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Sue - 2004-08-24 13:57:15
I've been getting the Lands' End catalog in the mail since Britney was in diapers, and I think it's sort of gone downhill since Sears took it over. The clothes are more or less the same, but you don't have the photos of Lands' End employees, the letters from customers, the Garrison Keillor-esque descriptions of Dodgeville, etc. It's just corporate and blah now. Of course, the same thing happened to Banana Republic so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
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Paula - 2004-08-24 13:59:53
Yeah, that's what bugs me--J Crew, Banana Republic, Tweeds--they all used to have their own identities. Now they are becoming part of a single bland aesthetic, a sort of upscale Gap.
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I wombat - 2004-08-24 14:43:07
corporate take overs, TV make overs, cultural homogenization, the 2nd law of thermo-dynamics, records used to sound different from each other too. The economy of scale applied to aesthetics. aaaarrgg.
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Paula - 2004-08-24 15:01:30
Here's what economy of scale means.
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I wombat - 2004-08-24 15:36:15
Yes, I know, I may have been a bit metaphorical, I may have been waxing rhapsotic, I may have misspelled words, but I think the "one size fits all" "lowest common denominator" sameness that you were noting does create, and is because of, a kind of economy of scale.
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Paula - 2004-08-24 15:42:44
Oh, no, Wombat, it was a great analogy--I was inserting the definition for people who didn't know what it meant.
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I wombat - 2004-08-24 16:16:00
Oh... me so touchy.... too much coffee..... thanks.
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2fs - 2004-08-24 18:34:54
One thing that bugs me about This Whole Thing (see above) is that in trying to make damned near everything sexy, it's half succeeding in making sexiness unsexy. ("Huh? What the hell is he saying?") I mean it's as if if you don't train your desires exactly along this same narrow path, admission to which sold everywhere, you're so completely off the scale as to be some major crank that mixes metaphors like an acid-crazed bartender dancing the ballet on rollerskates in an earthquake filmed by a hyperamphetimated MTV-video director. (How often is it that you can write a legitimate sentence that contains the word "if" twice in a row?) One reason I Hate the Olympics(tm) is the way it's just one giant Entertainment Spectacle: Exhibit 5,392 being the uniforms, respectively, of the men's and women's beach volleyball teams. The men's are practical, athletic...the women's are clearly designed to display as much athletically toned ass as possible. Which would bother me less if, thinking of trying to actually play volleyball in them, I can't help but imagine that having one's asscrack constantly invaded by sponsor-laden spandex would be a bit of a distraction. Okay, that's it for Grumpy McWordy today...
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Miles - 2004-08-25 10:55:53
I always hated J. Crew, in part because of its popularity with the VandyKids(TM) - want to look bland and fit in, but you're able to spend too much money doing it? J. Crew was the place.
Plus Melissa and I just don't do "bland." Apologies to neutrals fans out there.
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Miles - 2004-08-25 10:57:34
Make that "but want to show that you're able to spend too much money doing it?"
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Sharps - 2004-08-25 11:43:49
I usually agree with ya, FF's, but I just don't think every display of human sexuality in sports is the result of a directive from the evil corporate-network execs on high. My ex-wife, as I think you know, is from San Diego and she and her friends were beach V-ball players in college, and one of her friends became a network analyst for pro women's beach V-ball - so I got to go to a few pro matches and learn a bit about it. The uniforms come from a much more organic process than you suspect: the female players who first developed the game in Southern Cal tended to wear teeny bikinis, so today's uniform follow tradition. The difference between men's and women's uniforms reflect the difference in swimsuit styles!
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Sharps - 2004-08-25 12:03:25
Now, that's not to say that the teeny uniforms didn't help beach volleyball suddenly shoot to the top of the networks' interest! I'm sure it did, but I also happen to think it's a cool game.
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Paula - 2004-08-25 17:20:12
To pull back a bit to my original thesis: I just miss dowdiness as an aesthetic. There's certainly room for edgy/young/sexy in this world, but that's a given. I want to celebrate the functional, the middle-aged, the slowing down. I don't want to send the old Land's End catalog on an ice floe to its demise. Maybe I just miss my mom.
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2fs - 2004-08-25 23:12:35
Yo Sharples! I'm sure you're right...I didn't mean to imply that the Vast Cleavage Conspiracy dictated BVBall outfits... I'll take your word for it - and I'm sure that that makes a degree of sense, even though Butt Creep would seem to suggest, say, those rectangular things (fashion-forward folks will know the name) wouldn't maybe work better. But lest I be accused of being a parched old puritan, uh, actually I find *those* sexy. So there ya go.
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