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Fran Lebowitz's Style Notes

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  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    Fran Lebowitz's Style Notes

    Her own terrible style notwithstanding, some comic relief

    Full article here, some highlights below.

    American women think that clothes fit them if they can fit into them. But that's not at all what fit means.

    I always wore 501 Levi's. They used to make them in San Francisco. Every size was the same size, which sounds obvious, but you would be surprised—and then, I don't know, at some point during globalization they started making them in Mexico, and like every other thing they branched out to places you'd never heard of. So now every single size of Levi's is a different size. They cost less, too, which doesn't make any sense. I wish that real estate were cheaper and clothes were more expensive. But that's what young people want: $2 T shirts that fall apart in the wash.

    People care more about trends now than they do about style. They get so wrapped up in what's happening that they forget how to dress, and they never learn who they are because they never learn how to take care of anything. So much of what my generation was taught regarding clothes was how to make them last. How to wash and care for them.

    I dry-clean as infrequently as possible—not only because it's psychotically expensive, but also because who knows what it does to the clothes? Dry…clean. These words don't go together. Wet clean—that is how you clean. I can't even imagine the things they do at the drycleaner. I don't want to know.

    I think that's part of why visual things are becoming so derivative. Designers now, they all have these things called mood boards. I suppose they think a sense of discovery equals invention. It would be as if every writer had a board with paragraphs of other writers—'Oh, I'll take a little bit of this, and that, he was really good.' Yes, he was really good! And that is not a mood board, it is a stealing board.

    I have to say that one of the biggest changes in my lifetime, is the phenomenon of men wearing shorts. Men never wore shorts when I was young. There are few things I would rather see less, to tell you the truth. I'd just as soon see someone coming toward me with a hand grenade. This is one of the worst changes, by far. It's disgusting. To have to sit next to grown men on the subway in the summer, and they're wearing shorts? It's repulsive. They look ridiculous, like children, and I can't take them seriously.
    It's like any other sort of revealing clothing, in that the people you'd most like to see them on aren't wearing them. And if they are, it's probably their job to wear them. My fashion advice, particularly to men wearing shorts: Ask yourself, 'Could I make a living modeling these shorts?' If the answer is no, then change your clothes. Put on a pair of pants.


    You know when George Plimpton died, someone told me, 'He was so eccentric. He used to ride his bike in a suit and tie!' and it drove me crazy. I said, 'What's eccentric is the bicycle. Everyone here used to wear suits and it was lovely! But only children rode bicycles.' The trademark of New York City fashion used to be that we dressed more seriously here. More formally. Now people need special costumes to ride bicycles. I mean, a helmet, what, are you an astronaut??


    To a certain extent people still dress formally. Of course, more people should wear overcoats than those damned down jackets. Please. Are you skiing, or are you walking across the street? If you're not an arctic explorer, dress like a human being.


    All these clothes that you see people wearing, the yoga clothes—even men wear them!—it's just another way of being in pajamas. You need more natural beauty to get away with things like that. What's so great thing about clothes is that they're artificial—you can lie, you can choose the way you look, which is not true of natural beauty. So if you're naturally beautiful, wear what you want, but that's .01% of people. Most people just aren't good looking enough to wear what they have on. They should change. They should get some slacks and a nice overcoat.


    For instance: remember when the style was incredibly messy hair? That's great if you're a model. But if you're not a model, you would look better if you washed your hair, because you are not beautiful.
    On the one hand I think it's hilarious that so many people think they look fantastic, because they're wearing clothes that you should only wear if you look fantastic. If you walked around New York you would think there was a terrible mirror famine. There might be drought here, a wheat famine there, but in New York you have a mirror famine.

    I mean, I always thought it would be much wittier for drag queens to dress in this very drab way. You know, the yoga pants? Well, what if drag queens just really let themselves go, pretending not to try, like most women?


    But there are no drag queens like that, because drag queens know how to wear clothes. Can you imagine if women tried as hard as drag queens? We'd be a much more attractive culture. I wouldn't have to give out so many yoga pants citations.


    What about Hillary Clinton? I think her lack of style comes naturally.


