People keep blaming John F. Kennedy for "killing" the hat in popular fashion. This is either slanderous or libelous (depending on the medium), because the hat was already in decline in the 1930s (I've seen hat sellers' publications from that decade that had suggestions for convincing people to wear hats again), so I tend to blame Cary Grant more than anybody else. He was charm itself, but didn't look that good in hats, so he didn't wear them much, thus beginning the decline of the dress hat. This opinion is, of course, no better researched than the one I'm discrediting, but at least it's believable. Cary Grant did look a little silly in hats, and there were definitely fewer hats (at least in the movies) in the 1950s already, well before J.F. Kennedy's time in the White House.
JFK definitely wore a top hat to his inauguration, too. So don't believe that ugly rumor either.
Donnerstag, 30. Dezember 2010
Montag, 13. Dezember 2010
"Classic" style
I'm tired of men's style blogs talking about classic style and how wonderful it is. They seem to think that because the suits they wear now might have looked normal in the 1960s, they would look normal in any decade since the modern suit came into fashion. The writers of these blogs are fooling themselves.
I believe I've written before that we're in a time of backward-looking fashion (call it retro if it makes you feel better), and that fashion has looked backward more than forward these fifty years. This doesn't mean that men's style is timeless--today's suits would look silly in any past decade except the sixties--but rather that the drivers of men's fashion have been paying more attention to their rear view mirrors than the road ahead.
These praisers of "timeless" men's style often throw in references to the quite different world of women's fashion, which they see as trend-driven and mindlessly obsessed with the latest thing, whether that thing be figure-flattering or fugly. The worst of these wander into vaguely misogynistic suppositions about the nature of women themselves considering this propensity for following the herd.
What they fail to realize is that they themselves are following the current fashion in menswear: wearing sixties-inspired suits and calling them timeless. The sixties silhouette would not have looked timeless in the seventies or the eighties or the nineties; it would have looked ten or twenty or thirty years out of fashion. The icons of classic cool (Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, Cary Grant) were not concerned with posterity but with the moment, and the only reason they still look good now is that they were so successful at blending what was current and what looked good on them.
I believe I've written before that we're in a time of backward-looking fashion (call it retro if it makes you feel better), and that fashion has looked backward more than forward these fifty years. This doesn't mean that men's style is timeless--today's suits would look silly in any past decade except the sixties--but rather that the drivers of men's fashion have been paying more attention to their rear view mirrors than the road ahead.
These praisers of "timeless" men's style often throw in references to the quite different world of women's fashion, which they see as trend-driven and mindlessly obsessed with the latest thing, whether that thing be figure-flattering or fugly. The worst of these wander into vaguely misogynistic suppositions about the nature of women themselves considering this propensity for following the herd.
What they fail to realize is that they themselves are following the current fashion in menswear: wearing sixties-inspired suits and calling them timeless. The sixties silhouette would not have looked timeless in the seventies or the eighties or the nineties; it would have looked ten or twenty or thirty years out of fashion. The icons of classic cool (Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, Cary Grant) were not concerned with posterity but with the moment, and the only reason they still look good now is that they were so successful at blending what was current and what looked good on them.
Mittwoch, 1. Dezember 2010
Name games
I'm tired of my name. My last name is good and I like it. Sometimes I wish it were still spelled with the extra n the way it was before my ancestors came to America, but it really is a noble name.
No, my problem is with my first name. Most places on the internet, I spell it "Dschonn" in an effort to make it unusual, but it's really just my real name, John, filtered through German phonetic orthography. John is not a bad name in and of itself, and I know its complex history, but it's such a very common name and its meaning does nothing to tell me who I should be, since so many diverse people have borne it. It comes ultimately from a Hebrew name, commonly transliterated Yehochanan, which means something like "Yahweh having given graciously" or "Yahweh's gracious gift". This was shortened to Yochanan (it was against the rules to say Yahweh's name, and so I suppose eventually people realized that making it part of a name given to a person might cause it to be spoken at some point), then transliterated into Greek as Ἰωάννης, whence Latin derived Iohannes (My theory is that the Greek name still had an h sound in there, although they couldn't write it because of their alphabet's lack of a letter for that sound, but Latin did have such a letter and they used it. This is based on almost no evidence at all.). This then was spread to the Germanic tongues, who eventually spelled the name with a J, and after a number of generations shortened further in English to John, most likely because of the influence from the Norman French form Jean. The fact that it doesn't start with that y sound anymore is probably also the fault of those crazy Normans.
