Maybe women's thighs don't get cold. At least, I've never known them to...laydeez.
In a world of which apo is a part, those pictures get labelled "nsfw"?
I'd wear 'em!*
*With a little bit more undergarmenting, but that's completely normal for translating runway into street.**
**And really, when I say I'd wear 'em, I mean that I would be willing to wear them if I weren't so utterly wedded to my uniform of hoboish sweaters and corduroys and clogs. I'm not ideologically opposed to them, is what I mean.
The world of high fashion doesn't make sense to me. Nor do the first couple of gens of the inspired clothes. It takes several convolutions with the staid before it approaches things I can get behind.
OTOH, on the topic of clothing in general I've always hated it, and resented the cost. But I think it was Jackmormon who made a comment that sustainability issues with textiles manufacture should be important to people who care about that.
That may yet change my ways.
It is entirely possible that I said that to justify my desire to buy top-quality used clothing. But if everyone bought nice things to donate to the Goodwill, I wouldn't have to flip through so much worthless H&M crap to find the durable stuff, so win-win!
re: 1
I don't know about the US, but 'short shorts' have remained a fashion staple here, right through winter. As has that 'I'm not wearing any trousers or shorts at all' look. Compared to what a lot of people seem to have been wearing, that stuff looks positively cosy.
convolutions with the staid
I want to borrow this phrase for the title of my future autobiography.
As has that 'I'm not wearing any trousers or shorts at all' look.
As in the long-sweater-plus-leggings look? That continues here. The other night at dinner, I saw a woman trying to pull it off with a sweater that was just a bit too short, plus no leggings.
re: 12
I mean more the latter, yeah. Thick tights, or even no tights. And sometimes not so much a sweater as just a blouse. It can look pretty stylish but it must be chilly.
Mercifully, high fashion is trying to bring back the wide legs and full skirt. It'll happen! What I have refused to abandon will return!
As a long-waisted person, I should probably stock up on the long shirts and sweaters before stores no longer carry them. And thick, durable tights that border on leggings will always be snuggly, even after they are not considered a stand-alone lower-body garment.
I now regret that in comment #12 I judged the woman's sweater to be too short. What the fuck do I know about fashion, anyway?
WIthout a photo, Stanley, we have no idea whether you were too hasty.
17: I can only imagine trying to explain to my date, as I furtively fumbled with my cameraphone, "No, I know it seems weird, but trust me it's not. It's for the internet."
Don't be such a big girl's blouse, Stanley.
It's amazing how little fashion I see on a daily basis anymore. I like to look at the fashion blogs still, but Heebie U is seriously the frumpiest place I've ever seen. By far.
The women's hairstyles are so scripted. All girls have long hair. There are no college age girls with short-hair, and maybe one per class who has shoulder-length hair. Then grown up women have short hair, unless they're professors, in which case they may otherwise have messy, forgotten long hair. Which is all fine. I know I sound judgemental, but just for the lack of diversity. I like watching what people put on when they're willing to dress unconventionally, and no one does there.
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Coq au vin from the Julia Child recipe? Really, really good. Very hard to stop having another spoonful of the sauce.
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That last model really does look like she is FREEZING. Brr.
You mean the second model neb linked? She also seems to be wearing some sort of capillary bruising colored hose.
The last model in the linked post should at least have very warm ankles.
I just read a 'fashionpunk SF' novel called Grey by Jon Armstrong. Fun, but nothing special. Apparently the prequel Yarn is better. Those who are into fashion, SF, and pretentious highbrow design/fashion/art mags might want to check it out.
Those who are into fashion, SF, and pretentious highbrow design/fashion/art mags might want to check it out.
Now there's a small Venn-diagram intersection. Well, the 2nd with the 1st and 3rd, anyway.
25. There is however an important sub-genre waiting to happen, about human explorers failing to grasp what passes for hipster cool on the planet Tralfamadore.
