the honor was a black wool suit

In the United States, streetwear is a revolution that breaks the rules of good taste imposed by whites, to tell another story

Century 21 is a landmark outlet in New York, the first of its kind in the United States, that declared bankruptcy during the pandemic, but thanks to the magical ability of American entrepreneurship to rise from its distinctive ashes, promptly again Revealed. Unlike outlets filled with a strange mix of past collections from more or less well-known brands, Century 21 represents the average American customer, conformist and fearful of new things, and, on floors devoted to men’s fashion, it ranges from Balenciaga There’s been a long succession of sweatshirts and T-shirts up until Ralph Lauren, but sweatshirts and T-shirts have always been there.

Wandering through dreary racks overflowing with monochromatic clothing in New York last week, I notice a particularly crowded and especially colorful area, filled with neon jackets, printed cargo pants and embroidered shirts. I also notice something else I find odd: There are only young African-American men around that exact corner of the store. No white man comes close to those five square metres.

Very expensive (albeit discounted) clothing by Off-White hangs on a stand, the former creative director of Louis Vuitton menswear, the cult brand of African-American designer Virgil Abloh, who died in late 2021 at just 41 from a rare form of cancer. And entered the legend.
The very clear impression is that in that small space the noise of the outlet subsides and turns into the typical silence of a place of worship reserved only for people belonging to a faith that has the characteristics of a manifest doctrine.

A few nights later I go to Lincoln Center to see a Natalie Merchant concert. Lincoln Center is a spectacular center for the performing arts built in the 1960s for private contributions from very wealthy New York families, including the Rockefellers. These huge venues where you can attend a performance in one evening AstrayFrom a concert by Sting, to one of experimental electronic music and, in fact, Private by Natalie Merchant, as are almost everything related to culture in the States, and an accurate representation of the structure of American society with all its contradictions We do.

Natalie Merchant is a politically engaged singer-songwriter who uses a folk register as a narrative basis for soulful songs and has had an avid fan following since she was a member of the group 10,000 Frenzy in the 1980s Are. As I listen to Merchant sing accompanied by a huge symphony orchestra, gazing at the hall where at least two thousand people sit, I realize that, incredibly, there is not a single black person. I continue to scan the audience in disbelief but nothing, all I see are very white faces. All middle aged and very fair.

The definition based on skin color is something that doesn’t mean anything genetically but is taken very seriously in the United States from a cultural perspective, even on Pornhub, the most viewed porn site in the world Site is a Specification Named Category interracial in which men and women of different skin colors embrace, the only distinguishing fact being that the actors have different skin colors.

Even the self-representation of each ethnic or cultural minority in the United States follows a determination that is very difficult for us to understand. Identifying oneself in readily intelligible codes, especially for discriminated groups, has been and still is a way of survival. Since the 1980s, the African-American community in particular has developed a distinctive way of dressing, which has developed around the phenomenon of hip-hop and rap music. The commercial successes of a collection of artists like Kanye West or Travis Scott, both successful rappers, are not yet another example. sales Celebrity’s but successful attempt to create a proposal in terms of clothing that no longer follows the codes of European, white, racist and colonialist fashion history, but invents new ones.

This change, slow but drastic, has restored a political value to fashion, a privilege that, beginning in the 1970s, was usurped in favor of increasingly penetrating and obsessive market arguments.

One of the most effective ways in which, historically, the white world affirmed its superiority and explicitly separated itself from subordinate and oppressed minorities was through the mechanism of good taste, a complex set of rules that Europe I began in the nineteenth century and which has been assimilated by the whole world as a true thing in itself, ever, until recently, without question. The strongest example of this aesthetic pattern is the formal men’s suit consisting of a jacket, trousers, shirt, tie and lace-up shoes. Which lawyer, accountant, businessman, banker or banker would dare to go to work without this protective uniform which suggests goodness of mind, professionalism and an ethical approach to work as well as life?

In fact, the men’s suit was born as a separator between the new bourgeois entrepreneurial class hungry for power and visibility, and the older pre-wealthy elite, who had never had to work hard to earn money in life and who Because of this fell into the abandoned category… Brand new uniforms are used to sign millionaire contracts on Wall Street, but also to cut the ribbon for the opening of the Metropolitan Museum, as Robert Owen Lehman did. Yes, Lehman Brothers. Respect also passes to the black woolen suit.
The rest of the civil and political society of the United States, especially African American society which had only come out of segregation in 1965, would have difficulty finding equally powerful symbols to identify with, making themselves visible but not undermining their power. Also to show and, if possible, increase it.

The New York subway has always been, as hundreds of movies and television series have demonstrated, the place where the aesthetic and social contradictions of American society meet. Personally I was used to the diverse turmoil of styles, personalities, subcultures that the mythically multifaceted American Census represented, remembering its coexistence but also its great lawlessness.

After four years of not going there, my impression this time was very different. The distinction between the two large American ethnic groups, white and black, is very clear and the identity elements of each are no longer manifested through traits of wealth and good taste on the one hand and excluded Bad taste on the other. A balance has been struck that certainly does not yet correspond to social equality, but shows how an alternative language has been created for the equally noble and powerful white bourgeoisie.

A gray masculine suit worn with basketball sneakers and a huge hat, accented with a close-fitting fluorescent orange suit messes and Swarovski, a large palm-shaded leather varsity jacket worn over oversized ripped jeans, a tie-dye sweatshirt with one logo over a T-shirt, unspecified with another logo, good in all colors Any existing sense of taste would reject at first. Until recently, faced with this scene, I would have raised the corner of my mouth slightly with an expression of judgmental denial, whereas this time I feel free to open-mindedly accept different stories, different theories. felt the urge to do.

This extraordinary innovation, the only really relevant thing that has happened in fashion in recent times, comes from the world of so-called Street wear, due to its systemic and radical nature, is structured as a real system of signs, close to subcultures and fundamentally far from commercial logic, and unlike European fashion, designers and luxury brands. In the past ten years a world of denim, sweatshirts, sneakers and workwear that we usually see as some expensive fad of a teenage son has entered fashion salons with characters like Virgil Abloh, the creative director of Louis Vuitton. Have become. The brand with the highest turnover in the world, or like singer and music producer Pharrell Williams, who will replace him next July.

Through the work of him and many others, a culture that until recently had no voice rose to the pinnacle of the fashion world, effectively completing a long revolutionary journey and creating a unique and never before Creating the seen vision and design methodology. But also providing precision tools that are in a range of tastes that they didn’t have before.

Today, diversity in fashion has become a powerful and dynamic concept that has managed to permeate the American population and the world at large with its transformative power. It’s the revolution equivalent of Mary Quant’s miniskirt in the 1960s, a real weapon of the feminist struggle, and whose effects we’re only just beginning to see.

However, like all great changes, there is a problematic side to what is called, as in many other cases, cultural appropriation. Although the language of streetwear does not belong to the Afro-American community by birth, it was the same community that elaborated and popularized it, and the risk is that it will become distant from its honest and noble roots, disassociated, digested and a mere emerged as a consumer product.

“It’s called capitalism, beauty,” and the big luxury corporations can’t wait to turn it into a Goods As he has done with many other subjects, he has emptied them of their social value. It may be and is happening, but in the meanwhile there is a part of the world which has learned to express itself through a language which did not exist before, which it has created in its own image and likeness and which is eternal. Might be possible. Characteristics of a universal language.

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