Former Vogue fashionista Kirstie Clements bemoans the trend towards women (and she does mean women) wearing tiny, clingy bits of ‘active wear’ lycra. Not because she’s a prude, mind you, but because it means haute couture misses out altogether. Particularly if women end up wearing such little nothings even on airplanes!
I do a daily almost-jog along the riverside in an affluent area of Brisbane, and I can testify that a high proportion of the others I encounter, from barely pubescent teens to women who are my peers, squeeze themselves into the tightest, skimpiest little active wear stretch fabrics, and usually a full job of warpaint as well.
Whoever convinced women that G-strings don’t leave VPLs did well to fool so many. What my morning jaunts convince me of is that many women depilate quite severely, and would like men to know it, for wearing such tight costumes that nothing much is left for any unpeeling that might occur later.
And that does seem to be the point: it’s a mating ritual. A parade of what’s on offer. The male equivalent is the shirtless strut to show off sculpted abs, pecs, biceps, and the inevitable tattoos that illustrate a deep wallet rather than outlaw toughness. Mind you, a goodly lot of the muscle boys around here aren’t looking for female companionship.
I imagine the deals are closed at various coffee shops that dot the landscape in these parts in such profusion you might think they dispensed whisky, or an immortality elixir.
What Clements missed in bemoaning the déclassé act of wearing skintights on an aeroplane, or in decidedly non-active situations, is the abject failure of the Australian fashion industry.
In what delusional state of mind does it make sense to emulate northern hemisphere clothes in southern hemisphere climes?
Talking, for a moment, from a male perspective: it’s not that the men around me have developed much of a style of their own. Even the queer eyes who reckon they can dress the straight guy are boringly conformist. But what the fuck is it with business suits in 30 degree heat and 90 per cent humidity. You’d think we might have learnt something in 200-odd years. But clearly not. Bogan shorts and singlets are not what I’d call a fashion statement, even if I wear them often enough myself.
But back to the biggest fashion victims: women.
Clements ought to ask herself about the political economy of fashion, too.
When I buy hipster briefs, they’re about twenty bucks for
three at Big W. When my girlfriend buys
them, they’re about fifty bucks for one, made in the same factory in China.And so it goes up the scale to every item of clothing imaginable.
Buying skintight nothings, and wearing them everywhere, is just cheaper than maintaining a wardrobe for every occasion. Particularly if you can distract the men around you to do whatever you ask them to. Men are dumb that way.
So, Clements, if you are serious about wanting to end this trend, talk to your fellow fashionistas and come up with some viable tropical wear options that don’t emulate Europeans on holiday somewhere, and don't require a Ghetty purse to buy.
And while you’re at it, tidy up the disgrace that is the vacuum in men’s fashion in between suits and bogan shorts. No: those bloody culottes with leg pockets are not an acceptable option.
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