25: not so; William Gibson has largely abandoned mass drivers, direct neural interfaces and O'Neill habitats in favour of Buzz Rickson jackets, small-run designer jeans and other outbreaks of Camdeniana. I spent most of his last novel waiting for Tyler Brule to turn up in a bit part (and, ideally, be attacked by a vat-grown Yakuza assassin and sliced into three mismatched pieces with a length of monomolecular wire).
re: 27
Yeah, his last novel is basically a love letter to London.
27, 28: It sits virtually unopened on our piano bench. Somehow its opening with an observation on the change in taxi aesthetics (I assume in London) triggered a "not right now" reaction in me.
I have an extremely minor role as a killjoy in that book!
re: 30
Oh, really? I forgot that he did mention you on his blog a while back, so yeah, cool!
I liked the book quite a bit, although bits of it did grate. Some of the 'London' stuff rings sort of true [of the urban UK in general] and some of it is more like the sort of creation-myths that corporations who employ Nathan Barleys tell themselves. Bits of Gibson's London schtick were already pre-pwned a long time ago.
32.1: well, kind of: he mentioned on twitter that the characters were going to take this kind of bike and put these wheels on it, but I pointed out that would involve bending the stays out fully 10cm with a two-by-four; in the book the bike mechanic they've hired makes the same point over the phone, so they go with a more modern frame. You know, close enough to being me for me.
32.2: this might be giving him too much credit, but I see the whole thing as sort of a riff on the artificiality and goofiness of those kind of creation myths; the character most invested in them ends up as basically a cartoon supervillain, after all.
I feel very "Get off my lawn" when I see women wearing the long shirt and tights combination. The other day I saw a woman in this type of outfit bend over and I could see every circle in her polka-dot thong. I disapprove.
On the other hand, I like sweater dresses that end slightly above the knee paired with tights.
re: 33.1
I remember that very bit!
re: 32.2
Yeah, possibly, although like a lot of people who are gently lampooning a subculture you can easily go 'Stockholm'.
I associate the long-shirt/sweater and tights look with my vague and ill-fated attempts to look hott in the late '80s, so while I'm vaguely nostalgic about it, it also looks ridiculous to me on anyone who isn't 16.
35:
"It was an itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie, yellow, polka dot bikini,
That she wore with tights today."
I think my reaction is less 'get off my lawn' and more 'Oh poor dear, she doesn't understand the difference between tights and leggings.' Maybe with an added eye roll, at most. If the material is thick and/or opaque enough, I don't really care.
In semi-related news, I wore a pair of 68% wool tights for the first time last night, and they keps getting baggy at the ankles. I felt sort of like I was wearing old-school stockings.
Is it usual to have the wool content specified with such precision?
You were thinking the label would say "2/3s or so wool and also some other stuff"?
36: he also picked out the shoes I wore to get married in, but that's a different William Gibson fashion story.
He may very well have gone Stockholm; he does after all have a line of signature sneakers.
re: 37
I don't know. I walked past a woman in the British Museum the other day, wearing just a silk blouse and sheer tights. She looked pretty good in a 'just got out of bed and pulled my boyfriend's shirt on' way. I'd be surprised if she had been much younger than me. Thirties, definitely.
68% wool, 30% nylon, 2% elastic. To be precise.
it also looks ridiculous to me on anyone who isn't 16
It would have looked pretty odd on me even at 16, I'd wager. Having a body type that could ever possibly be styled to look 'long and lean' is probably a prerequisite for pulling off the look.
43: Oh, this isn't a particularly strong or principled reaction, it just looks inappropriate on anyone who's not a teenager to me because the last time it was in style I was a teenager.
I am glad that this (NSFW) didn't seem to catch on. I know the justification was something called "pancake ass," but this was my own "get off my lawn" moment.
Oh yay! Now you can get the dreaded thong wedgie from your tights, too.
Anyway, I bought a bunch of wool socks and thought they were great. But then I discovered that if you forget just one time and wash them on hot like I wash all my other socks, suddenly you have comically small socks. Maybe I had 32% too much wool.
