Fashion and Food
Manolo says, the Manolo’s internet friend the Kit she has the few thoughts on the intersection between the fashion and the food.
When I read the Manolo’s post, I started thinking about the connections between food and fashion. True, there are foodies who pay next to no attention to their appearances, and there are certainly many fashionistas who shun the food (the evils of the fashion industry that spawn those attitudes belong to another post entirely.) But really, the intersection between those who love food and those who love fashion is large, and understandably so.
Indeed, this it is exactly correct as the intersection slightly to the north of the Manolo’s belt, where the food and the fashion they meet, it is larger than it needs to be, and understandably so.
Ha! The Manolo he jokes!
Here is more from the Kit.
Appreciating both fashion and food is, at its core, about responding to the sensory qualities of a basic human need. About elevating those needs, taking them beyond the minimum requirements for survival.
This it is partly correct, but it does not go far enough.
The Manolo would say that the commonality it is that the humans we are designed to seek pleasure in our senses. And beautiful clothes and good food give us pleasure in dramatic and obvious ways.
When we are the children, we delighted in the unrefined pleasures. So that if given the opportunity we would gobble the sweetest and stickiest sort of the candy until we vomit, as the Teeny Manolo did on more than one of the occasions.
But, as we grow older we are taught to moderate our desires, to control them, and if we are lucky, we begin to refine these desires so that we can appreciate the more sophisticated, adult pleasures.
We can even, if we become refined enough, find less obviously direct pleasure in the food and the fashion, including the peculiar meta-pleasures of connoisseurship: the oh-so satisfying pleasures one takes in knowing how to take pleasure in certain things. (Although, here one must be careful not to end up like the annoying oenophiles who weild their snooty connoisseurship like the policemen’s truncheons.)
The Manolo he would say that the pleasures we seek in beautiful clothes and good food are not just the direct pleasures of consumption, but are also the intellectual and psychic and social pleasure that come with knowing what is good and what is not. And so it is natural that one who has refined the tastes and senses in one field should seek to do so in the other.
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Comments
Alice Bachini 19 years ago
If the internet is comparable with the C18th coffee shop where the cognoscenti and the ordinary public would meet and enjoy edifying conversation, then the Manolo is comparable with Mr Addison and Mr Steele of the original “Spectator” magazine, who understood, talked and wrote about the necessity of refined aesthetic appreciation in man’s endeavour towards civilising himself. This is a value that has been somewhat lost in our modern age of Britney Spears, and the Manolo is performing a great service to the internets of the world in bringing it back.
Kit 19 years ago
The un-snooty connoisseur – that is exactly what I hope to become! And I love Alice’s image of the Manolo as the host of a modern day salon, hopefully full of un-snooty connoisseurs.
Thank you, Manolo, for expanding on my thoughts. As usual, I agree with everything you said – and you said it so well!
Mimi 19 years ago
Thank you, Manolo, for once again putting into words what so many of us have a sense of but would have been unable to put into words–at least, not the eloquent and succinct ones that you chose.
Donna B 19 years ago
I had lunch once with a restaurant critic, and I was fascinated with how she approached our dishes! The first thing she did, when each course arrived, was to just stare at it, her hands in her lap, for several moments. I thought at first she saw something she didn’t like, or was waiting for it to cool down. No, she was being an artist, and looking at the layout, the colors, textures, even the dishes and glasses themselves, to see how or if it appealed to her in an aesthetic appetizing way. (It did!)
Oh, how we all admire the Manolo even more for being an appreciator of food, as well as having the highest taste in shoes and fashion. Because really, wouldn’t we all prefer to eat the pretty?