I know everyone is eagerly awaiting the cinematic event of the summer: Ocean’s Thirteen, third in a series of the lighthearted adventures of a gang of elegant rogues who like to pull off elaborate capers centered on lavish casino heists. Admittedly, the Eurocentric Ocean’s Twelve was a somewhat rambling letdown, but the latest installment promises a return to Vegas and hopefully also to form.
Seeing buzz about the new movie reminded me of a review I read of Ocean’s Twelve. To paraphrase, it expressed the sentiment “This isn’t by any means a very good film, but man, these people sure know how to wear clothes.” This summer’s installment adds Ellen Barkin and Al Pacino to the cast, so the knowledge of clothes-wearing should only be enhanced. (Also Noureen DeWulf, although I’m not familiar with her work.)
So my question is, what does it mean to “know how to wear clothes”? We might at first guess that it refers to the ability of a person to choose clothes that are right for their style, their body type, and the occasion. But in a major motion picture, one presumes that there are professionals whose job it is to do the clothes-choosing, so (respecting the reviewer enough to imagine that they meant exactly what they said) that can’t be it. It could also mean “is wearing nice clothes” or simply “is pretty hot,” but neither of those talents would accurately be characterized as knowing how to wear clothes.
So is there a specific kind of knowledge that refers to the ability to wear clothes? Is it not just a matter of picking out a good outfit, but a particular method of wearing them, adapting one’s demeanor and bearing to the clothes one wears? Or are we just faced with a sloppy deployment of language in an attempt to convey “Boy, that George Clooney would look yummy in a burlap kilt” in an imaginative way? Help me out here, people.
(p.s. Apparently we don’t have a “fashion” category on this blog. Yet.)
No offense, but it’s kind of one of those “if you have to ask” type things.
I do have to ask! Damn, I guess I’ll never know.
A koan for you then, Grasshopper:
As my father said to me upon the occasion of my donning my first three-piece, “You should wear the suit [or dress, or old blue jeans, or whatever, as the case may be]; the suit should not wear you.”
Meditate upon these words and be enlightened…
Sean,
It’s about knowing how to sit down, instinctively unbuttoning a jacket or standing while buttoning it, getting out of a cab in a dress without letting your Britney hang out…using teh clothes you’re wearing almost as props.
I think you’re right to assume it’s about demeanor. Sure, most men look at least decent in a suit, but slouching and hanging your head certainly takes it down a notch. Like boomslang said, don’t let the suit wear you. You should look as though you’re completely entitled to look fabulous, and that really it’s no wonder you’re so handsomely dressed. It’s because you, yourself are a stud.
Hold your head straight, smile, shoulders back, maybe a hand in a pocket to bring an air of assurance… think… Bond.
Ocean’s Thirteen’s wardrobe and makeup crews are masters of their crafts. Pacino has never look less haggard.
Not to be too unkind here, but you can sort of tell that those guys are not physicists, or molecular biologists, or even historians. No one with a Ph.D. could wear a jacket and sunglasses like that.
Ssssh! Quiet, I am gawking at Noureen Dewulf.
Obviously it’s much more than just picking the clothes out as my wife continuously feels obliged to remind me.
e.
Wow.
The number of things I know that I don’t know just expanded.
Allyson has it right. It’s not just that certain body types and social situations have fitting outfits (choosing), but that all interactions have some sort of body language associated with them. Never mind that the complexity of a clothing-enhanced message is usually never more than “I am sexy” or some simple variant. A level 1 example: a man much hairier than brad pit shouldn’t wear his shirt open like that. Level 3, mentioned previously: a jacket looks more suave open than closed when sitting, so the art of deftly undoing the button as you sit is a technique in “wearing clothes well”. If you’re wearing a long skirt or some other flowing garment, turning around such that you get a float effect is always cool (think about someone like Dracula in his cape, spinning around when his name is called, as opposed to just shuffle-turning around). It’s mostly just normal body language, and the knowledge of how the clothes enhance it. I guess my approach has always been to wear my clothes as if they’re a physical extension of my limbs, rather than something hanging off of me.
Why, oh why did I choose to make my first reply to this respectable physics blog about clothing? Half of the students on my campus don’t even wear any.
I think the crucial lead in this linguistic string of inquiry is to consider the word wear as used in the idiom “wear yourself”. It is how you wear yourself that matter, not what you wear, and knowing how to wear clothes is an important part of wearing yourself well.
So bewear and don’t get weary or even wary. It’s all just yarn in the end.
