Showing posts with label clothing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clothing. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

British teenage boys are sweaty, fashionable.



There's a 95% chance that wherever you are reading this in the world your body is slowly devolving into a gelatinous puddle from the summer of 2016. Teenage boys in Great Britain feel you. Or they would, that is, if they didn't feel like they were going to keel over from heatstroke first.

Uniforms are required at the Longhill High School in Rottingdean, East Sussex, which led to nearly twenty boys swapping out their long, heavy pants for their school gym shorts after a recent heat wave.

This is England though, where a love of elderly women wearing tiaras is only matched by a national sense of schadenfreude--so the shorts-adorned boys were told to wear pants, sent home, or kept in isolation all day at school.

According to the BBC, the boys were told that they needed to "wear any part of the agreed school uniform." In a genius move, four boys came to school the next day wearing the school approved skirts for girls, which flummoxed Kate Williams, the head teacher. She allowed it. As a result, ten additional boys joined in wearing the school approved skirt the following day in an act of solidarity and/or cooled gams.

The Argus, a local newspaper, quotes Williams' subtle displeasure. "Students have access to water in order to keep themselves hydrated," she said. "We have made reasonable steps to ensure that classrooms are as comfortable as possible."

Hydration = Least enthusiastic air conditioning method ever. Remember that, kids. Don't start asking for ice now or whatnot. This isn't France.



Sunday, May 22, 2016

Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' never looked so...bare.



I've always said that you can't really enjoy 400-year old Renaissance drama unless it's done stark naked in the middle of New York's Central Park--which is what happened this week at Summit Rock, where an all-female cast performed Shakespeare's The Tempest completely in the nude.

How does the theater company explain it?


"This Tempest [...] will be dramatized not only through performance and staging but also through inventive and integral use of costuming, with the harrowed, conspiring shipwreck victims initially forced to navigate the play’s island setting in constricting outfits suggestive of European aristocracy."


"[I]nventive and integral use of costuming."

Or, you know, as naked as the day you were born.

If this sounds reminiscent of that time you walked through Central Park naked while yelling out quotes from Shakespeare--it's exactly like that, minus the various felony charges and people fleeing from you while firing off pepper spray.

But just like that.



 

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: Woodsy Owl runs afo(w)l of labor laws, it seems.



Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.

Today:  Give a hoot! Don't...expect minimum wage, kid.





Random Thoughts and Questions:

1.)  Only you can prevent Smoky the Bear from forcing Woodsy Owl on us.
2.)  I never knew an owl could look so suave in a pair of capris.
3.)  This is the least inspired graffiti I've ever seen. Shelli + Jack? Vic? Fred? Kind of makes you pine for the good ol' morally questionable stuff written on a public bathroom wall.
4.)  At no point do we see Woodsy lift a wing to help out the unpaid cleanup crew of children wash away the graffiti. This is because Woodsy runs a corrupt operation.
5.)  Look, Ma! No helmet on Woodsy while he pops a wheelie on his BMX! No helmets on anyone! Hooooray, brain damage!




Saturday, April 23, 2016

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: Let's all sneer together about our parks.



Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.

Today:  Why do I suddenly feel like a park perp?




Random Thoughts and Questions:

1.)  Dirty Harry retired and became a park ranger?
2.)  While sneering at our inaction, at no point does Clint Eastwood actually say what he's going to do himself.
3.)  This is possibly the only PSA to reference clowns and not have Ronald McDonald appear.
4.)  We all can agree that Clint's rocking a pretty hefty shirt collar there, right? Right? That thing's got wings.
5.)  I, too, often walk through woodlands in a suit coat.
6.)  "Now, I know what you're thinking." Stop reading my mind, Clint! Those are private thoughts! "What can I do?" Oh, no, never mind. I wasn't thinking that.


Monday, April 4, 2016

Walmart failed geography class in grade school.



Twitter user Samantha Ficco noticed something a little off when recently shopping at Walmart.

The University of Maryland t-shirts on display showed the state of Maryland's girthier sibling, Massachusetts, instead, and alerted them in the most polite tweet ever posted:





Easy mistake! We're all gaining weight as we become older, so who's to say Maryland didn't go a size up on their waistband?

As a refresher, this is Maryland:





And this is Massachusetts:



Looks like typical middle aged bloat to me!

Walmart was practical when alerted to this snafu, and quickly apologized and claimed responsi--

Oh, ha! No, wait, they didn't.






Obviously, Who hasn't been confused? I'm always tripped up because Florida has that huge dippy thing dangling off it like Massachusetts has, too. Geography is hard! Such shapes!

Eventually, Walmart backpedaled and realized their mistake.

But not before Massachusetts gained a complex for being chubby.




Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Teen boys wear women's clothes to protest school ban.



Teen boys donned dresses and teen girls wore men's clothes in Clovis, CA, in protest of rules upheld by the local school board dictating a dress code.

The Clovis Unified school board voted to maintain a decade-long outline that specifically states dresses are solely worn by women and girls, and forbids boys from having long hair and earrings. The students argue this stance is discriminatory against many, including those who are transgender, and intend to fight the decision by dressing however they please, as this photo shows:


The cast of 'Reality Bites' reunites!

Clovis Unified Trustee Richard Lake is quoted as saying, "a woman's a woman and a man's a man, and there's a difference."

