the deal with
condom manufacturers? Imagine them printing "Trojan" in big
letters–like "Union Pacific" on the nose of a locomotive–on their
condoms. Why don’t they take advantage of all that free advertising
space? Maybe its for fear of establishing a negative association in
the minds of those unfortunate guys out there who might have a bit
too much of that chichi (CQ) micro-brew and consequently be able to
unveil only the first few letters of the product’s brand name.
Harsh. This is what I think. We wear what we wear for a reason. We
never accidentally wear our shirts in-side-out or backwards. I
think that by wearing brand names associated with athleticism we’re
saying "I’m virile/nubile," by wearing brand names associated with
affluence we’re saying "I’ve got money, therefore I can be a good
provider and show you a good time too," and by wearing brand names
associated with retro-culture we’re saying "I’m not virile/nubile
or rich, but I am an arty-farty-smarty, and isn’t that what really
counts?" Granted, it’s not one of those overt things. People don’t
go to the store and say "God, I suck. I need a tee-shirt to change
my identity," any more than Darwin’s finches said "Gee, I need a
bigger beak." I was curious to see what people were saying with
their clothes so I headed out to Bruin Walk and did a quick survey.
I, dullard, sat on the curb during lunch rush hour and counted name
brands. Not the inside-the-waste-band labels, but the billboard
sized proclamations that a possum facing the wrong way could read
at 1000 yards. Not surprisingly, the most common brand name in
evidence was "UCLA" with 64 sightings. The second most common brand
name was Nike (17) followed by Adidas (14) then Billabong and
Quicksilver (tied with 4 apiece), Calvin Klein, Reebok and Mossimo
(each with 3), Polo, Guess, Tommy Hilfiger, Speedo, and Diesel (2),
followed by Fila, Nautica, Stussy, Benetton, Banana Republic,
Aeropostale, and Spaulding. It was a bad day for The Gap. The
highlight of the day was a guy wearing all Nike: hat, shirt, shorts
and shoes. Being a columnist and all, I just had to ask: "Excuse
me, everything you’re wearing is Nike. Why?" "It wasn’t
intentional, I just woke up and grabbed everything." "You must
really like Nike stuff?" "No, it wasn’t intentional, I just woke
up." "But, I mean, you must have a lot of it if by just randomly
grabbing clothes this morning your entire ensemble turns out to be
Nike brand sports wear. What are the odds of that? Isn’t that like
getting dealt a natural four-of-a-kind? "No, it wasn’t intentional,
I just woke up." By the way, if it hadn’t been for him, Adidas
would have beaten Nike 14-13. Based of my tally, if people voted
with their tee-shirts, Planet Hollywood, not the Hard Rock Cafe,
would be the official overpriced burger cum rock and roll
memorabilia theme restaurant, the Rolling Stones and Cypress Hill
the official bands, and Vaseline the official petroleum jelly of
UCLA. I was surprised and somewhat disconcerted to find that not
one single person was wearing any item of clothing that advertised
a cause, any cause. There were no personal messages, nothing
political, religious, or activistic (CQ). What happened to "Meat is
Murder," "Take Back the Night," or "Don’t Squeeze the Juice"? Last
I’d heard, university campuses were more or less the bastions of
political and social activism in this country. So, it seems
peculiar to me that of all those I saw who chose to take advantage
of their built-in personal ad space to display text, that text
invariably served to publicize a multi-million or even billion
dollar corporation or institution. How … fashionable. Michael
Daugherty is a fourth-year English student and a clothes horse. He
can be reached at daughert@ucla.edu.