December 2011
“They don’t have to be real to be painful.”
– Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body (via thetitles)
Excerpt of Vice Magazine's William Gibson...
Vice: The military wear that the novel hinges on in a lot of ways is very related to jeans. It’s ultra utilitarian, it’s linked to ideas of Americana. At one point Bigend says that the military invented branding, and another character says that the military find themselves ‘competing with their own historical product, reiterated as streetwear.’ And then you refer to the civilian wearing of military clothing as a form of cosplay, and you also invoke the actual military term “gear queer,” which refers to people outside of the service who like to dress as if they’re soldiers.
William Gibson: “Gear queer” amused me the first time I encountered it. It’s historical. Some of these things that became classic, iconic patterns were from the immediate post-war America period, the years of luxuriating in victory before the Cold War loomed. It was only a very few years. That’s the period of American culture that the Japanese took their iconic stuff from, which is kind of interesting because it was when we were occupying their country.
Vice: So that was the first golden age of military gear fetishizing.
William Gibson: It sort of went downhill after that. Where it lives now is in patterns of streetwear.
Vice: And in the almost military precision of advertising.
William Gibson: The contemporary apparel industry viewed as a kind of war actually overlaps with real wars in some cases. And then there’s the extent to which it really is a life or death business for some people.
Vice: That’s enacted in almost literal terms in Zero History. It’s what we started this conversation with: the idea of treating fashion and marketing as the sort of espionage that carries the actual possibility of losing one’s life. But when I think of military gear being used as streetwear, the first thing that comes to mind is the countercultural use of something like the fatigue jacket. It runs down from Vietnam protestors—and returning vets who joined the protests—to metalheads smoking in high school parking lots. But now, the military streetwear thing seems to be more the province of this personal soldier, militia kind of guy. I wonder if that has anything to do with the privatization of military work today, and the feeling that anybody could be a soldier.
William Gibson: Yeah, I think it could. If somebody wears even one piece of really high tech military clothing, I’m immediately suspicious. I’ll cross the street, even though it may just be some guy who wishes he could get a job as a mall ninja. I think that some people wear that stuff because they think it will cause other people to suspect that they might be carrying a gun. And that’s, like, really not smart on a whole lot of levels. Especially if you really are carrying a gun. So, yeah, it’s a strange kind of aberration.
“Only one thing remains infinitely fascinating to me: the mystery of moods. To be...”
– Oscar Wilde (via suzywire)
A&F shirt, anyone?
See, I really like their flannel because it’s mega soft, and I realize that if you buy those shirts in an A&F Lovers set (i.e.: one girl’s and one guy’s shirt, in the same design), it’s cheaper. It’s about GBP £58 for the two (therefore SGD $58 for one), as opposed t about SGD $95 - 130 for one.
So I’m sorta looking for someone t share with me? I’ll...
“what is luck, but the ability to exploit accidents?”
– (via audaciouslyeuphoric)
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From...”
– Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)
Even if the world supposedly ends...
It feels like so much is gonna happen in 2012. I’m excited already.
“They say that fortune favors the brave,
Well let me get paid while I make you...”
– Jason Mraz, “Butterfly”