(Well, that, and the day I went to a yoga class and realized more than one person was wearing metallic (!) tights that could in no way have been breathable. These people couldn't have been more than 3 years younger than me. I felt very odd.)
They make machine-washable wool now -- you want to look for SmartWool, I think.
53: These were machine-washable socks, I think. Just not washable in hot water.
Though if they make wool pants that are machine washable, I'd be interested.
As I have mentioned repeatedly, I love my smartwool socks.
I do not believe that I would wear the smartwool tights referenced in 49, but, perhaps, I just dont understand the value of them.
57: Those look nice, but they don't say the percentage that is wool. Does that mean 100%?
Actually, those pants look dowdy, but I found the same thing with pleats.
58:
True to their name, these pants give you the warmth of wool without the dry cleaning. They're machine washable and come out of the dryer ready to wear. The soft 8.5 oz. 100% wool flannel will see you comfortably through the colder months. Classic Fit with straight legs. Imported. Machine wash and dry.
60: Sorry, I missed that because I switched to these pants before I read the details.
The pleated ones are definitely a better cut.
I thought one of the main benefits of wool was that you didn't have to wash it?
63: I like mustard and I eat carelessly.
Also, no matter what the fabric, eventually any pants will start to smell like sweaty ass if you don't wash them.
49: As if I needed one more reason to hate American Apparel.
66. Maybe this depends on what you mean by "eventually". But doesn't wool have natural antibacterial properties that make washing unecessary? I mean, if a wool diaper cover can be peed on a half dozen times a day and yet go months (years?) without washing, I'd think wool pants would be able to take some fairly significant ass sweat before they showed any ill effects.
70: Someone with actual functioning sensory organs is washing that diaper cover when you aren't looking.
But doesn't wool have natural antibacterial properties that make washing unecessary?
Yes. This is why sheep are so clean and odorless.
Finally, wool contains natural lanolin which creates a natural waterproof barrier or repellency, and has antibacterial properties.... A wool cover can get totally full of urine night after night, and after sitting out to dry you can put your face right in it and take a whiff and you smell nothing. No urine. Even after 6 weeks of use with no washing.
This is consistent with my experience.
I was so sure this would be the last line of a haiku. Pity.
I have to admit, my feet get hotter and sweatier in my new SmartWool socks than you guys led me to believe they would. Either I'm overly optimistic, or you guys oversold them, or I have some danky dank feet.
What we need is some vigorous hobo based testing of this wool theory.
74: Not even rinsing out the urine?
I like them and they work very well. But I was expecting magic.
Baby pee just doesn't smell that bad. If the diaper covers had gotten poo on them and still didn't need washing, then I'd be impressed.
Baby pee just doesn't smell that bad.
The smell inside a diaper pail begs to differ. Even when there's only pee in there, it gets very bad.
Although to settle this maybe I should pee on a diaper cover tonight and report back in the morning.
Urple's a baby where it counts.
49: those tights are hilarious. But please enlighten us--what is this "pancake ass" of which you speak? Oh, I see from Google it's a flat but sagging ass. I don't quite see how these would help, though. Wouldn't they just create a very visible seam where the ass emerged from the tights and began its sagging?
The pleated ones are definitely a better cut.
I thought pleats were deprecated. On the blog, that is. They're definitely deprecated in my own wardrobe.
The smell inside a diaper pail begs to differ. Even when there's only pee in there, it gets very bad.
Especially if you leave the diaper pail down in the basement when it's no longer in use, and discover diapers in it four years later. O my God my sinuses.
Although to settle this maybe I should pee on a diaper cover tonight and report back in the morning.
On second thought--I happen to be wearing wool pants right this minute...
87: Giving new meaning to "Lawyers do it in their briefs."
Oh, I see from Google it's a flat but sagging ass.
I assumed that the tights facilitated the flattening of the ass.
Yes, nosflow has it right. Tights of the usual kind apparently flatten the ass under a skirt in an unflattering way, making it unsuitable to attracting a mate or asserting one's social dominance over other, less attractive, hipsters. It seemed like this is a bug that could be turned into a feature -- I was expecting assless, fupa* flattening tights to be the next iteration -- but then Gawker did us all a favor and took American Apparel down.
