do you know what it's like to be surrounded by beautiful things when, once, you weren't? And i'm not even talking the designer stuff andie's talking about. just freakin' craft maid cabinets. or walls painted with quality paint, not whatever shit is cheap at walmart. a wood floor that's been taken care of and shines -- not the beat up thing I once had with stainsfrom a dog's piss on it, scratched, dull, etc.
do you know what's it like to buy, no not even the best clothes, but a few rungs up the ladder from walmart. The clothes fit better, feel better, wear better, resist stains and pilling, and don't get dull so quickly. I suspect well made clothes are even better.
i walk to work every day. i walk to the gym. and i can't get over it some days. the bricks are fucking gorgeous. (yeah: i know i'm crazeeee) because someone cared about making a street easier to walk on and look nice. yeah, it was to attract the yups and raise property values. But I walk on those bricks and sometimes, i want to get on the ground and kiss them, they're so beautiful -- and not concrete.
Or just the way the windows in the high rise condos were made so that,when they're opened, they reflect the blue sky and I time it so I can visit a window at work every day, just to freaking see the patch work of beautiful blue peeking out here and there among the brownish gray. i'm sure some architectural snob will explain why the building's a piss of sheet, but for me, and compared to where I've been living (in lower middle class stuckoed out the hoo ha surburbanian hell -- someone kill me if I ever move to the suburbs again!), it's glorious.
I mean, even compared to the suburb I just moved from, which was supposedly one of the more sought after neighborhoods. IT had all the accoutrements of the YUP condo village, the whole she-bang. but there was something about it that felt wrong. When we moved in, after a few days, we realized: the crap construction, the shoddy materials, and the poor workmanship because people were prob. paid crap. (Maybe the ppl were paid crap for the nicer stuff, too. Don't know)
My point is, I guess, that I really fucking resent it when people pull this shit. I hate the authenticity game, but fuck me dead. Why do people who probably never done anything other than to *choose* to live a life of denial think they get to speak for the rest of us who lived most of our lives that way because we had little choice -- or at least very limited ones.
Yeah, I worry about the things andie mentions in his later post, and the positional goods stuff doug talks about. But it's not fashion we're talking about: it's beauty, quality, joy, passion. Deny people that at our peril.
At 05:44 PM 12/14/2007, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>You it pisses the fucking shit out of me when
>sanctimonious right wing reporters and others,
>including more-prolet-than though leftists, set
>themselves up as fashion police for the left, as if
>(a) right wingers have any fucking business telling us
>what the proper clothes for a socialist might be
>(maybe we can tell them that jeans and t-shirts are
>verboten for fascist creeps, neocon lapdogs, and
>bourgeois apologists?), and (b) certain self-styled
>leftists think that worn jeans and a work shirt is a
>requirement to be on the left, like some sort of a
>fucking uniform.
>
>Back in the day M&E, the German SDP, and even the old
>Bolshies work suits and ties or nice dresses. You
>better bet Engels was clothed on Saville Row, and Marx
>dressed as well as he could afford (as well as Engels
>would provide him). Rosa Luxemburg was a fashion
>plate. Look at those hats! So was Alexandra Kollontai.
>I've seen some of Lenin's nice wardobe in the former
>Lenin museum in Moscow (since closed), lots of good
>French, Swiss, and English tailoring he brought back
>from exile. And afater the assassination attempt, an
>armored Rolls Royce. Even Stalin smoked Dunhill pipes.
>
>It's post hippie crap, not anything left, that makes
>jeans, t-shirts, and work clothes the "expected"
>uniform of the left. And the right wing has no
>business whatsoever accusing us of hypocrisy or
>telling us what to wear. I think they shoulf wear
>prison orange and chains, how about that? Let them
>excuse their sell-outs of the free market and
>bourgeois liberties before they pick on our clothes.
>
>OK, _I_ wear Armani and Versace and Loro Piana and
>even fancier stuff you never heard of unless you're a
>fashionista like me (bought on eBay for a fraction of
>list, that's my secret, shh, don't tell); I have a
>Florentine tailor and a good tailor in Chicago AND I'M
>NOT ASHAMED OF IT. Au contraire, I am pleased and
>proud to look good. I'm wearing an Armani shearling
>jacket RIGHT NOW in fact! I LIKE to look better than
>schlumpfy right wingers. Why shouldn't we be smarter,
>sexier, better informed, better dressed, and more
>stylish than the enema, er, the enemy?
>
>As (I think it was) Aneurin Bevan said, nothing is too
>good for the working class. Why shouldn't the
>proletariat wear Prada? Who gave the Devil a monopoly
>on fine clothes? Fuck the Mao suit and the jeans,
>Vuitton for all!
>
>Btw, you notice how advocates of socialism "spout" it,
>as if it were some fort of effluence, rather than
>urge, argue, or advocate it? I saw we say that the
>right "vomits" reaction, in the Biblical sense, like
>the dog that returneth to its vomit.
>
>--- "B." <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Vuitton-clad official spouts socialism
> > Fri Dec 14, 2007 11:40am EST
> >
> > CARACAS (Reuters) - A video of a Gucci- and Louis
> > Vuitton-clad politician attacking capitalism then
> > struggling to explain how his luxurious clothes
> > square
> > with his socialist beliefs has become an instant
> > YouTube hit in Venezuela.
> >
> > Venezuelan Interior Minister Pedro Carreno was
> > momentarily at a loss for words when a journalist
> > interrupted his speech and asked if it was not
> > contradictory to criticize capitalism while wearing
> > Gucci shoes and a tie made by Parisian luxury goods
> > maker Louis Vuitton.
> >
> > "I don't, uh ... I ... of course," stammered Carreno
> > on Tuesday before regaining his composure. "It's not
> > contradictory because I would like Venezuela to
> > produce all this so I could buy stuff produced here
> > instead of 95 percent of what we consume being
> > imported."
> >
> > The video clip (www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsdXkY4UlE)
> > had been viewed more than 15,000 times on Thursday,
> > a
> > day after it was posted on the YouTube Web site.
> >
> > Despite the best efforts of left-wing President Hugo
> > Chavez to instill austere socialist values in its
> > people, the oil-rich South American nation remains
> > attached to consumerism.
> >
> > Riding a boom in oil prices, middle-class and
> > wealthy
> > Venezuelans are on a spending spree, guzzling fine
> > whiskies and snapping up luxury cars. Poorer
> > Venezuelans also have benefited, with subsidies
> > driving a spike in demand for basic products.
> >
> > (Reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel, writing by
> > Frank
> > Jack Daniel; Editing by Xavier Briand)
> >
> >
> >
>http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN1426791920071214?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews
> > ___________________________________
> >
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> >
>
>
>
>
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