Happy New Year!
]]>There's an interesting story in the New York Times today about the legacy of William Randolph Hearst, a man who built and lost an empire, and lived out much of his tumultuous personal and professional life in Manhattan. It brought back memories.
Among many other things, Hearst is believed to have been one of the rare male shopaholics.
Ironically, during my own shopping addled years, I lived across the street from what is now the Hearst Tower, and I photographed its construction from my twenty-third floor apartment window. Over a series of months I took snapshots of the structure as it grew taller, each skeletal layer added atop the other. I don't know exactly why I chose to photograph this. Maybe there was some metaphorical message in there somewhere; at that time I was (in a sense) reconstructing myself.
I ended up leaving New York shortly before the tower was completed.
In retrospect, that vantage point and those photographs seem magical. When I view those images today I'm always somewhat startled by what I have captured. And when I return to New York I look at the completed tower feeling that I know something intimate about its soul.
moon and star prints blouse which I write about in Spent.
]]>
Happy New Year!
]]>I’ve never been keen on total buying blackouts, but have been an advocate of mindful consuming. I’ve recently read about a trend called “recommerce” which sounds a lot like mindful consumption. Recommerce is about buying things with knowledge of the value of ownership as well as resale value. While things like cars and houses have always been purchased with resale value in mind, today anything from electronics to clothing can hold resale potential.
Recommerce savvy consumers are investing in “upgradeable” products rather than stocking up on piles of junkaholic style possessions. Buying well-made, well-crafted and durable is looking increasingly smarter than purchasing poorly constructed. Retailers, surprisingly, are also embracing this consuming paradigm. French fashion label A.P.C., for example, has a Better Worn-Out program offering half-price on jeans when you bring in your used pair. Patagonia recently launched a "buy less, buy used" initiative in collaboration with eBay, encouraging the purchase of the label's used items. The continued popularity of "vintage" can also be considered part of the trend.
Recommerce is neither earth shaking nor unprecedented, but it is a sign that the age of conspicuous over consumption, entirely supported and encouraged by retailers, is waning. Maybe it's also a sign of the beginning of the end of “disposable” style purchasing which has been glamorized in hoarding videos and embraced by zombie-like consumers (one of which I used to be) around the globe.
thanks to trendwatching.com
London, England: To my knowledge, these are the first ever shopping riots made up of marauding crowds whose primary goal seems to be smash and grab, get their hands on more “stuff.” They migrate from shopping center to shopping center where they break in, and then skitter away with arm loads of sneakers, mobile phones, T-shirts, and other meaningless objects.
It’s fascinating for both its depravity and its singularity. It’s fascinating because it was largely predicted.
It was Guy Debord who wrote in The Society of the Spectacle, a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism, about what happens in a society of advanced capitalism when we reach the historical moment “at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life"; a time where consumer culture and mass media collide and the spectacle takes over. The Society of the Spectacle, was published in 1967, in France.
Today, this “spectacle” is what we have been witnessing throughout England,
In short, Debord's theory helps to explain how the spectacle takes over. It occurs at the point where society becomes so deeply disconnected from reality and where images have supplanted genuine human interaction.
So it’s not surprising when today I read in The International Herald Tribune an interview with a 17-year old rioter who says that his life consists of little more than receiving government benefit checks that barely keep him, “fed and watching TV.” It’s not surprising to hear reports that rioters communicate in TV talk, like characters on The Wire, referring to the police as “Feds.” It’s not surprising to see cheap, meaningless consumer goods being wielded as trophies of the rioting experience.
As Debord pointed out, in a consumer society, social life is not about living but about having; the spectacle uses the image to convey what people need and must have.
Maybe leaders would be well-served to read some Debord and begin to gather a deeper understanding of what is occurring on England’s streets right now.
]]>What's it going to take for you to stop shopping?
Perhaps Lucy Siegle's new book. To Die For: Is Fashion Weaing Out The World?, will help you find the stop button. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Die-Fashion-Wearing-Out-World/dp/0007264097
The following is an excerpt from a 2006 interview between Ostap Karmodi and David Foster Wallace:
Ostap Karmodi: Do you feel we’re living in an age of consumerism or is that just a media concept that doesn’t have any real meaning?
David Foster Wallace: This question, as you know, is very complicated. I can give answers that are somewhat simple and I can really talk only about America, because it’s really the only society that I know. America, as everybody knows, is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse. For many years everybody knew that business was business and people needed to make money, but people were also a little embarrassed or ashamed of that. It was regarded as somewhat crass. Some of this contradiction comes out of England and old conflicts between the bourgeoisie and nobility. Sometime—I’m not sure whether it was the 1990s or 1980s in America—half of that conflict really sort of disappeared, and there’s now a celebration of commercialism and consumerism and marketing that is not really balanced by any kind of shame or embarrassment or reticence or sense that in fact consumerism and commercialism were really only a very small part of human life. I think that many peoples’ daily lives probably aren’t completely consumer-driven here in America, but they’re certainly much more so than they were twenty or thirty years ago.
