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Thursday, 5/1/97 Wearing your identity on your sleeve Words on clothes we wear reveal a lot about who we are, what we like

This guy called Colley Cibber said: "As good be out of the world as out of the fashion." I have no idea who he is or what it means, but I fancy starting my articles with obscure quotes from obscure dead folk. It's ... fashionable. You'll note the word "fashion" in the Cibber quote, as well as in the title of this article. I sense a theme in the making. I was at one of those tony (CQ) parties, a charity soiree at some swank venue to benefit the emergent cause of the week; I believe it may have been one of those "Save the _______" affairs, but what exactly we all were to have been so assiduously saving I don't recall ... it was either some ill-fated species that unwisely decided to evolve in a habitat destined millions of years later to become malignant with urban sprawl, or the preservation of some idiotic sacred cow tax-deduction that promised to protect the livelihood of British coach-builders in Crewe, England by cutting the excise tax on Bentleys and Rolls Royces. Had it ever occurred to these creme de la crap (CQ) fund-raiser attendees that if they were to simply donate what they spent on these functions--let's see, that's five hundred per plate (foie gras avec pommes, jarret de veau, and creme brulee) (CQ the whole menu), three-fifty for the limo, two bills for hair and nails, and let's not forget to mention the fifteen hundred for that really cute, little black silk Donna Karan (CQ) Collection number they had at Neiman's (CQ) --and just have a weenie-roasting, water-balloon-tossing, three-legged-racing, pinata-smashing hoedown (CQ) at the park, the charity could raise enough money to save anything from extinction, even Newt Gingrich's reputation. In any event, this woman approaches me and says in her best "Hi, what do you drive?" affectation for a voice: "Nice tie, whose is it?" I ponder her question for a second, then another second then another. I hit the mental instant replay button to make sure she hadn't just said "Biker pie, stew kiss it," or something equally incomprehensible. I wonder if I appear to be the kind o' guy who purchases his dress wear accessories at police auctions, or if she thinks that frisking my tie will reveal someone else's summer camp laundry label stitched within its lining. She has me. I didn't know what on God's sartorially challenged earth she's talking about. So I say the only thing that seems to make any sense at all, albeit without an ounce of assertiveness, almost like I'm guessing at a Final Jeopardy answer posed in Gaelic: "It's ... mine?" She belts out one of those patronizing "Oh that's rich, you clever boy, you couldn't really be that naive, could you?" laughs. I feel pleased with my self, but in that nauseated I-must-have-huge-chunks-of-food-stuck-in-my-teeth way. I know I had just said something hysterically funny, but have no idea what or why. She clarifies: "No, (fool) who is the designer?" I laugh right back at her like I'm in on the joke instead of being it. I turn the tie over and read the label. It says "Bijan." So I say "Bijan," but pronounce it like "pigeon" with a 'b.' (I have since been told that its proper pronunciation is more like "begone" (CQ) with a 'j' where the 'g' goes.) She laughs again, harder this time, like I'm so damned funny. Hardy-Har-Har. I was young, I was uninitiated. I had just assumed that "bigeon" (CQ) or "bejohn" (CQ) or however you say it was just one of those affected sounding European pseudo designers, like Georgio Armunchi (CQ) or Gianni Versplotchi (CQ), or whatever they sell at Target (rhymes with parquet) trying to sound all chic by way of quasi-homophony. And why should I care anyway? I found the tie hanging on a hook in a closet of ground floor room at a Best Western hotel in Grand Falls, Idaho. Grand Falls is where vacuum-packed bricks of freeze-dried instant hashed-brown potatoes are born by the thousand every hour of every day. What a Bijan tie was doing there, I have no idea. What I was doing there ... I have no idea. But I thought the tie was pretty. I kept it. Of course, I didn't know then that Bijan is an incredibly exclusive, by-appointment-only, don't-you-dare-come-in-here, tourist's palm and nose prints on the window, valet parking for your Gulfstream, boutique on Rodeo (ro-DAY-oh) Drive in Beverly Hills. It's famous for $100,000 luggage and gold-plated hand guns. Ties run three hundred and sixty bucks or something obnoxious like that. Four pieces of high fashion neck-ware or sixteen units of higher education with parking. Hmmmmm... Anyway, once she had determined that I was the kind of guy who was being either really nonchalant or really dense about the fact that he was sporting a strip of cloth around his neck worth more than the average working stiff's weekly gross, she turned on the tractor beams and I kid you not, she wouldn't leave me alone. We ended up getting married and putting 10% down on a little condo in Northridge ... not. Moral: what we wear says a lot about us. No big surprise here. Whether we like it or not, whether its right or wrong, we project an identity related message every time we venture out into Societyland. (CQ) In some cases, what we wear may end up saying something other or more than whatever message it is we knowingly wish to convey through our "fashion statements." Look at yourself. What do the words on your clothes mean? What do you think they mean to someone else? How much flesh are you showing? How much flesh are you hiding? What would a master sleuth deduce about you based on your stylistic preferences? Don't pretend like you don't have any, even a slob has stylistic preferences. Do they say, to name a few possibilities, "I'm down with all that?," or "I'm