*I actually googled to try to find a synonym for this. The only one I found was worse.
Tights of the usual kind apparently flatten the ass under a skirt in an unflattering way
And yet Spanx exist.
Maybe you'd think that AA and Spanx are aimed at different aged audiences, but I was recently in a clothing store where the two early 20s, very waifish sales clerks were having a conversation about how once you get a pair of Spanx, you just end up having to wear them under everything (even jeans!) because they make you look so much better.
how once you get a pair of Spanx, you just end up having to wear them under everything (even jeans!) because they make you look so much better
This is why I don't own any. Also: laziness.
I find "dislike of being forcibly compressed" a sufficient reason to avoid them.
93: Oh my yes. I imagine this is what would develop if I ever received a pair of Spanx unbidden. But then I'd also probably have some issues with whoever gave them to me.
"Spanx Unbidden" would be a good title for a bad bodice ripper.
re: 93
God yes. I have various compression garments that I wear when doing kickboxing, to prevent injuries, and it feels like being swaddled in some sort of itchy-powder laced plastic. To make matters worse, I turned up once to teach a class and forgot the over-shorts I normally wear, so I had to take a class in what are, to all intents and purposes, really dorky cycling shorts.
Back when I was a skinny teenager, someone gave me a cute bodysuit as a Christmas present, that unfortunately also had Spanx-like compression technology stuff going on. I tried to wear it a couple of times, because it really was attractive, but by the end of an evening in the damn thing it felt like my pelvis was going to snap from the force compressing my hipbones. I don't know how people managed in periods where girdles/corsets were a norm.
really dorky cycling shorts.
Goes without saying?
"Spanx Unbidden" would be a good title for a bad bodice ripper.
Or an Unfogged pseud! Any lurkers want to step up?
I don't know how people managed in periods where girdles/corsets were a norm
Rib removal and hysteria?
100: That was the Garden of Eden, right?
13: I'd always assumed that you can just get really warm tights.
I don't know how people managed in periods where girdles/corsets were a norm.
I have recommended this book before, but Anne Hollander has several enlightening passages on stays and corseting issue in Sex and Suits, in which she points out, inter alia, that the tight lacing of the latter half of the 19th century represented an avant garde decadence.
felt like my pelvis was going to snap from the force compressing my hipbones
Now imagine having external genitalia.
in which she points out, inter alia, that the tight lacing of the latter half of the 19th century represented an avant garde decadence.
Huzzah! An excuse to link to Tight-lacing OR THE EVILS OF COMPRESSING THE ORGANS OF ANIMAL LIFE, written by a practicing phrenologist, part of which (reproduced below) was quoted recently in a Christmas Cracker!
My conscience constrains me reluctantly to allude here to one other evil connected with tight-lacing. If I could omit it in justice to myself, in justice to my work, in justice to tight-lacers, and in justice to those who may marry small waists, I would gladly do it. One thing is certain, I do not do it to gain popularity, for I know it will injure (at least for a few years) the popularity and sale of this work. I introduce it because it ought to go in--it ought to be KNOWN that it may be guarded against. Who does not know that the compression of any part produces inflammation ? Who does not know that, therefore, tight-lacing around the waist keeps the blood from returning freely to the heart, and retains it in the bowels and neighbouring organs, and thereby inflames all the organs of the abdomen, which thereby EXCITES AMATIVE DESIRES? Away goes this book into the fire! 'Shame! shame on the man who writes this!' exclaims Miss Fastidious Small Waist. 'The man who wrote that, ought to be tarred and feathered.' Granted; and then what shall be done to the woman who laces tight? If it be improper for a man to allude to this effect of lacing, what is it for a woman to cause and experience it? Let me tell you, Miss Fastidious, that the less you say about this, the better; because I have TRUTH on my side, and because it is high time that men who wish virtuous wives, knew it, so that they may avoid those who have inflamed and exhausted this element of their nature. It is also high time that virtuous woman should blush for very shame to be seen laced tight, just as she should blush to be caught indulging impure desires.