]]>A Zen master, D.T. Suzuki, defines satori as "the acquiring of a new point of view in our dialogue with life and the world."
I've been interested in satori for a long time yet have never had the courage, or perhaps given myself the tools, to achieve it. The idea of tilting the kaleidoscope on one's outlook and emerging with a new set of fractal prisms sounds appealing and scary at the same time. As creatures of habit, we get used to our same old way of seeing things, for better or worse, and tend to stick with them.
Recently, I found myself sitting in the office of Alix Needham, one of London's most renowned hypnotherapists. She was offering me a chance to tilt the kaleidoscope, and perhaps alter some worn out perceptions, change my dialogue with life.
As I sat back in my plush chair, she instructed me to relax, sink into my thoughts, feel my eyelids getting heavy. I have to admit, I was sceptical: the heavy eyelids line snagged in my mind. But I let it pass, and allowed myself to float, let go, open myself up to Needham's instructions delivered in her duvet like voice.
Like Alice down the rabbit hole, I soon found myself transported. Eyes shut, I was speaking out loud about an early life event that got jammed in my system-- altered my perception of myself and my capabilities. Needham's method involves repeating phrases and something called tapping. Following her instructions, I repeated my laments and gently tapped with a finger on my palm. At one point, I was laughing and crying at the same time.The events I found myself recalling were painful, but how I had chosen to carry (and distort) them in my life was indeed comical! I felt ready to shift my perspective.
When it was over, I opened my eyes (my eyelids did feel heavy) to realize I'd lost all track of time. Did I also acquire a new point of view?
I think it's safe to say that something in me was roused. Needham often achieves successful transformations with clients in about three sessions, so my one session felt like the tip of the iceberg. Although, she informed me that the particular issue I chose to address should, in fact, be transformed.
In the days that followed, it was clear that the kaleidoscope had tilted, and even though the effects were subtle they felt pure. A pattern I had been following had changed. I knew this because without any forethought I found myself doing and speaking about certain things that formerly would have caused me discomfort.
Have I achieved a certain satori? If I follow Zen mater Suzuki's definition, the answer would be yes. But I think it is the mystic Osho who best explains what I have experienced.
He writes: The real journey starts when the first satori happens. When you have had a first glimpse, trust arises. Then you are no more groping in the dark, you know now. You yourself know that it exists. Now it is not taken from some authority -- not that Osho says, not that Buddha says, not that Christ says. Now you have also become a witness to it. It is!It is your own experience -- of course, very atomic, seed-like, but that is nothing to be worried about. Once the seed is there, the tree will be coming.
For more information about Alix Needham: www.alixneedham.com
]]>
The HBO Mini-series, Mildred Pierce is airing tomorrow and I wish I were back in the States to see it. I'm a huge fan of both the book and the original film starring Joan Crawford. It's been on my short-list of favorite films for decades.
One of the things I enjoy most about Mildred Pierce, the film, is the fashion. If I could spend each day dressed in styles reminiscent of the early 40's I wouldn't be unhappy.
There was a lot of 40's showing up during the fall 2011 runway shows, mainly in New York and Paris. But it was the collection from Miu Miu that I found intriguing. Designer Miuccia Prada has honed in on fabulous details, such as this fur cummberbund.
Below is a photo of model/artist Lee Miller taken in 1940, and on the right a look from Miu Miu's fall 2011 collection.
Marchesa Luisa Casati (1881-1957)
A true original, Luisa Casati was an Italian aristocrat who once gilded her servants in gold and wore a live snake around her neck as an accessory.
She was bizarre and brave and apparently enjoyed dressing and living provocatively in an age before such provocations were the norm.
She was also a spendaholic with a passion for clothes, jewels, and an undeniably extravagant lifestyle.
Spending lavishly reportedly left her with a personal debt of close to $25 million before she reached the age of fifty, and rumor has it that her last years were spent in poverty.
Sad story? In some ways yes, of course. In other ways, there's an admiration for such an achingly passionate individual's desire to live life by her own rules. One only wishes, of course, that with all the financial fortunes she was bestowed (the early death of her parents left her with a massive inheritance) she could have better managed her money.
Of course, the fact that money was the thing that replaced something completely unreplaceable-- her parents-- probably holds the key to the WHY? of her incredible story.
]]>