@citrusfields - Tumblr Blog

papayajuan2019

haters mad because my bleeding open wound talks to me sometimes

thechemistryset

Jacob Holdt, New York, 1970s

archiveofaffinities

Alice Aycock, Low Building with Dirt Roof, near New Kingston Pennsylvania, 1973

nemfrog

“The three main angles.” The technique of film editing. c.1958.

Internet Archive

pwlanier

Quilt, 'Blazing Star with Peacocks'

United States, New York, Staten Island, Tottenville, circa 1850

Textiles; quilts

Pieced, appliquéd (broderie perse), and quilted

LACMA

neshamama

andrew bush, “woman taking her time rambling south at 63 mph on the hollywood freeway near the vine street exit on a saturday afternoon,” 1991, chromogenic print

neshamama

gd i am obsessed w grocery store parking lots

neshamama

grocery store parking lots mirror the best of visual culture of the early modern period i mean the excess and waste, the fresh and the rotting, the symbols of status or lack thereof, the congregation and the absence, the limbo and the ritual. i open the car door and greet a bird eating a beautifully maimed hamburger: what kind of place is this? very spiritual.

unsubconscious

Tomona Matsukawa

polkadotmotmot

Sofia Zubi - A Horse, A Door, 2021

stufflikethathere

knitted sock made in the 3rd or 4th centrury

musicktoplayinthedark

PETER CHRISTOPHERSON - Untitled (Circa 1979) Photograph.

Source : Graham Duff facebook

megapope-deactivated20220531

I don’t need to tell you that the trend in fashion right now is toward casualwear and athleisure, and that this is a positive to a lot of people. i think to conclude that you’d have to start by assuming that the only reason anyone ever wants to wear anything but pajamas is social pressure, and it’s a relief to have to dress up for fewer and fewer situations. but you are not an actor flouncing around LA on the weekend in sweatpants after a long week of other people telling you what to wear. you are joe schmo who sleeps in sweatpants and works in sweatpants and goes dancing in sweatpants and watches netflix on the couch in sweatpants.

so what this is isn’t an expansion of what’s appropriate in everyday life but a contraction of the semantic domain of clothing. there’s simply less difference across the board in what someone wears for any given situation than there used to be, and the normalization of athleisure is the latest expression of that. expanding what one wears in private moments alone in the home to what one wears outside the home in public doesn’t add to the ways one can express oneself through dress, it effectively reduces the number of distinct dress contexts. same reason “casual friday” doesn’t really mean anything anymore: gee boss, you mean I get to wear jeans and a polo shirt after a long week wearing khakis cut exactly like jeans and a buttondown shirt made from the same material?

why does any of it matter? the reason i’ve gotten more into fashion over the past couple years is that I love design and it’s the easiest way to design yourself. there’s a whole world of screwing with proportion and color and density and fold and drape that you can use to look all kinds of ways. flattening the semantic domain of clothing combined with the preoccupation with fitness and bodybuilding creates a world in which the only way you can design yourself is by dumping tons of free time into working out. is that the world you want to live in? are the two options on the table shrinkwrapping yourself in slim jeans and bike shorts if your body looks the way you want or hiding in formless hoodies and basketball shorts and joggers if it doesn’t? of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of those things - i’m writing this in sweatpants right now - it’s the standardization of it all to the exclusion of other options that poses a real threat to peoples’ ability to look the way they want to look or even perceive their looking another way as a real possibility.

it’s untenable, and i predict a coming reaction to this that resembles a lot of young millennials/older gen zs’ reaction to the death of tv and dominance of superhero movies by turning to 70s-80s new hollywood, 90s sitcoms, columbo, horror, hong kong action, and writing about it all on letterboxd. in fact I think it’ll be directly informed by that. there’s only so many times you can see guys looking like this:

and wonder why it is that when you put on your khakis and your button down shirt from old navy you look and feel like this:

that you can take before you start wondering what’s up. it’s not because you’re not robert redford or dustin hoffman, and it’s not because you’re not in shape, and it’s not because you don’t have a wardrobe department. it’s because options like wide sleeves and thick collars and interestingly cut pants have been closed off to you for no good reason. so go to the goodwill and spend an afternoon trying on dead old mens’ slacks! get a shirt “too big” and wear it until your other shirts seem small! we can build a world where people are both comfortable and interesting to look at again if we all decide it’s worth doing, we just need to decide it’s worth doing.