In fact the part reproduced in 105 supra is only a part of the part that was quoted in the Christmas Cracker, IIRC.
I don't actually know, but wouldn't you think that corsetry that didn't qualify as 'tight-lacing' was nonetheless fairly uncomfortably compressive? I mean, the bodysuit that was trying to snap my pelvis in half wasn't fetishwear, it was something sold in sizes appropriate for fairly slim people to make them look a bit smoother.
I can imagine that under certain fetishistic conditions, compression might feel kind of interesting for a little while. For example, if I ever have to wear a smooth, satin, bias-cut formal gown, compressive undergarments would not only make the dress look nice but also remind me to stand up straight and be on my best behavior.
Clearly all this is fourteen flights of fancy from my usual sartorial inclinations.
105: It finishes well:
What possible motive, drawn from religion, can a pious woman have for tight-lacing? No more than she can have for taking arsenic! Tight-lacing is incompatible with Christianity, or else I do not understand either its precepts or its principles.
104: If you order somebody to do, it probably isn't fun for them.
107: Hollander has an interesting passage about that, in which she points out that, for many centuries, women did all sorts of "women's work" -- washing, spinning, weaving, caring for children, serving, climbing stairs, even agricultural harvesting -- wearing such compressive garments, and draws from that fact a well-measured lesson about the comfort, to all, of being properly dressed for one's time and place. It's really a very interesting book.
Compression garments are quite au courant among (certain kinds of) athletes and fighter pilots.
Because it is less painful than hernia surgery?
Long-sleeved tops and so on with some sort of compression technology are pretty mainstream - at least, if *I've* seen them in sports shops, they must be.
114: mostly blood-flow oriented, I think?
I mean, for fighter pilots the idea is to keep blood from pooling in the legs and making you pass out. For athletes it sounds like there are a bunch of ill-defined snake-oil-ish reasons people wear them.
It's really a very interesting book.
... which you probably wouldn't expect, from the title.
re: 115
Yeah, people were wearing them at the competition I was officiating at on Sunday. As over-garments. Admittedly, mostly just the particularly buff people. Most other people wear them under things. Although technically everyone's supposed to wear something basically skin-tight, even the not buff ones, so you always get the odd very wobbly person in lycra.
re: 117
I'm pretty sure, from personal experience, there's some benefit to the compression shorts, and rugby players all seem to be wearing the shirts these days, so perhaps there's a benefit there, too? I find the compression t-shirts annoying and sweaty, though. Although I'm not really built for them, I suppose.
How about the stuff people are now beginning to wear for randonee and off piste skiing - air bags. The idea is that they keep you floating up at or near the surface of an avalanche. The catch is that you have to remember to pull the release tab and that they're sort of hit and miss in effectiveness.
rugby players all seem to be wearing the shirts these days, so perhaps there's a benefit there, too?
I think rugby players switched to the tight tops from traditional looser rugby shirts because it's much more difficult for someone to get a grip on a tight top, so it makes you more difficult to tackle.
re: 122
Yeah, I'm sure you're right re: the change in the outer layer, but they have also been wearing the under-armour type compression shirts under those tight tops for a while.
Ah, sorry, misunderstood you. I imagine they wear those because they wick away sweat.
Ironically, the one thing you shouldn't do with your Under Armour t-shirt is wear it under your armour, because it's made of synthetic materials, so if you get caught in a flash or a fire it'll melt and stick.
121: on the other hand, those must make for hilarious pranks.
I assume you mean "randonee" in some kind of skiing sense? I've only heard the term used for long, self-supported bicycle events.
randonee skiing involves go up mountains on downhill like skis with bindings that can either allow for the heel to move up and down or be locked down for the descent. You attack (fake) seal skins to the bottom of the ski to provide one way friction. It is very high risk for avalanches.
