N.B. Several of the Manolo’s internet friends have responded heroically to the Manolo’s plaintive call for help. This post, by the marvelously erudite and witty Sarah, is the first of the guest posts provided by these wonderful friends.

The Manolo is in the rut. The Manolo is filled with the ennui.

The Manolo has brought me such pleasure over the years that I have been reading his blogs, and has added so many touches of beauty to my life that I find this douleur completely unacceptable. It is true that March does have a tendency to bring in da funk, but the Manolo must not be permitted to suffer. I am compelled assist him in rediscovering his joie de blog.

And so, with no further ado , let’s talk about Shakespeare.

The great fashion joke in Shakespeare comes in his play Twelfth Night when a pair of wealthy party animals joins up with a clever maidservant to convince the uptight and unfashionable Malvolio that his beautiful young employer, Olivia, is in love with him. As a sign of his passion for her, he is told that he should wear yellow stockings and cross-garters. Our merry pranksters consider this to be as hilarious and humiliating as Charlie Sheen’s latest antics.

For those of us who aren’t living in the seventeenth century, however, the joke falls a little flat.

Here’s what’s going on. Sort of.

The truth is that even those of us who study this stuff aren’t entirely sure why yellow stockings and cross-garters are hilarious. So really, the most famous fashion joke in history is something of a mystery. But I can give you a few possibilities to bring up the next time Shakespeare comes up in conversation as he so often does.

First, yellow stockings and cross garters look like this:

So that's comedy gold right there.

Second, the flashiness of the cross-garters and yellow stockings is over the top, even for the excesses of men’s fashion in the Renaissance.

Here’s Henry VIII, who was no slouch as a sartorialist. Notice, though, how plain his stockings are.

Hank 8, Rocking the Stockings and Garters

And he was King! Malvolio is just a steward (a high level servant/manager type).

So, they’re funny-looking, and they’re overly flashy.

It gets worse for Malvolio, though. In the Renaissance, great legs were one of the most enticing and macho things a man could put on display. The other, well….
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And here we see miss Aubrey O’Day at the premiere of her new Oxygen reality show All About Aubrey (a program I can only imagine is going to be both titillating and inspiring). 

Oh heavens, where to begin. First, I applaud her for the effort to draw attention away from her face ( made entirely out of fondant these days) with an “eye catching” outfit, something she tossed together at the very last minute by scrounging through a Frederick’s of Hollywood sales rack.

But those shoes…

Unless someone is planning on making a parody of the Spice Girl’s “Wannabe” music video, I feel that shoes this obscene and this pink should be banned for any feet that don’t plan on being wrapped around a pole for a few hours.

N.B. The Manolo has asked his friend Trisha Marie to help him from time to time.


Manolo says, our friend, Miss Plumcake, has the wise advice about how to avoid the designer fakes and the luxury phonies that proliferate on the interwebs.

Luxury houses have very specific agreements as to where their merchandise can be sold. They take the exclusivity of their product very seriously, because they know you’re buying not just the product, but the prestige. If Manolo Blahnik won’t let his merchandise be sold at Net-a-Porter, arguably the poshest online-only luxury store, because it’s not prestigious enough, you can bet your suitably luscious bippy he’s not going to give a sweeter deal to TotallyNotFakeShoesReallyWePromise.com

But there is much, much more, so you must go read the whole thing.

Ear Flaps? Oh Fortuna!

Manolo says, while few things would make the Manolo happier than to see the tyrant Qaddafi run out of Libya in ignominy, it is nonetheless somewhat disappointing to see him reduced to such dire sartorial straits.

It was only the few years ago that the Manolo was pointing out that Colonel Nutbar was the only despot who fully understood the value of costuming…

Colonel Hawtness, 1969

Naturally there is the exception that proves the rule, the one dictator who knows how to rock the clothing. The man who in his prime was the movie-star handsome tyrant with the mythic fashion sense.

The Manolo is speaking, of the course, about the Mu’amar al-Qaddafi, who has eschewed the cheap gangster look, preferring in the stead to wear the flowing natural-fibers and earth-toned robes favored by both the Bedouins of the Sahara and the Jedi Knights of Tatooine.

And when he was not sporting the Bedouin robes, the Qaddafi he wears the kinte-cloth dashikis! And he had the personal bodyguard comprised entirely of the super hotty she-devils!

This [...] is how the real tyrants do it, with flair and drama and color, and Amazons in the tight-fitting camouflage cat-suits!

Who's the cat who won't cop out when there's danger all about? QADDAFI!

Qaddafi, he’s not just the despot, he is the Arab Superfly, White Shaft in Africa!

Let us hope that the people of Libya will soon be free from this clothing-aware lunatic.

Manolo says, the Manolo has been in the ferociously interesting conversation with his internet friend Eliza Wharton about the matters of beauty, style, and what makes someone the modern icon.

Over the course of this conversation, the Manolo has stated the few of his beliefs, which he will now deliver as the set of provocative Don Colacho style aphorisms:

1. Beauty is not negotiable.

4. Great beauty can make you the icon, but beauty is neither necessary nor common among icons.

****
And now, for the explications:

Beauty is not negotiable

'Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety'... ORLY?

