Punk Cancan

I was going to try and justify having this as a title image by like being "life in SF is a punk cancan amirite" but really I just really like neon word art.

Some things about now: I officially wrapped up my first project today, and currently the biggest problem I am having is I keep putting my chai cup too close to my dark chocolate square so it keeps melting.

Everything is lovely and is only getting lovelier.

I feel very much a different person--which is always strange.

Now is also the time I wanted to catch up on the past months--mainly by going through my pictures and seeing what stands out.

One of my interests (as you know) is being not only abnormally interested in things, but abnormally interested in why I'm abnormally interested in those things.  I finally figured out the big through-lines through a lot of my preoccupations were transformation and performance-as-identity.  I cite as proof mythology, superhero comics, and David Bowie.  This has been lifelong, but was certainly honed by the type of identity code-switching it takes to get through BYU and then start in the vaguest and most corporate of jobs as a consultant.

Lately this has translated into a heightened interest in the world of couture, which I think was kicked off by the Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibit at the DeYoung I went to a looong time ago.

They carved out the whole bottom floor of the DeYoung, which I used to think was this beautifully jarring geometrically Bauhaus construction in the middle of Golden Gate Park, but I later found out it is in fact designed to blend in with its scenery especially when the copper it’s covered in oxidizes to green in a couple of year so shows what I know about architecture.  

Really, though?  It's not like organic.  I love it, but am I wrong? 

They grouped the whole exhibit into sections, starting with the signature Gaultier looks like the stripes, and the religious and mermaid iconography.  They achieved this with creepy-as-eff mannequins with superimposed filmed faces.  David Bowie liked this so much he used the effect as the entirety of his first music video in TEN YEARS REALLY??  REALLY DAVID THAT'S WHAT YOU WENT WITH COOL AWESOME.  

But I digress.

Most of them were speaking if you got up close which was totally charming and not at all the worst uncanny valley experience ever; the Gaultier stand-in was reciting interviews.

The mermaids all walked on crutches because of their tails--this was pretty cool to see on film as they jerked and hobbled their way down the catwalk, literally handicapped in such an unforgiving environment.

The next section featured a lot of his designs inspired by undergarments--but like, foundation garments instead of lingerie.  This includes the famous cone-bra corset from Madonna's Blonde Ambition tour, but it was a bit boring so I didn't get a picture.

Scaffolding and exoskeleton for the human body as dress.

This jeweled skeleton-corset getup is one of the more famous pieces I think.

I know this is because I've read too much Paglia, but even though I am not really that interested in the phenomenon of body modification I do like thinking about the idea of fashion as forms superimposed on the sort of formless mutable human body--in this case literally conforming and shaping, as beauty.

Here, have a quote from Camille Paglia that this section made me think of: “Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature.” 

(I mean and she's literally talking about beauty in the Kantean beautiful-v-sublime dichotomy here re: fashion and as such it is not as complimentary as it sounds but fashion is a problematic art form at best anyways so I feel good about using it.)

Oh yes and of course there was the bondage-sexy-room.

Which was extremely dooo-hoo-hoo-aren't-we-NAUGHTY which I think I would have gone the precisely opposite tack to really isolate the pretty incredible aesthetic from the sexually utilitarian underpinnings and influence but whatever.

The other rooms focused on the more culturally relevant (for the time) pieces--I guess couture was not always the experimental artsy thing it is now.  A lot of pieces were chosen for the pomo cultural mashup/juxt they were, which seems pretty old hat now but I understand was significant for the time.

This lady had it going on, however.

In the room with all the punk stuff was this moving catwalk of more traditional French-style pieces get it Punk Cancan GET IT.

But so even though I didn't quite get the cultural relevancy of the pieces, I really enjoyed seeing them.  There’s a great silliness and fun to them.  They're all pop-culture and couture and juxtoposition and boundary-blurring—drawing on bringing the inside outside and the outside inside.  It's pinning a culture and identity on a malleable human form.  And in fact there was a brashness and a joy to the pieces that was just like infectious.  Everyone was walking around smiling; there were little kids.

There was also the best hat of all time ever in the world ever.

Hands down though my favorite part was the rooms dedicated to his film collaborations--with a special emphasis on The Fifth Element, aka the one where Milla Jovovich wanders around in an orange wig going LEELOO DALLAS MOOLTEEPAHSS and Gary Oldman is a Cajun arms dealer in a plastic suit.  

But of course is so suave even in his character sketch.  (I live for character design.)

The only actual costume they had was Ruby Rod's, which is all I will say on the matter.

In addition to The Fifth Element, the other two really significant film contributions Gaultier made (I feel) was designing costumes for Jeunet's "City of Lost Children" and Almodovar's "The Skin I Live In."  Although he's kind of a bizarre match for Jeunet's grimy dreamlike aesthetic, he's perfect for Besson's self-conscious drag-splendor weirdness.  He's WONDERFUL for the content of "The Skin I Live In," and the thematic freakiness of literally carving and cutting out and sewing a new identity, of wearing a body like a disguise.

It reminds me of Michael Chabon's essay "Secret Skin," about dressing up as superheros and the awesome impossibility of superhero fashion: "It's not about escape, I wanted to tell [my teacher]...it was about transformation...the superhero's costume often functions as a kind of magic screen onto which the repressed narrative may be projected. No matter how well he or she hides its traces, the secret narrative of transformation, of rebirth, is given up by the costume."

WOW this got realllly silly really fast.

In conclusion:

I love silly clothes.  I love San Francisco.  I love my life and all my awesome opportunities.  I can still quote a good bit of the Fifth Element.  I miss my family in Austin.  I bit off way more than I can chew for the next few months, writing-wise.  My orchid is still alive.  I may soon finally realize my ambition of presenting a paper about Batman and Norse mythology AT THE SAME TIME.  Being a consultant is pretty cool.  I love San Francisco.  

I can't wait to see who and where I'll be in another year.