athletic?," or "I'm anti-social?," or "I have lovely breasts?" Granted, we students usually don't go the Bijan route, at least not on campus. Generally speaking, we can't afford it. But we can afford tee-shirts. Gotta have 'em. And you gotta have a back-pack. And you gotta have shoes, athletic shoes to be precise, just in case a spontaneous track meet breaks out on Bruin Walk. And we need hats. It's that stinking ozone hole thing. And we can't exactly all go around looking the same, like a mass of monochromatic, barbiturate-laced punch swilling, web mastering, castrati (CQ) from Heaven's Gate, can we? (You may have noticed they were all wearing Nikes; puts a whole new spin on "Just Do It," n'est ce pas?) We have our own way. We need words on our clothes, words that reveal important things about us like what chichi (CQ) micro-brew we like to drink, or the acronymous (CQ) name of the school we attend. One particularly overt message we project with our on-campus dishabille (CQ) is the name of the company that purportedly manufactures whatever it is we happen to be wearing at the moment. "Nice tee-shirt, whose is it?" Take this test: I buy a Calvin Klein tee-shirt. Guess what it says on front, "Save Mono Lake"? No. I buy a Guess? shirt. Guess what it says on the front, "Guess?"? I guess. Would you buy an Adidas tee-shirt that didn't clearly indicate that it was an Adidas shirt? I guess not. Now for the big question: What costs more, a plain white tee-shirt or a plain white tee-shirt with the word Reebok on it? Answer: the Reebok shirt costs more. So, we deduce that we are willing to spend more on a shirt because it has a company's logo on it. But it has to be the right company. It can't be "Pat's Chevron, 29 Palms, California." It's got to be ... fashionable. Manufacturers know this, so they put their names everywhere they can. I am, on rare occasion, surprised to find a consumer product that doesn't have its manufacturer's logo boldly plastered somewhere upon it for all in attendance to see. In fact, when they don't use every square inch to advertise I start to wonder. Like what's the deal with condom manufacturers? Imagine them printing "Trojan" in big letters--like "Union Pacific" on the nose of a locomotive--on their condoms. Why don't they take advantage of all that free advertising space? Maybe its for fear of establishing a negative association in the minds of those unfortunate guys out there who might have a bit too much of that chichi (CQ) micro-brew and consequently be able to unveil only the first few letters of the product's brand name. Harsh. This is what I think. We wear what we wear for a reason. We never accidentally wear our shirts in-side-out or backwards. I think that by wearing brand names associated with athleticism we're saying "I'm virile/nubile," by wearing brand names associated with affluence we're saying "I've got money, therefore I can be a good provider and show you a good time too," and by wearing brand names associated with retro-culture we're saying "I'm not virile/nubile or rich, but I am an arty-farty-smarty, and isn't that what really counts?" Granted, it's not one of those overt things. People don't go to the store and say "God, I suck. I need a tee-shirt to change my identity," any more than Darwin's finches said "Gee, I need a bigger beak." I was curious to see what people were saying with their clothes so I headed out to Bruin Walk and did a quick survey. I, dullard, sat on the curb during lunch rush hour and counted name brands. Not the inside-the-waste-band labels, but the billboard sized proclamations that a possum facing the wrong way could read at 1000 yards. Not surprisingly, the most common brand name in evidence was "UCLA" with 64 sightings. The second most common brand name was Nike (17) followed by Adidas (14) then Billabong and Quicksilver (tied with 4 apiece), Calvin Klein, Reebok and Mossimo (each with 3), Polo, Guess, Tommy Hilfiger, Speedo, and Diesel (2), followed by Fila, Nautica, Stussy, Benetton, Banana Republic, Aeropostale, and Spaulding. It was a bad day for The Gap. The highlight of the day was a guy wearing all Nike: hat, shirt, shorts and shoes. Being a columnist and all, I just had to ask: "Excuse me, everything you're wearing is Nike. Why?" "It wasn't intentional, I just woke up and grabbed everything." "You must really like Nike stuff?" "No, it wasn't intentional, I just woke up." "But, I mean, you must have a lot of it if by just randomly grabbing clothes this morning your entire ensemble turns out to be Nike brand sports wear. What are the odds of that? Isn't that like getting dealt a natural four-of-a-kind? "No, it wasn't intentional, I just woke up." By the way, if it hadn't been for him, Adidas would have beaten Nike 14-13. Based of my tally, if people voted with their tee-shirts, Planet Hollywood, not the Hard Rock Cafe, would be the official overpriced burger cum rock and roll memorabilia theme restaurant, the Rolling Stones and Cypress Hill the official bands, and Vaseline the official petroleum jelly of UCLA. I was surprised and somewhat disconcerted to find that not one single person was wearing any item of clothing that advertised a cause, any cause. There were no personal messages, nothing political, religious, or activistic (CQ). What happened to "Meat is Murder," "Take Back the Night," or "Don't Squeeze the Juice"? Last I'd heard, university campuses were more or less the bastions of political and social activism in this country. So, it seems peculiar to me that of all those I saw who chose to take advantage of their built-in personal ad space to display text, that text invariably served to publicize a multi-million or even billion dollar corporation or institution. How ... fashionable. Michael Daugherty is a fourth-year English student and a clothes horse. He can be reached at daughert@ucla.edu.