    I notice her clothes if she knows how to wear clothes. It's a trait, not a talent. A person who actually knows how to wear clothes…they would look good in any clothes. You see this especially at the Academy Awards. Even if the dresses are beautiful and expensive and important, the actresses can't always carry them. Sometimes I feel like saying to them, 'Act! You know how to act, you're an actor. You're about to win an award for (I don't know) convincingly playing that Venezuelan nun who went to war. Now act like you can wear this dress.'


    Maybe it's superficial to exude a sense of confidence in one's clothes. But it's also integral. Yes, if you cover a man's eyes, he legitimately might not remember what he has on. But is that really worth celebrating, or imitating? Personally I don't think we need to emulate that level of stupidity. Because look, we have an appearance. Not all of us are beautiful. But we can appear fine looking. So we should. Feeling good about an outfit is the point at which that outfit finally becomes good.
    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

    StyleZeitgeist Magazine
  • galia
    Senior Member
    • Jun 2009
    • 1719

    #2
    Really fun read !

    Comment

    • MikeN
      Senior Member
      • Nov 2007
      • 2205

      #3
      I love her.

      Comment

      • DudleyGray
        Senior Member
        • Jul 2013
        • 1143

        #4
        She's amazing and I went on a Fran interview binge after reading that one last night. I came across one quip that really struck me as relevant to the postmodernism discussion going on that I'll just post here instead:

        AVC: There’s a larger trend in the culture where people are resistant to submitting themselves to art. They want to interact with it, rather than being humbled by it.

        FL: I said this in the movie: There’s too much democracy in the culture, not enough in the society. Let me assure you, they do not turn the lights down at Carnegie Hall. I mean, Carnegie Hall! The lights are on at Carnegie Hall. The lights are on at the Philharmonic. At the New York City Ballet. To me, this is enraging beyond belief. I don’t want to be aware of my surroundings. I want to be taken by the thing; that’s why I go. I’m not a movie-maker. I’m not Beethoven. I go because I appreciate these things. I don’t want my appreciation interfered with by you, the person sitting in front of me. If I was interested in you, the person sitting in front of me, I would pay to go see you.

        This is a false equality. It’s not true. I mean, it’s a lie. It’s a lie that your opinion is as important as the thing you’re watching. If it is, make the thing. It’s just a lie. It must come from the way they raise children now. I’m just guessing at this, because luckily, I have none. Well, it wasn’t luck, it wasn’t an accident. But I mean, people ask people things they couldn’t possibly know. They’re always inquiring. People ask their children things. They ask their 7-year-old child, “Where would you like to go to school?” A 7-year-old child is no more capable of making the correct judgment for that than the person sitting next to you in the movie theater in the dark. There is this big lie in the culture that has been disastrous. It’s disastrous. Especially when it goes into politics. I give you Sarah Palin. [Laughs.]
        bandcamp | facebook | youtube

        Comment

        • Faust
          kitsch killer
          • Sep 2006
          • 37852

          #5
          Dudley, you read that last night and did not share with the forum? Shame on you.
          Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

          StyleZeitgeist Magazine

          Comment

          • MJRH
            Senior Member
            • Nov 2006
            • 418

            #6
            She's always a great read, but I'd never really noticed her style (which is great imo) because most photos of her are headshots. The queer thing is, she often articulates things that've already come out of my own mouth--see comments on men's shorts, platform shoes, and yoga pants--and look at this: as I'm reading this article now, I'm wearing a Brooks Bros shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. Admittedly not 501s or wingtips, but still... spooky.
            ain't no beauty queens in this locality

            Comment

            • DudleyGray
              Senior Member
              • Jul 2013
              • 1143

              #7
              I was going to post it but got enamored with her wit and sidetracked by pretty much all her words available on the internet. I look like a studious Asian on the surface, but deep down I'm a ditzy blonde that gets distr
              bandcamp | facebook | youtube

              Comment

              • Faust
                kitsch killer
                • Sep 2006
                • 37852

                #8
                Originally posted by MJRH View Post
                She's always a great read, but I'd never really noticed her style (which is great imo) because most photos of her are headshots. The queer thing is, she often articulates things that've already come out of my own mouth--see comments on men's shorts, platform shoes, and yoga pants--and look at this: as I'm reading this article now, I'm wearing a Brooks Bros shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. Admittedly not 501s or wingtips, but still... spooky.
                Her style is dreadful, but that does not take away from her powers of observation and her ability to express them. Goes to show you that you don't always have to practice what you preach.
                Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                Comment

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