Many people don’t notice it in their day-to-day affairs,
but cycling has become a major factor in the music world. And I
don’t mean cycling in the
overcoming-cancer-to-take-home-the-yellow-jersey-all-the-while-tugging-at-the-heartstrings-of-a-nation
sense of the word. I’m talking the constant shifting in and
out of vogue of various musical fashions and trends.
It happens every day, just beyond the doors of perception. Wait
one minute, darn it! Aldous Huxley isn’t cool any more;
certainly not enough to warrant reference in these pages. But then,
just maybe, that means he’s already on his way back, probing
the edges of the underground, insinuating himself into the outer
consciousness of the ultra-hip, petitioning that shadowy cabal, the
governors of Cool. Before long he may be just lame enough to be the
next big thing.
But that’s my point. What’s at work here is a little
known, less understood law of fashion among the way, way in.
It’s the law that tells us the coolness of a style of music,
of clothing or of thought varies inversely with its own coolness.
The cooler a hat grows, or a song or a novelist, the less cool it
becomes. The more ridiculed, derided, stigmatized upon its exit,
the greater its value for postmodern commentary, geeky chic and
kitsch.
Let’s look at a recent example: Around 18 months ago,
someone noticed the only people who wore mesh hats or
“truckers” were in fact truck drivers and guys in
Alabama who fish. So when one popped up above the Dickies and
Members Only jacket of some guy at an Ugly Cassanova show in
Portland, everyone applauded the ingenious incongruity, the subtle
but savvy disclosure of social mores. Soon you couldn’t show
up to the local White Stripes concert without seeing at least 491
mesh hats; they’d become the next ironic metal tee.
So now you’re thinking: Hey great, I’m gonna start
sporting that totally obscure trucker I found in the attic of that
house I broke into in West Virginia. Fine, do it. I won’t try
to stop you. But don’t think you’re cool.
Those things were out the second they came in. But Dan,
you’ll say, I swear I just saw Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for
Cutie wearing one the other day.
Never, never speak that name to me again. Do you understand
me?
While we can observe the results of this law, we still lack the
theoretical underpinning. Great thinkers have tried endless
approaches, from advanced combinatorics and number theory to
eastern philosophy and the Koans of Zen Buddhism. Some in this
latter sect speak of the enlightenment of One and follow the
prophet Julian Casablancas, but these teachings are generally
thought apocryphal. The truth, I feel, is that the feverish Library
of Fashion is, like Borges’ great library, finite and
cyclical, and if you go far enough in one direction you are bound
to return once more. Just for now, please, enough with the trucker
hats.
If you made it to the end of this column then you realize
everything said at the beginning is now irrelevant, call Crossen on
it at dcrossen@media.ucla.edu.