John has been the name of many, many people. King John signed the Magna Carta (this document was a big deal for England because it gave power to the nobility that had previously been concentrated in the office of the King), but was otherwise such a bastard that since his time nobody who has had the slightest chance of becoming the king of England has been named John (as I recall he only signed it under duress and this duress was necessary because he'd been abusing his power like nobody's business as well as spending too much time trying to catch Robin Hood when anyone could see that Mr Hood was actually the good guy). John Lennon was a musician in a little band called The Beatles. He wrote and co-wrote some pretty catchy tunes. John Smith was an explorer who went to America looking for a way to India and found Pocahontas instead, and if we can believe the movie he looked quite a bit like Colin Farrell. Johnny Depp is an actor with incredible cheekbones and an enviable ability to attract people rather than repel them with his extreme eccentricity. The list goes on.
So I've been considering changing it. I could simply go by Jack (this came from John + -kin, a diminutive suffix, and it evolved through Jankin and Jackin to become Jack), which would be fairly easy to explain, or I could make up a completely different and preferably unique nickname and pretend to new acquaintances that it's what people call me, and hope that the nickname sticks. The problem with this second plan is that such a name is really best given by someone else rather than chosen for oneself, since it should indicate who I am to others rather than who I want to believe I am.
I have played around with Germanic roots to see if I can come up with something with the same etymological meaning as John, but so far I've had no luck. I mean I can put roots together, but I haven't made anything that sounds like anything I'd want to be called.
Anyway, I am pretty sure that the reason I've spent so much time thinking about this is that my situation is so uncertain. I'm unsure about most everything to do with my life, and somewhere in my mind I believe that having a truly unique name will tell me who I am supposed to be. The rest of me tends to doubt that it would work that way, but alternative ideas are in short supply.
No, my problem is with my first name. Most places on the internet, I spell it "Dschonn" in an effort to make it unusual, but it's really just my real name, John, filtered through German phonetic orthography. John is not a bad name in and of itself, and I know its complex history, but it's such a very common name and its meaning does nothing to tell me who I should be, since so many diverse people have borne it. It comes ultimately from a Hebrew name, commonly transliterated Yehochanan, which means something like "Yahweh having given graciously" or "Yahweh's gracious gift". This was shortened to Yochanan (it was against the rules to say Yahweh's name, and so I suppose eventually people realized that making it part of a name given to a person might cause it to be spoken at some point), then transliterated into Greek as Ἰωάννης, whence Latin derived Iohannes (My theory is that the Greek name still had an h sound in there, although they couldn't write it because of their alphabet's lack of a letter for that sound, but Latin did have such a letter and they used it. This is based on almost no evidence at all.). This then was spread to the Germanic tongues, who eventually spelled the name with a J, and after a number of generations shortened further in English to John, most likely because of the influence from the Norman French form Jean. The fact that it doesn't start with that y sound anymore is probably also the fault of those crazy Normans.
John has been the name of many, many people. King John signed the Magna Carta (this document was a big deal for England because it gave power to the nobility that had previously been concentrated in the office of the King), but was otherwise such a bastard that since his time nobody who has had the slightest chance of becoming the king of England has been named John (as I recall he only signed it under duress and this duress was necessary because he'd been abusing his power like nobody's business as well as spending too much time trying to catch Robin Hood when anyone could see that Mr Hood was actually the good guy). John Lennon was a musician in a little band called The Beatles. He wrote and co-wrote some pretty catchy tunes. John Smith was an explorer who went to America looking for a way to India and found Pocahontas instead, and if we can believe the movie he looked quite a bit like Colin Farrell. Johnny Depp is an actor with incredible cheekbones and an enviable ability to attract people rather than repel them with his extreme eccentricity. The list goes on.
So I've been considering changing it. I could simply go by Jack (this came from John + -kin, a diminutive suffix, and it evolved through Jankin and Jackin to become Jack), which would be fairly easy to explain, or I could make up a completely different and preferably unique nickname and pretend to new acquaintances that it's what people call me, and hope that the nickname sticks. The problem with this second plan is that such a name is really best given by someone else rather than chosen for oneself, since it should indicate who I am to others rather than who I want to believe I am.
I have played around with Germanic roots to see if I can come up with something with the same etymological meaning as John, but so far I've had no luck. I mean I can put roots together, but I haven't made anything that sounds like anything I'd want to be called.
Anyway, I am pretty sure that the reason I've spent so much time thinking about this is that my situation is so uncertain. I'm unsure about most everything to do with my life, and somewhere in my mind I believe that having a truly unique name will tell me who I am supposed to be. The rest of me tends to doubt that it would work that way, but alternative ideas are in short supply.
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