I’m more impressed with people who know how not to wear clothes. (SFW)
Sean, let me just note that, to my knowledge, there were no fashion posts back in the old days (= Chicago). Ahem.
I like the question a lot. It seems like a superficial topic but it isn’t. Look at Ellen in the photo, she is totally gorgeous. But my guess is that it has to do with her personality, her confidence, her character. Think of how many beautiful actresses with beautiful bodies could wear the same dress. It could become trashy, matronly (yes even with that neckline), girlish, etc. But on her, the first thing you notice is that she’s beautiful, and secondly the dress. A shallow person might imagine that buying the dress would make you look beautiful like her (in fact all of advertising is based on this fallacy), but it won’t. It depends on the character of the woman wearing it.
In my own experience, wearing clothes is a combination of art, buddhism, a deep mind/body connection, and character. In fact I thought of this today while riding my bicycle to the bank and the market. On the surface, I was a woman with blue hat and a blue skirt and a light green t-shirt riding a bicycle. None of the aforementioned items of clothing would knock anyone out on their own, and alas, neither would I, if I were absolutely still and on display. However, it seems to me that I got an unusual number of looks and glances, from men and women. It might have something to do with this – I love and adore that skirt I was wearing. Two layers of the lightest cotton, the skirt feels fluffy and soft, and it is navy blue, which means the two layers are opaque when I walk. However, when riding the bike, with the sun on me and the skirt flying in the wind, the layers separate a bit, and I can see the shadow of the skirt on the road and it is translucent, the top layer fluttering in the wind and casting a beautiful 40% shadow on the ground.
It was so pretty I worried I wouldn’t pay enough attention to the road in front of me. And the hat, ridiculous, big brim, soft dark blue cotton, when I went into the market I flipped the brim up instead of taking the hat off. I went to pay for my groceries and the woman at the cash register, who knows who I am since I’ve been going there for years, looks at me, then at the hat, then at my eyes again. I smiled even bigger at her hat scrutiny, knowing that it looked ridiculous in a way, but also knowing that I loved that hat.
Finally, and very importantly, I could ride that bike for days as it makes me feel strong and also I love the wind on my face. Walking or riding a bicycle is great for the soul.
The point is, if you feel graceful and strong and beautiful just because of whatever is going through your mind and heart, I think it comes through to people. It does help to have a darling figure, which your fluttering skirt and wide brim hat can perch on. But it isn’t necessary.
My guess is that the Brad Pitts and George Cloonies of the world don’t get all Buddha-like and love the texture of their suits, but I do think that they find themselves beautiful, alluring, with a great deal of control over their lives (i.e. power I suppose), and that they are very in touch with their bodies. In fact most actors need to have a sort of easy physicality to be very good, ex-dancers have it.
Do you find yourself beautiful? When you look in the mirror, do you see the imperfections or are you pleased by the darling bits? If you say “I’m pleased with the darling bits” then you can be trusted to go clothes shopping for yourself, and you will pick out an outfit that will almost naturally unbutton itself at the right moment, or hang at the right angle, and people will notice your sexiness first, outfit afterwards, and wonder how you do it.
I promise.
I think it has a lot to do with having a squad of people around to not only tailor your clothes, but also to replace them with freshly pressed duplicates as needed, to adjust them prior to any camera in the vicinity being turned on, and still other people to make sure the cameras catch you in an optimally flattering way.
ie, catch these people off-set and off the clock, and they often look a lot more like mortal humans.
So why is it that the folks who know how to wear clothes are precisely the folks who would be most interesting without clothes? Ah….maybe that explains it!
I do not know anything about how to wear clothes, but I do know that Ocean’s Twelve is an awful movie.
There are many instances of actors in interviews talking about letting the costume do the acting, and that really is the case. Having worked as a performer, there is a moment in your mind where you can ‘throw the switch’ and become that which wears those clothes, (or at the very least, that which you are pretending to be…) and suddenly you are wearing the suit, rather than just being dressed in it. I suspect it’s the same for any actor/performer/conman/politician/business man. I suppose the best visual example is the moment in “Pulp Fiction” when the character stops just before entering the room and says, “Okay, let’s get into character…”
As an earlier commenter said, the most important thing in wearing the clothes is to have very firmly in mind thoughts like “I deserver to wear this and feel fabulous” but it is also equally important to bury that thought, because you don’t want it apparent that this is not normal for you. Anthony Hopkins, in an interview about his role in “Nixon” described his method as “learning the lines until you can say them as if you have never said them before” (or words to that effect) The premise is that if you know your part so well, when the time comes to say the line, it will come out because that’s the only thing that your character could have said at that point. The same goes for the clothes. If you are in the character, there’s no way you could be wearing anything else.
