Style vs. Fashion — A Faerie Tale
“The next time I buy a jacket, I don’t want sexism and homophobia woven into the fabric.”
from The Sexist Distinction Between ‘Style’ and ‘Fashion’ by Richard Thompson Ford
Serious writers know to keep a keen eye on social trends if they expect to stay relevant in the 24-hour news cycle — meaning mainly how fast the trends cycle through. And nothing’s hotter at the moment than anything about the putting down of womankind, though in the fashion world, there are equal opportunity offenders.
The other day I began an important piece for Southern Living about designing kitchens in the modern age. Seeing only those of the fairer sex read that self-congratulatory magazine, I needed a way to weave misogyny into the story and had a brainstorm: Why are kitchen cabinets so tall — and the women who suffer. Could it not be a conspiracy, that women are unable to reach the top shelves? It sounded to me a perfect example of male privilege. A shear stroke of genius, and I was good to go. Still working out the story’s middle, but it’s bound to be a hit. I just needed that hook.
Only thing hotter than bewailing the persecution women are novelists with unpronounceable names, even if they have degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. Seems the entire bloody empire has moved into London — not that the English don’t deserve it.
I working on translating my name into Gaelic with all those consonants — Booker Prize, here we come.
So while perusing last week’s The Edition, wherein the Medium editors highlight the cream of the week’s writing on the platform, my eyes immediately landed on The Sexist Distinction Between ‘Style’ and ‘Fashion’ — Why are men celebrated as stylish and women belittled as fashion victims? by Richard Thompson Ford. With a second last name like Thompson, you know he’s serious. And with a photograph no less than Sean Connery being fitted for a bespoke suit from Savile Row? (Wink, wink, say no more.) You simply cannot argue with Sean Connery; I’ve been practicing my Scottish brogue for a while.
Thompson Ford indeed has his facts in order. Doing his research, he returns us to the root of so many problems between the sexes: Victorian England. According to Thompson Ford, it had gotten out of hand, damn near impossible back in the old days to tell the men from the fops. Evidently the problem became so great, there were fops like Oscar Wilde, you know, who liked men, and women like Virginia Woolf who liked women. Kinky stuff that needed straightening out, by George — George being the king at the time.
So the wiser sexed of the species who didn’t need to actually work with their hands or mess up their powdered wigs resolved to resist that feminine corruption and become ‘stylish’ in Ford’s words: i.e. stop being fops. David Bowie never got word in time, but we real men celebrate our testosterone and hairy legs by refusing to wear dresses and make up (hair coloring is OK as long as it’s not hot pink) and the world’s a happier place for it.
So to the core of his appreciatively short piece: Thompson Ford has discovered an amazing detail that simply escaped the rest of us, namely that since the industrial age, men’s styles and women’s fashions have been practiced as two distinctly different things. Who knew? And I do so miss my codpiece when I go out.
It’s simply untrue Thompson Ford had a new book to shill and needed a hook:
“The self-possession my Neapolitan sport jackets offer me is really no different than the satisfaction my wife gets from her Zac Posen dresses. My John Lobbs are no less a fashion statement than her Louboutins. I also had to acknowledge that my refusal to admit this was rooted in gender stereotypes. The style/fashion distinction implies that while stylish men are elegant and cultured, fashionable women are extravagant and vain. The privileged status of style over fashion is a cigar and single malt-whiskey scented form of male chauvinism.”
from The Sexist Distinction Between ‘Style’ and ‘Fashion’ by Richard Thompson Ford
Can’t you see how clever that is? You get big woke points for the leed and still can write about a subject as inane as brand name apparel. Man, is that clever. Thompson Ford gets extra points for getting down with the oppressed of the fashion world, surely a persecuted minority.
If one wants to write about fashion, er, style, and get anyone to read it outside of the three people who enjoy reading the NY Times’ T Magazine, the way to get their attention is, you guessed, say it with me, “Women are being put down!” Just look at those pouty fashion boys and wasted girls, and vaguely European white men in castles and tell me there’s no discrimination.
I wish I’d thought of that one.