He's right! Men have testes and women have ovaries! I just looked it up! Some people even have both sex organs! Look up endocrinology if you're bored sometime. It's an extensive world regarding the vast complexities of hormones.

But that doesn't explain why clothes--which are simply just sewn pieces of fabric assigned social codes--somehow dictate who's a man and who's a woman. Clothes are only defined by the standards and mores individuals and society levy upon the inanimate objects that woven fabric actually is. It's not a difficult concept.

The silliest thing about all of this?

In order to "swap" genders, all the Clovis students somehow dressed like the cast of an early 1990's romantic comedy. If you squint closely, I swear Ethan Hawke and Janeane Garfalo are in the photo above.






Thursday, October 1, 2015

Free Dobby! (And maybe buy him a shirt.)



At the Warner Brother's studio tour at Leavesden in London, people have begun leaving socks at the case where a life-sized (for a house elf) Dobby stands inside, all in hopes of freeing him.

In case you're confused because you didn't read the Harry Potter books, Dobby is Harry's elf servant. House elves serve humans in the book series, and can free themselves from a life of slavery if given pieces of clothing. (I don't know what the logic is, just go with it.) In the books, Hermione knits socks and places them around Hogwarts hoping the elves find them and free themselves.

Which brings us back to the studio tour where socks are now being draped beside Dobby's case, as this Twitter post shows.


Isn't this cruelty though? Dobby's locked inside a case. How exactly is he going to be able to grab one of those socks. That's just teasing the poor little guy at this point. No wonder he has his eyes closed. He can't bear to look.





Now, I may be wrong, but the piece of clothing doesn't have to be a sock. So why not drape some other clothing for the poor guy outside the case. A shirt, a nice pair of slacks, some underwear. Dobby is wearing a sweat-stained and dirt-caked rag--and people are going to leave him mismatched socks? He needs an entire wardrobe, people.

And while I'm at it--what's up with so many cartoon characters lacking pants? Donald Duck and Porky Pig are prime examples. Both wear shirts--and bow ties, no less (BOW TIES!)--but no pants. So they can show their goodies, but damned if they aren't going to look stylish with the neckwear. Business up top, party down below, I guess.






Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Urban Outfitters claims red, mottled, "vintage" looking Kent State sweatshirt wasn't about people being gunned down.


In case you weren't born yet, have long-term memory loss, or are really horrible with American history, Kent State University has a past. And not a good past.

On May 4, 1970, Kent State students held a protest over President Richard Nixon's announcement of the Cambodian Campaign of the Vietnam War. Because of previous protests, National Guard troops were called in to monitor. By the day's end though, thirteen students would be shot by those same troops. Nine were injured, four were dead.

The events led to the famous song 'Ohio' by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young:



This leads us to 2014, where overpriced clothier and housewares chain Urban Outfitters decided to sell a $129 'vintage' sweatshirt of Kent State, complete with a red spray pattern that looks strikingly like blood.

But we're all mistaken, Urban Outfitters insists. As they said in a press release:

“Urban Outfitters sincerely apologizes for any offense our Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt may have caused. It was never our intention to allude to the tragic events that took place at Kent State in 1970 and we are extremely saddened that this item was perceived as such… There is no blood on this shirt nor has this item been altered in any way. The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray.”

Oh, okay then. It's not a horrible shirt making a buck off dead protesters. It's just a horrible shirt with blood-colored discolorations, holes, and fray.

Let me grab my wallet then.




Wednesday, April 23, 2014

The souvenir t-shirt to James Franco's 'Of Mice and Men' play isn't half bad.



New York Daily News theater critic Joe Dziemianowicz enjoyed the play (easy now, Franco!), but he really likes the souvenir $30 t-shirt for sale in the lobby.


Says Dziemianowicz :

It’s a souvenir shirt that sees the world through Lennie’s eyes — childlike and innocent. Even when the world is anything but.

I noticed the shirt as I was leaving the theater. That’s when a rabbit caught my eye.


Tiny, white and with long ears pointed straight up like side-by-side exclamation points, the critter was staring out at me from a black T-shirt on sale near the exit.



The last time a piece of clothing was this hypnotic to someone was Pippa Middleton's bridesmaid dress, and that didn't even come with a souvenir.




photos: New York Daily News



Thursday, February 27, 2014

Poems on shirts. Very, very expensive shirts.


Erdem is a fashion designer who has experience with Vivienne Westwood and Diane von Furstenburg. I know this because I'm fairly literate and just read it off the Neiman Marcus website.

What does this have to do with us? Erdem has released poetry-inspired high fashion shirts, covered in verses from his two favorite poets, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

Described as a "Naomi Handwritten Love Poem Script Lace Shell"--which itself sounds as delicate as Dickinson and as cryptic as Whitman--the shirt consists of portions of both poets' works on the front, while the reverse side is labeled as a "very sheer organza back with keyhole." Ooh-la-la.

Dickinson's "I hide myself within my flower" and Whitman's "Passing Stranger!" are the two poems selected. The shirt retails for a gotta-have price of $1,490.

You, too, can stand frozen with a moody face and lifeless arms in a shirt that costs 1/30th the average American's salary!






I know what you're saying: But how can I pull the look together??
Neiman Marcus would like to recommend Erdem's Bonite Boxa Organza Lace Jacket for $2,640, matched with Erdem's Zola Tailored Lace Organza Trousers for $769.

Wearing an everyday Walt Whitman outfit for under $5,000? Tres chic.