If you can figure it out, it’s a great way to project self confidence. And yes, it does help to know when to button and unbutton the jacket, when to straighten your cuffs, (without looking.) Another good example from the movies is “The Magnificent Seven” if you rent the DVD, there is commentary and interviews, and a telling bit with Eli Wallach, as he describes the difficulty he had putting the pistol back in the holster without looking.
JoAnne is also correct. (again the self confidence thing)
Oh, JoAnne, but if your theory is correct then I’ll have switch first order and second order effects in my own theory (i.e. people stared because I did indeed look ridiculous). Well, such sacrifices are necessary to get at the truth.
But I do think there is something about a person on the inside that makes the clothes hang just right, I really do. Maybe I’m confusing clothes hangers (model types) with compelling people (people I love to watch), with the compelling people being all types physically. It reminds me of a discussion I had recently with a professor of medicine at Harvard. About half my height, a tiny bit pudgy, 60 years old (god help me if he reads physics blogs), totally nondescript. But he was the most darling guy and for the first time in many years I was casting about for something to say just to keep talking to him, it was so nice to watch his face. Anyway, he had it, but his clothes probably didn’t hang just right (I didn’t notice!)…
Peter has just given me a brain wave. Sean, I’ve pieced together that you want to be the most dapper creature at your own wedding, with a smart and sexy suit, every move a ballet of smooth gorgeousness. Ocean’s Fourteen, without the other 13. I thought you wanted discussion, theories, but I see now that this post wants concrete steps toward a concrete goal.
Here’s the plan. Go see Ocean’s Thirteen, opening night (you are in LA after all). Secretly tape it, use a tiny video camera (watch some Bond films if you want to look good whilst doing this). Go home. Play movie repeatedly, paying careful attention to every instance in which a George or a Brad is sitting, touching cufflinks, walking across a casino, etc. Then put your wedding suit on. Walk across the apartment, sit, stand, straighten cufflinks. Film yourself (get a tripod for tiny video camera). Watch video of yourself, take notes, adjust accordingly. Repeat until your wedding day.
At that point, you should have so delved into character that you might not respond to the part “Do you, Sean, take…” so do be careful. But I think it could work. Watch, practice, compare, repeat. Voila!
Joanne is correct. The beautiful people would look beautiful dressed in anything or nothing. Movies are mostly an excuse to put beautiful people on film for others to look at.
I’ve never owned a TV, but I’ve been working at a buddy’s house for some months, and have left one of his TVs on the SciFi channel. It turns out that they show the same shows over and over. Some of the shows specialize in beautiful people, and some of them specialize in people who are quite ugly.
I can understand that there is only a limited number of beautiful people to act the various parts, but when they run out, why do they go to the other end of the spectrum?
To see what it is to “know how to wear clothes”, look at those who do not know how to wear clothes: most professional athletes. They are mostly attractive people, and the clothes are probably impeccable, but they just look so darn uncomfortable. Like the dress or suit is strangling their very life essence. (There are obvious exceptions, naturally.)
Of course, the more egregious examples are us scientists and mathematicians. But it’s hard to see clearly that close to home.
Jon H,
Trust me, I’ve seen Brad Pitt on the street in a rumpled T-shirt & jeans and that detracted not a whit from the glamour. That’s what the root meaning of glamour is: a spell cast on the beholder to make the beheld more attractive than s/he really is. I’ve never seen a rumpled T-shirt and jeans looks so, so . . . fabulous. It’s all about the ‘tude. Sean, be the suit. You’ll look fabulous too.
A good example is in the 1969 movie Cactus, with Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman, and Goldie Hawn. The article of clothing in question is a mink stole, worn beautifully by Ingrid Bergman and simply put on by Goldie Hawn. Because the difference in the way the garment is worn is exaggerated, it’s an instructive example.
Another example is the writer who wrote about how, when he gets a new suit, he in effect beats it up to subdue it so that he can wear it without its overpowering him—i.e., so he can wear the suit, not have the suit wearing him. Obviously, the beating up is so he can gain the psychological upper hand.
Perhaps it’s easier to see in this example: think how a person who can truly afford a new Lamborghini drives it in contrast to a person who stretched to limit to buy one.
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