Sunday, February 3, 2013

pussy riot fashion sense

Elle January 2013
In a lesson on the 1st Amendment, my students couldn't quite grasp the idea of not having free speech or free press or free anything. Their understanding of the greater world is ... naive.

And so I introduced them to Pussy Riot and their Punk Rock Prayer. I think that I got through to some of them that freedoms are villainously restricted in many parts of this world, but what captured their attention most, and given their  narrow perspective on the world as they are teenagers, and they are Americans, was the fashion. That's what stood out to them.

And then I read this piece in Elle magazine last month, and I thought, hmph. There's something to this about how we, women, arm ourselves for important events with what we wear. Not too many weeks before this lesson, I had an appointment with my principal to go over performance data. I wore a new outfit. It was a little different for me as it was pants, and typically I wear dresses. But the jacket is sweet, and the blouse a beautiful patterned silk with a self-tie. Very unlike me, but it felt really good. And when I heard that he had left the building for a meeting ... I was ... disappointed. I had on a new outfit. It was going to give me power and confidence. I was going to win him over with my work, yes, but I would dazzle him with glad rags. Luckily for me, he came back. And the outfit did not go to waste. Did he notice? Oh, probably not. But I imagine that it really wasn't for him at all. It was for me.

And so I have gone through times and outfits, and I've found a connection that is very real between what I wore and what I did.

First, the purple crushed velvet skort with the brass buttons that I wore with a white blouse with billowy sleeves and patterned with little purple violets that I wore to the Bozo Circus show. That was a big deal getting to see Bozo as I've mentioned, I'm sure, before. I had a whole parade of outfits that I remember very clearly from my childhood. I probably remember them so well because I had so little to work with. Thankfully, my mother sewed, so whatever I would come up with, she would do her best to copy it.

When I was in my Shawn Cassidy phase, I scored some tickets. I stood in line at  Sears and was able to get 2 tickets. Plus, I met a girl in a line, older than myself, who offered to drive my friend and I to the concert. What luck! Now the outfit ... on Shawn's album cover, he wore a satin baseball jacket. And I became obsessed with having the same. At that moment, they were not available in the stores (a few months later, they were in Limiteds across the country). I dragged my mom to the fabric store and we found a pattern for a jacket. It wasn't a baseball jacket, but it was close enough. Of course, it had dolmen sleeves ... but that was ok. I picked out a beautiful baby blue satin backed charmeuse ... it wasn't stiff at all. It was liquid, and it was, in my estimation, the same color blue as Shawn's eyes. My mom made it just in time to go to the show. Did it look like a baseball jacket, like the one that was on the album ... cover, no. But, I will tell you this ... no one in that stadium had on anything like it. I was da doo run running heaven. And I remember it so vividly.

I could go on for days mulling over all of the outfits that I've given to events/beliefs/feelings. Fashion is a disarming or approachable or killer statement of what one is bringing on.

Pussy Riot definitely represents.  In brightness and color blocking, they are a light in what seems to be a very a dark Russia.

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