Anna Scholz Blog

Clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch apparently wants to pay Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino from the hit MTV reality show The Jersey Shore big bucks not to wear their clothing anymore.

A&F have decided that “The Sitch” is damaging to their reputation as a brand “rooted in East Coast traditions and Ivy League heritage” and “the essence of privilege and casual luxury”. A&F also sells clothing under the surfing-themed brand Hollister and the Australian-themed underwear brand Gilly Hicks.

Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino

The Jersey Shore has wrapped up its fourth season and depicts a loud, mostly Italian-American cast partying in the state of New Jersey in the US.

The official statement released by A&F reads: “[We] believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans. We have therefore offered a substantial payment to Michael ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino and the producers of MTV’s The Jersey Shore to have the character wear an alternate brand. We have also extended this offer to other members of the cast, and are urgently waiting a response.”

Apparently, it wasn’t so long ago that A&F were happily selling “The Fitchuation” t-shirts. Go figure.

Meanwhile, porn king Larry Flynt has apparently offered “The Situation” money to wear his XXX brand of clothing so that “he can stay well dressed.”

When Life closes a door…

The cast of The Jersey Shore

What do you think about the offer from Abercrombie & Fitch? Is it rude? Classist? Is there such a thing as bad publicity?

The BBC news website reported that an Austrian atheist cab driver has won the right to wear a pasta strainer on his head in his driver’s license photo because it is “religious headgear.”

The license took three years to come through, but it has been officially ruled that, as a practicing Pastafarian, Niko Alm is allowed to wear the strainer on his head in the photo.

Though technically an atheist, Mr Alm claims membership to the US-based Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The church’s only dogma is “the rejection of dogma.”

Score one for freedom of expression!

We’ve all bought that item of clothing that we couldn’t quite afford or was a bit of a stretch for the image of ourselves that we usually present. It is our prerogative as women to take fashion risks and to treat ourselves to the latest looks.

But imagine a time when stepping out of the house in the wrong garment for your station in life could –quite literally –bring down the fashion police.

In Elizabethan England, extensive Sumptuary Laws were put in place banning “excess of apparel and the superfluity of unnecessary foreign wares.”  Such “great abuses” of fashion threatened to “so manifest a decay of the wealth of the realm and to the ruin of a multitude of serviceable young men and gentlemen and of many good families.”

The laws purported to protect family fortunes and to curb extravagant spending of money that could be put to better use within the country, such as acquiring horses. But the laws also served to keep commoners from attempting to look like nobility and to keep everyone easily identifiable. The idea was that if you couldn’t tell a farmer from a count at a glance, the very fabric of society was weakened.

Clauses within the Sumptuary Laws (outlined here circa 1574) go into great detail as to what men and women of different social strata could and couldn’t wear.

For example, no one below the degree of vicountess or baroness or similar rank could wear “cloth of gold, silver, tinseled satin, silk, or cloth mixed or embroidered with gold or silver or pearl, saving silk mixed with gold or silver in linings of cowls, partlets, and sleeves.” But the laws expanded to include “wives of barons and knights of the order” for the wearing of “velvet, tufted taffeta, satin, or gold or silver in any cloak or safeguard.”

For both men and women, the laws also stipulated which servants could wear which items of clothing as would be appropriate for their stations in relation to nobility. As a result, “caps, hats, hatbands, capbands, garters, or boothose trimmed with gold or silver or pearl; silk netherstocks; enameled chains, buttons, aglets” were allowable by nobility as well as “the gentlemen attending upon the Queen’s person in her highness’s Privy chamber or in the office of cupbearer, carver, sewer [server], esquire for the body, gentlemen ushers, or esquires of the stable.”

There was one small note of mercy in all this though, as the laws allowed, “that her majesty’s meaning is not, by this order, to forbid in any person the wearing of silk buttons, the facing of coats, cloaks, hats and caps, for comeliness only, with taffeta, velvet, or other silk, as is commonly used.”

So, the next time you go out on a limb with your outfit, think of what those poor Elizabethan women would have given to walk in your Manolos.

Ever wonder why pink is for girls and blue for boys? It wasn’t always so. In her new book, Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America, Jo B. Paoletti, an historian at the University of Maryland, explores the cultural shift away from gender-neutral children’s clothing.

For centuries, boys and girls in Western culture both wore little white cotton dresses because they were easy to bleach.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1884

Pastels came into vogue as baby colours after World War I, but up until World War II, Paoletti cites numerous popular culture sources which initially advocated pink for boys and blue for girls. However, by the 1940s, a collective decision and push on the part of manufacturers and retailers set the standard of pink for girls and blue for boys. It was really the Baby Boomers who were first raised in gender-specific clothing.

The women’s liberation movement of the mid-1960s created a bit of a backlash against pink for girls that lasted through the 70s; but, by the 1980s, gender-specific clothing was back in full swing. Paoletti attributes this to advances in antenatal testing that allowed expectant parents to know the sex of their unborn child, and to begin establishing his or her identity right away.

Gender-neutral children's clothing from the 196s and 70s

Another reason that girls have continued to be attached to pink and boys to blue, says Paoletti, is that children themselves have become active consumers. Children are the targets of pervasive advertising campaigns and imagery that tend to reinforce social convention. Kids absorb from an early age how “society” thinks a girl or a boy should look.

