It’s an unadulterated, no-way-around-it fact: I love plaid as much as I hate it, and now I’m sort of torn. It was Sir Mungo Murray, scion of a noble Scottish family, who was first documented donning this classic pattern in 1683. Since then, tartan has tarted up everyone and everything; Queen Victoria’s Balmoral castle looked like plaid, now more British than Scottish, threw up all over it.
Today, the preferred fabric design of bagpipe players and Catholic schoolgirls has become part of the hipster uniform. From Omaha, Nebraska to this side of North Korea, everyone knows at least seven dudes who wear check shirts with either skinny jeans or shorts and a variety of sockless old-man footwear. As the look works exceptionally well for a lot of people, the ubiquity is astounding. Therefore, it’s also totally annoying.
The turning point came for me sometime last weekend. I was stepping out of the elevator in my apartment building when there he was, another drinker of the same sartorial soup. We stood in front of each other like mimes — he in a blue check shirt, ankle-baring skinnies, brown Sperry boat shoes, and dork glasses and me in a green check shirt from Commune, rolled up Paul Smith jean shorts, blue Sperry boat shoes, and Ray-Ban RX dork glasses. It was my errand-running outfit but still, it made my parts hurt. I suddenly felt unspecial.
“Today’s scenesters all wear the same clothes and accessories, listen to the same sounds, ride the same bicycles, and read the same magazines, e-mailouts and style blogs,” The Guardian’s Tim Walker observed in 2008. If you possess an impatient instinct and enjoy being different like me, how do you revolt against this post-millenial monotony?
We live in a world where everything is recycled, redone, rehashed and reinterpreted for open appropriation so I’ve taken up the task of kicking up my own cloud of dust and venturing out on the peripheries in an effort to make unique — and potentially dubious — decisions. Here, boys and girls, are other overdone things that need to be overturned stat.
Fashion Collabos
Pros: One name teaming up with another to produce something wholly different has given mere mortals access to elite talent. Target, with its Go International series, and H&M are arguably the most well-known among the dozens of high-street retailers that have released limited edition capsule collections by major designers. Of course, there are also one-off projects for the high-end set; the latest ones for men are Thakoon x Aloha Rag and Rodarte x Opening Ceremony.
Cons: In its first issue for 2010, Sweden’s quarterly Plaza magazine singles out someone who sums up their argument against the collabo conundrum: Rei Kawakubo. “H&M, Fred Perry, Speedo, Tretorn, Lacoste, The North Face, Nike, Visvim, Artek, Monocle — the Comme des Garçons designer has lent her label to more commercial collaborations than anyone else. It’s all at the expense of something, but what? A sense of exclusivity, perhaps?”
My take: If you really want stuff that no one else has, why don’t you go for the newer, purer labels instead of the more established ones that are struggling to stay relevant? Producing men’s chainmail hoodies inspired by bearskin rugs, 25-year-old British designer Katie Eary could just be the next Alexander McQueen.
Pop Music, Whatever It Is These Days
Pros: As the Internet flattens out communication lines, the definition of pop music has become a moving target. Depending on your personal taste, even stuff by Thieves Like Us, Owen Pallett, and Joy Orbison can be considered as such. As long as it has a great hook, a knife-sharp melody, and a beat you can bust a few moves to, it’s pop.
Cons: Justin Bieber, Ke$ha and, sigh, The Black Eyed Peas are okay to like as long as you aren’t too sensitive and fanatical about it. Plus points if you like cheesy acts — including K-pop groups, natch — only because you’re afraid to become 100-percent pretentious and/or you’re on a mission to subvert coolness. That said, I want to make Roxette relevant to everyone’s interests.
My take: For fresh music that enters through your sinus and makes your head implode in a good way, there’s MixCloud. Like HypeM for mixes, the new search site has a nice chunky interface. Last I checked, there’s apparently a mixtape dedicated to the late Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren floating somewhere, waiting to park itself in my hard drive.
TV ‘Talent’ Shows And Unscripted Programming
Pros: Showtime and Pilipinas Got Talent are the latest plot-free programs to emerge from the golden vaults of ABS-CBN. The former has made a star out of Vice Ganda, a witty stand-up comedian with the allure of a transsexual Trace Cyrus. The latter, meanwhile, has made it clear that Billy Crawford is awesome. In the only episode I’ve so far managed to catch, a female contestant says her partner can “beatbax.” Crawford calls out the [sic] and spells it out backstage. Let me buy both of you a beer — and a falafel just because.
Cons: Like the Iraq war of television, Pinoy Big Brother is still around. After the extremely enlightening Double Up comes the local franchise’s Teen Clash of 2010. The rich-versus-poor angle is new and somewhat intriguing, but there’s only so much you can make these kids do that hasn’t been pegged as criminally unnecessary. Paging Pedobear.
My take: Nestled at the opposite end of the TV spectrum is Archer, an animated spy series on FX. Unlike reality television, each episode of the cartoon takes a full month to produce. (A full month!) With the likes of Chris Parnell and Aisha Tyler lending their voices to the project, Archer is attracting viewers with its very Adult Swim, un-PC and therefore hysterical dialogue. Quality show is quality.
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