The rules of feminine beauty cannot be changed, no matter how much we may wish that they could be. They are as immutable and as fixed as the stars in the heavens: youth, fecundity, symmetry, and the pleasing hip-to-waist ratio.

We may try to convince ourselves that there are other standards of beauty, but such attempts are pretty lies we tell ourselves to make us feel better about our relative lack of beauty.

As cruel as they seem, such statements say nothing about our worth as individuals, or our goodness, or our merit to our family or the world.

Physical beauty is the gift given without reference to merit.

Although, it is the strange gift that inevitably dissipates with age. And one may still be compelling even into oldest age, but one should not be confused: compelling and beautiful are not the same thing. Beauty is compelling, but often the compelling is not also beautiful.
.

Gloria Swanson, First Beautiful, then Compelling

If you are not blessed with beauty, change the game.

Voted Least Likely to Date James Brolin

As youthful beauty fades, or was perhaps never fully present, this is where the art and magic of contriving the desirable is found.

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Manolo says, from Levis

Remember the girlfriend with the great style? Here’s a tribute to her — a fit that’s super-snug allover, an update of the five-pocket classic that’s as skinny as it gets.

The bad news is that she dumped you for the manly man who looks like the lumberjack and wears the classic 501s.

The good news is that the Levi-Strauss Company feels your pain, Emo Boy.

You know who would like these ridiculous pantaloons?

This person…

Via.

Transcendent

Manolo says, not all fashion is impelled by our nostalgia for the mud, indeed, the best and most enduring fashion is inspired by our longings for transcendence.

Transcendence. We wish to move beyond ourselves, to leave behind the mundanity of our lives and be carried aloft to the higher plane, to the place where we are more beautiful, more charming, more alluring, and where we are dressed only and forever in Christian Dior, 2011 Spring Couture Collection.

Transcendent

There is such the thing as transcendent nostalgia, the longing for the golden past, for the specific Periclean circumstances that would allow us to be more than ourselves, to be better than we are, to achieve the apotheosis of our essential humanity.

Transcendent

Beautiful clothing allows us to touch the hem of transcendence. What it gives is more than utility, more than adornment, more than fashion. Its true gift is the glimpse of perfection.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Manolo says, one of the Manolo’s internet friends has asked him the question.

Dear Sir,

I’m working on a small academic paper about fashion, for presenting at the Association of Private Enterprise in Education (APEE) meeting this coming April. Virginia Postrel, who is both your friend and mine, has told me that you’re quite nice and quite classical liberal in your inclinations, so I wondered if I might ask you if you have a brief comment or two on the perennial fashion trend of extremely costly clothing made to look like garbage.

I am thinking, for example, of the Vivienne Westwood Fall 2010 Menswear collection:

Vivienne Westwood presents Derelicte!

The destroyed cotton Balmain t-shirt that you blogged on Ayyyy!

Balmain Destroyed Cotton T-Shirt; yours for only $1624!

And the Louis Vuitton trashbag purse:

Louis Vuitton Trash-bag-tastic! $1960

There’s something very interesting going on here with ideas of wealth, price, value, appearance…

At any rate, if you have time to think about it a little, I’d love to know what thoughts you have.

All the best,

Sarah

Briefly laying aside the matters economic, what is going on here is what the French writer Émile Augier called La nostalgie de la boue, or the “longing for the mud”.

It is the commonplace notion that the primitive, the well-worn and tattered, even the debased are superior in essence to the refined and civilized.

This idea and emotion, as far as the Manolo knows, has been present in all societies and all places, undoubtedly since the humans first left the trees, and then longed to build the treehouse in which they could retreat on the weekends to express their inner australopithecus.

In the other words, “Keepin it real, yo.”

Nostalgie de la boue in its various guises has figured prominently in the philosophies and writings of Rousseau, Sigmund Freud, Jean Braudillard, and Tupac Shakur, among many others.

And, as fashion is the art form reflective of society and its traumas, and as it is also the business, it is only natural that the fashion houses would eagerly seek to reflect upon and profit from this universal human desire.

Of the course, the fashionistas, with the few notable exceptions, are not the deep thinkers, and so you will not find complex thoughts expressed about this idea in regards to society, history and authenticity, only variations of the phrase “I think it looks cool”.

And now, let us mock them…

Derelicte!

And, lest you think such mockery unwarranted…the Manolo gives you the Brother Sharp.

Brother Sharp, Chinese Fashion Icon

But Mr Cheng’s life changed dramatically after an amateur photographer posted pictures of him walking the streets onto the Chinese internet.

His prominent cheekbones and bohemian clothes quickly won him a legion of fans who called him “China’s Sexiest Tramp” and, most often, “Brother Sharp”.

[...]

Meanwhile, offers have poured in for him to appear in advertisements and he even did a stint as a catwalk model in the southern city of Foshan.

And now that we have established that we universally long for the mud, especially when the people who are wallowing in it are photogenic, how can we make the money from it?

