الوسم: other

How did you arrive at your current style?

I think I always had it, but my tastes just became more expensive.
The biggest difference is that when I was young, I wore sweaters. Crewneck sweaters, with button-down shirts and jeans, every single day. And I think at a certain point in my twenties, I decided that was childish. So I gave away all my beautiful sweaters.
Blue jeans are childish too, obviously. But luckily everyone my age kept wearing them. It used to be that adults did not wear jeans—not men, unless they were construction workers—only teenagers wore them. But I guess my generation just said, "We’re going to keep wearing them until we die, because we’re almost there."
Besides your sweater phase, was there ever a period in your life where you indulged a style other than your current one—perhaps something you look back on and think, "I can’t believe I did that?"

No. For instance in the ’60s I never wore bellbottoms. I thought they were ridiculous. It’s a horrible line. I never wore tie-dye, either. If it comes from the ’60s I never wore it.
That’s not true. The army jackets. We used to buy clothes ironically at the Army Navy stores. So I had one of those khaki jackets, which was, you know, covered in anti-war pins and stuff.
But that’s it. Everything else I hated. The first time I ever saw platform shoes in the ’70s, I knew they’d been revived from the ’40s, and I felt sickened. And for whatever reason, they keep getting revived. They’ve come back four times. I wish we could let them die. They want to die. They were horrible then, they’re horrible now. The lines on bellbottoms don’t flatter, and neither do the lines on platforms.
But I guess they have to keep making them because teenagers see them and go, ‘Wow, that’s edgy.’ If you’re 18 right now, you think you invented platform shoes. You think you’re doing something new. You think you’ve invented something so ugly that it’s beautiful.
When we were young, we knew things. We knew basic history, even as it related to fashion. Now, when something reappears, an 18 year old has no clue that it’s a revival. Despite the fact that they’re almost always online they don’t get references.
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.
YOU NEED MORE NATURAL BEAUTY TO GET AWAY WITH THINGS LIKE THAT.

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. Because everything people wear, you have to assume they bought it.

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 do, I really do. She has no style, zero. Of course there’s millions of women like this, it’s just that not everyone’s looking at them constantly.
I DON’T FEEL THAT INSIDE OF HILLARY CLINTON THERE’S A JANE BIRKIN WAITING TO GET OUT.

But I would not say her look (I won’t even call it style) is so imposed on her. Yes, there’s a narrow parameter for a woman that public, but I don’t feel that inside of Hillary Clinton there’s a Jane Birkin waiting to get out. I don’t think she cares. I don’t think she is interested in how her house looks, where her furniture is from—I don’t think she has any visual interests. And there’s nothing wrong in not caring. A man who doesn’t care about what he looks like, he’s applauded. We say, ‘Oh, he’s not superficial!’
I, myself, am deeply superficial.
What do you look for in a woman’s outfit?

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.

How did you arrive at your current style?

I think I always had it, but my tastes just became more expensive.
The biggest difference is that when I was young, I wore sweaters. Crewneck sweaters, with button-down shirts and jeans, every single day. And I think at a certain point in my twenties, I decided that was childish. So I gave away all my beautiful sweaters.
Blue jeans are childish too, obviously. But luckily everyone my age kept wearing them. It used to be that adults did not wear jeans—not men, unless they were construction workers—only teenagers wore them. But I guess my generation just said, "We’re going to keep wearing them until we die, because we’re almost there."
Besides your sweater phase, was there ever a period in your life where you indulged a style other than your current one—perhaps something you look back on and think, "I can’t believe I did that?"

No. For instance in the ’60s I never wore bellbottoms. I thought they were ridiculous. It’s a horrible line. I never wore tie-dye, either. If it comes from the ’60s I never wore it.
That’s not true. The army jackets. We used to buy clothes ironically at the Army Navy stores. So I had one of those khaki jackets, which was, you know, covered in anti-war pins and stuff.
But that’s it. Everything else I hated. The first time I ever saw platform shoes in the ’70s, I knew they’d been revived from the ’40s, and I felt sickened. And for whatever reason, they keep getting revived. They’ve come back four times. I wish we could let them die. They want to die. They were horrible then, they’re horrible now. The lines on bellbottoms don’t flatter, and neither do the lines on platforms.
But I guess they have to keep making them because teenagers see them and go, ‘Wow, that’s edgy.’ If you’re 18 right now, you think you invented platform shoes. You think you’re doing something new. You think you’ve invented something so ugly that it’s beautiful.
When we were young, we knew things. We knew basic history, even as it related to fashion. Now, when something reappears, an 18 year old has no clue that it’s a revival. Despite the fact that they’re almost always online they don’t get references.
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.
YOU NEED MORE NATURAL BEAUTY TO GET AWAY WITH THINGS LIKE THAT.

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. Because everything people wear, you have to assume they bought it.

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 do, I really do. She has no style, zero. Of course there’s millions of women like this, it’s just that not everyone’s looking at them constantly.
I DON’T FEEL THAT INSIDE OF HILLARY CLINTON THERE’S A JANE BIRKIN WAITING TO GET OUT.

But I would not say her look (I won’t even call it style) is so imposed on her. Yes, there’s a narrow parameter for a woman that public, but I don’t feel that inside of Hillary Clinton there’s a Jane Birkin waiting to get out. I don’t think she cares. I don’t think she is interested in how her house looks, where her furniture is from—I don’t think she has any visual interests. And there’s nothing wrong in not caring. A man who doesn’t care about what he looks like, he’s applauded. We say, ‘Oh, he’s not superficial!’
I, myself, am deeply superficial.
What do you look for in a woman’s outfit?

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.