High life
Trends
Taki
Happiness, said Saint-Just a century ago, is a new concept in Europe. Modern anthropologists define it in different ways. Like keeping up, or being trendy. Take the typical young girl today. A pair of tight jeans with pencil-thin legs, a hot-green tube top, a purple belt, a yellow plastic bracelet, highheeled shoes, frizzy hair and two bright spots of pink rouge on her cheeks. She could be the daughter of a duke or a postman. One could never tell them apart. Even the dropping of an H or two is not a sure sign of one's patrimony. After all, the trendiest thing today is to speak like a worker. Look over your shoulder and you'll see thousands of happy nobs and proles streaking happily astride their common trendiness towards the _Seventies' Nirvana. To be in is to be happy. And as Spinoza said, happiness is not a reward but a state of mind.
The pop culture of today makes it de rigueur to keep up. It used to be intensely American to hanker after the new and different. No longer. Ever since the Swinging Sixties, London has replaced New York as the centre of collective individualism, like punk culture and rebellion. It is an urban phenomenon, spread about by the television to hundreds of thousands of breathlessly waiting prospective consumers, compulsively eager to sink half their pay check or allowance in some trifle that in months or weeks will be as dead as yesterday's campaign promise. The fads, needless to say, are churned out by a Trojan horse called the economy. All those nice people from Marks and Sparks, Harrods, Conrans and Halston. And Adidas. There are Adidas to jog with, Adidas to play basket ball with, Adidas to exercise with, Adidas to relax with, Adidas to walk with, Not being aware of this I bought a pair of them and played tennis with them. After one set! had pulled a muscle. 'Dummy,' said my doctor 'you played tennis with jogging Adidas, they're only good to run forward with.'
See what I mean about happiness. I looked like a fool and, worse, I felt like one. Now I have four pairs and spend half my time trying to figure out what I will do during the day in order not to pull a muscle with the wrong shoe. Cynics call my predicament fad-following.
Whereas the trend setters used to be society figures and politicians, such are the depths to which both groups have degenerated that Hollywood types are now the leaders of the conspicuous consumers, or clothesaholics. Diane Keaton, a homely girl who in normal times would never get the boy, popularised the 'Annie Hall Look'. She donned men's waistcoats and ties, although real trendies had been doing it for years. Which brings us to Woody Allen. He has made losers winners by expertly man ipulating us to like the man who never gets the girl. So now you have a situation in which to be strong is out, to be good almost criminal, and to be a patriot worse than child molesting. No wonder a lot of old type movie stars like George Sanders preferred to commit suicide.
For a trend to catch on you need only one condition. Publicity. And we all know how easy it is to get that today. There are more PR people around than there are Arabs, and they tend to give more parties than Marie Antoinette ever did. Big Brother dictates that in order to keep up one has to wear Ralston, go to discos, admit that God is dead, be gay, ridicule the military, genuflect for oil-riches and jog.
So, you loyal Spectator readers, don't fall for the 1984 fashion trap. Don't be a working woman. Don't be a new man, meaning a man who is ready to forget male dominance and pick up a dish cloth. Don't insist on eating everywhere Italian. Don't protest about the same things the high priestess of contrived causes and publicity, Jane Fonda, protests about. Don't wear bright colours and broad shoulders. Don't be a groupie and open your house to Jack,Warren, Ryan, Marisa and the rest of the HollywoodHalston set. Don't drop your H's on purpose. Don't buy high tech. Don't take up transcendental meditation and other such phoney pursuits. Sign up with a good karate teacher instead. It is a great exercise for both sexes and can come in handy too. Finally, never buy or do anything that newspapers or magazines advise you to do.
Previous page