This is where the Manolo must take you back to Ur, by making the reference to the work of Thorstein Veblen, and his notions of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous waste.

Throughout the entire evolution of conspicuous expenditure, whether of goods or of services or human life, runs the obvious implication that in order to effectually mend the consumer’s good fame it must be an expenditure of superfluities. In order to be reputable it must be wasteful.

Thus, if one feels the desire to wallow, and yet must maintain or build one’s reputation for being the right sort of fashionable person, one must be prepared to spend serious cash on something whose price cannot be justified by utility alone.

The fashion houses and designers know this and profit from it.

The example of the Louis Vuitton trash bag that costs $1960 for what is essentially the wan joke is prima facie evidence. It is not attractive, nor does it appear to be well made, and yet the person who has purchased it makes the undeniable statement about her status, economic resources, and knowledgeable hipness.

And now, the Manolo asks you to consider one more item…

Louis Vuitton Urban Satchel, Real or Clever Joke?

If it were real, would you carry it?

Manolo says, in general, it was hard to find much serious fault with the outfits that this year graced the carpet of red at the Globes of Gold.

However…

Ayyyy! She just got the new sewing machine!

Did the Peg Bundy sew this herself?

.

Shaggy Do!

No one wishes to say anything bad about America’s Most Wronged Sweetheart, but all the Manolo can think is, where is Sonny, 1967 Cher?

.

Salaciously Trashy.

It is the elderly Mae West!

No, it is just Christina Aguilera, fallen from the great height and landing with the splat in early drag-queen middle age.

.
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Pair With Crocs for Evening Wear Look.

Manolo says, yes, it has come to this. For the people who believe that readjusting the Snuggie when you move from the Barcolounger to the mobility scooter is too much work, comes the Forever Lazy, described as :”the one piece, lie around, lounge around, full body lazy wear!” (Please note that the exclamation mark is in the original, apparently the punctuational celebration of sloth rewarded.)

Put on the Crocs, and head out for the night on the town…Walmart, Applebys, Chuck E. Cheese. The world is your oyster!

Or, stay in and make the sloppy joes! Recline in front of the fire with the one you love; the romantic evening, just the two of you. When the Budweiserly nectar you have been sipping puts you and your partner in the mood, you shall really appreciate the front-and-back, double-zippered hatches!

For Those Times When You Feel Romantic

Ayyyy! The guarantee of money back? Perfect! It is like the investment, even!

And now the Manolo must go back to bed, as it is raining and the Vandals are approaching Hippo.

P.S. Many thanks to the Manolo’s internet friend Anne for alerting him to this.

P.P.S. Please consider following the Manolo on Twitter and befriending him on the Facebook.

Manolo says, today in the New York Times there is the annotated list of the 41 Places to Go in 2011, which was, as such things usually are, mostly the exercise in status-conscious, Bobo one-upmanship.

Naturally, because the Manolo is both the bohemian and bourgeois, the Manolo was pleased to see that he had recently been to several of the places on the list, including the number one choice, Santiago, Chile.

And, he was extremely happy to see that there was the entire paragraph in the NY Times Santiago entry devoted to the Museo de la Moda…

Perhaps the most remarkable cultural space to open in the last few years is the Museo de la Moda, a privately financed fashion museum inside a revamped 1960s Modernist mansion. It has a permanent collection of nearly 10,000 pieces of couture and memorabilia (of which 800 are typically on display), including a light-blue jacket worn in 1966 by John Lennon and a black strapless gown worn in 1981 by Diana, Princess of Wales.

The Manolo felt that the museum was strongest in the clothing of the mid-20th century, undoubtedly the result of the founder Jorge Yarur’s unusual filial devotion, which has preserved not only the family’s modernist mansion, but his mother’s clothing collection. Indeed, it is the clothing of the mother which forms the heart of this collection, lovingly displayed in cases in the darkened, converted bedrooms and family rooms of the mansion, as if they were the religious objects in glass reliquaries. (As one internet wag said, Jorge Yarur, The Most Fashionable Mama’s Boy Ever.)

Beyond the mother’s clothing, which is good but not great, however, there is the extensive collection of important and historical pieces, including several major Paul Poiret gowns, along with the Diors, the Chanels, and many older items of interest.

The shoe collection was likewise well done, although the Manolo did have the very sniffy pleasure of pointing out that two pairs of the boots had been misidentified, their cards transposed (undoubtedly the error of the inattentive curator).

Of the course, there many more reasons to go to Santiago, but for the Manolo, it was the Museo de la Moda that made the trip.

The Female Guard on the Metropolitan Railway in 1916

Manolo says, the Manolo loves these boots on the English railway guard lady, so feminine and flattering, indeed, the entire costume is most super fantastic!

From the site of London Transport Museum

During the First World War, the Metropolitan Railway, like other services serving the City, was effectively taken over by the government. Its trains were extensively used to transport troops from London to the Channel ports. To replace its employees who left to fight, the Met began employing women for the first time in positions such as porters, ticket inspectors, and guards.

Here is another picture of these boots and uniform on the different woman…

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