Paoletti feels that currently there is a rising demand for gender-neutral clothing for children and toddlers, that many parents would like their children to have more options for expressing themselves. The pink and blue divide is becoming less black and white.

Brother and sister, circa 1905

To read more about this book and see more photos, visit Smithsonian.com

During the 1920s, following the end of World War I, a new type of young Western woman emerged: the flapper.

The flapper wore short skirts, bobbed her hair, wore heavy make-up, drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, dated casually, drove automobiles and danced the night away.

But, in a larger sense, the flapper represented a new rise in women’s independence and forward-thinking. They advocated voting and women’s rights. They challenged Victorian gender roles and embraced consumerism and personal choice.

Flappers also quickly became known for their unconventional appearance and outrageous behaviour. Their style emerged out of French fashions, especially those pioneered by Coco Chanel, and the spread of the popularity of jazz music and the dancing that accompanied it. Hemlines rose and waistlines dropped and loosened.

The increased sexual liberation of the flapper generation ushered in new designs in lingerie that was sexy but allowed movement. The garter belt came into use to keep longer stockings from falling. Bra designs were further developed and perfected (in fact, some flapper bras worked to flatten the chest as a gamine, boyish look was all the rage). Corsetry was dispensed with and more functional bras and undergarments were favoured (of course, much of that work was undone in the 1950s, but hey). Flapper style was organised around movement and independence.

And, like all subcultures, flappers had their own lingo for those in-the-know. Part of pulling off true flapper style was knowing the right vocab. Some of it has survived today, but much of it is a delightful window into an era.

These slang terms and many more were compiled in 1922 in a magazine discovered by an antique book seller behind the blog Book Flaps.

Selection from The Flapper’s Dictionary:

Alarm Clock—Chaperone

Biscuit—A pettable flapper.

Barneymugging—Lovemaking.

Cancelled Stamp—A wallflower.

Corn Shredder—Young man who dances on a girl’s feet.

Duck’s Quack—The best thing ever

Dudding Up—Dressing

Embalmer—A bootlegger.

Eye Opener—A marriage

Floorflusher—Inveterate dance hound.

Goof—Sweetie

Munitions—Face powder and rouge.

Police Dog—Young man to whom one is engaged.

Rug Hopper—Young man who never takes a girl out. A parlor hound.

Sharpshooter—One who spends much and dances well

Tomato—A young woman shy of brains.

Whangdoodle—Jazz-band music.

Wind Sucker—Any person given to boasting.

Let’s try it out: Say, this party’s the duck’s quack but what’s a bisquit gotta do to ditch her alarm clock, find an embalmer, and engage is some good old-fashioned barneymugging with her goof?

Give us your best flapper-speak!

Vogue.com recently invited body language expert Lillian Glass, Ph.D. to interpret the way the models held their bags in a number of runway shows from Fall 2011.

While what happens on the catwalk is usually a far cry from daily reality, it is still fun to dissect what statements the designers and stylists are making with the placement of accessories, as every detail in a fashion show is most certainly calculated.

“They’re holding those bags like they’re holding a puppy!” Glass remarked of the runway images from Prada’s Fall 2011 catwalk show. Glass speculates that the models are cradling their bags close because “bags are no longer just an accessory—they are a vital part of our lives!” They hold everything from a lipstick to a wallet to an iPad. They hold all aspects of our lives.

Alternatively, to me, the gesture of snuggling the bag shows that the woman sees her Prada bag as something precious and pet-like. It’s a plush little friend, rather than a bag you sling over your shoulder or hold aloofly down at your side. It also signifies ownership and closeness with luxury.

At Marc Jacobs’s Louis Vuitton show, models held the coveted structured purses in hands that were cuffed behind their backs. Glass thinks this pose represents safety and security, not being careless with your possessions. She also thinks that despite this gesture of nervousness, “hands in back show an extreme amount of confidence and security. [...] It also shows a lot of self-confidence and self-assuredness. When you place your arms in back of you, as opposed to placing them in front, it says you have nothing to hide. Also, it lets the bag stands on its own, without distracting from the entire outfit.”

I think this gesture is also a saucy way of poking fun at fashion obsession.  The pose could be saying, “I’m a prisoner of fashion. I’m a victim.” Or it could be saying, “No matter what happens, I’ll have my fabulous little handbag with me. Even in the wake of disaster, I have my priorities.”

The models at Celine carried their bags from underneath like a sack of groceries, not even using the handles. Glass says, “What I am picking up from this is that in this day and age, women are carrying around a lot more things. It’s like a virtual office in their purses, and the handles make things feels heavier, so this new way of holding the purse may be more practical and less cumbersome.”

To me, this particular gesture seems mostly about the need to come up with some new spin on bag-holding. But it could also be about breaking the rules, about being in a casual relationship with luxury, or about creating interesting, complementary angles with the clean lines of the clothes themselves.

What are your thoughts on what these bag-holding gestures mean? Do you have any other thoughts on the meanings behind certain ways of holding bags? Or is it all just a sack of sugar?