Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Fashion

This is an odd topic for me.  I like good fashion; clothes do say a lot about a person.  I appreciate good clothes that make a person look respectable, beautiful, handsome, or even just intriguing.  Some clothes are cool just from the mere fact they exist (when I was a kid, those shoes with the blinking lights on your heels that blinked were so awesome), but the best fashions are those that don't exist for themselves but enhance the looks of the person wearing them.

I loathe terrible fashion.  There are plenty of bad clothes out there that can make even a good-looking person painful to look at.

There are a few movies where the costumes are the best part for me.  Usually, these are older movies where clothes were designed to make you look not only attractive but elegant as well (award shows usually pretend to be elegant but the truth is that the best they ever pull off on the red carpet is cute, whereas the rest are disastrously "creative" or plain slutty.)  But there are some semi-recent films that have caught my eye, the best being A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was breathtaking from that dress made out of belts to the outrageous costumes Jim Carrey wore.

But, though I appreciate good fashion, it's not something I'm terribly passionate about either.  I don't look through magazines beyond the covers as I'm waiting in line at the grocery store; over half of those are advertising sex rather than fashion anyways.

The main reason I don't bother learning about fashion is that I don't keep up on the latest styles.  I barely keep up with the news anymore and that's something that's relevant to my life; there's no way I'm going to waste my time learning what's new for now when in the next few months, it'll be replaced by something else.  And the price of clothes makes me shake my head in disbelief; no matter how many outrageous prices I've heard every year of my life for clothing, it's one thing that never ceases to amaze me.

I'm much more interested in the branch of fashion that has staying power no matter what generation we're in.  Trends that last for decades rather than weeks.

What brought this on?  I read Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins yesterday.  It really only took me a day to get through; great book.  I highly recommend it.  Collins has an amazing heroine, great supporting cast, a great voice for action, and a killer plot.*

But what caught my attention more than anything else, and I'm not sure how Collins would feel about this, but I thought the fashion she describes in the book was the most inventive part about it.  Not just in this book but in the first book, The Hunger Games, as well.  Now, here's the truth about clothing in literature: it's not that interesting.  Why?  Because you can't stinking see it!

Fashion is such a visual medium that describing it in words won't do it justice; just like describing blow-by-blow in literature makes for some lousy action scenes.  Sure, you can use your imagination but it's usually not as powerful as seeing it on screen.  Imagery is nice in literature but it's much more powerful on screen.  And when writing about clothes... ugh.  It's never that important to the story so why devote more than one or two sentences to what the person is wearing?

Collins gift is that she made me care.  Yes indeed.  She doesn't devote any time at all to what the people wear day-by-day; if she does, it's well in the background.  But when Katniss and her fellow tributes are put in their costumes, she goes wild.  She was so good that I could actually see not only what they were wearing but how it mattered and why it mattered.  The clothes are even used as a catalyst to enhance Katniss' relationships, with the audience of Capitol, with Cinna and her prep team, and to a degree, even her relationship with herself.

I honestly didn't know you could do so much with that bit of imagery beyond setting the scene.  I am very humbled now.

*As the plot goes, on Easter, before I started reading Catching Fire, I had a conversation with somebody who'd already finished it.  We got into a talk about the middle instalments of trilogies and I made a remark that it sounded like another Empire Strikes Back stories.  I meant it as a compliment but she vehemently said "It is not!"  I just want to say here and now that she is wrong.  It is totally Empire Strikes Back.  Katniss is a proactive Leia, Gale is Luke Skywalker (determined to destroy the evil empire and a love interest before the next movie made their kiss at the beginning incestuous; Lucas will never live that one down), and Peeta is the unfortunate Han Solo trapped in carbonite.

2 comments:

  1. Funny you're blogging about this subject as I just finished writing a bit of my story involving what the protagonist is wearing. I wasn't really sure how much time or words to devote to the description as it wasn't of HUGE import, but at the same time I still wanted the reader to be able to picture what I had in my head. I haven't read the Hunger Games yet. I know, so bad. I'll get to it...eventually. ;)

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    1. Well, to be honest, it literally took a year of arm twisting before I finally relented and read the stupid books. I really had an issue with the whole "get the kids to kill each other" plot in an epic game show. To be honest, I still hate the concept but it's what makes the story so powerful. I managed to read each volume in one day and that hasn't happened in a long while.

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