Brand Avenue

Clothes Make the Man

This morning, the New York Times delights in reporting that clothing is a key factor in differentiating locals and tourists in vacation destinations--in this case, the Hamptons. Who is an impostor, and who really belongs?

Exclusivity, as much as sun and sand, is part of the gravitational pull of the Hamptons, where Them and Us divisions are as fastidiously tended as a billionaire’s privet hedge.

It’s not exactly news that clothes denote status, but in beachside communities...the signs of inclusion among local elites are more challenging to convey. And, while there is no formalized uniform to identify which group one belongs to, a lot can be read in an item that upon a time was worn as underclothes.

Okay, I get it. Vacationing in the Hamptons is an endless game of signaling group affiliations to others. That's not much different than any other getaway spot. Florida, and where one goes on vacation in Florida in relation to where one is from, is a prime example in my own experience. In large part it seems to be about choosing for or against one's own background: my parents, inexplicably, prefer to vacation among the Quebecois when in the Sunshine State, despite having no ties to La Belle Province. Meanwhile, my in-laws prefer a certain city on the Gulf Coast where other escapees from their hometown are plentiful.

And sure, I am aware that mentioning Florida--as opposed to the Turks & Caicos, say, or Cinque-Terre--does carry with it a certain amount of information about me and the taste cultures of my relatives. Choosing where to travel is an autobiographical act, a consumer choice. It's fairly obvious, but is rarely taken seriously, as the tone of the article indicates.

In fact, it is interesting to regard the extent to which the activity of leisure travel is really a yearning and searching for placeness and belonging elsewhere, and how that exists in tension with one's identity. You become more yourself, while also stepping into someone else's shoes. That can be quite magical: travel is of course a vehicle for seeing the world, but also seeing oneself in relation to that world. This is me, slathered in SPF 45, as a beachgoer; this is me, changing trains at Chatelet, as a Parisian.

I got a whopping dose of this thinking as an exchange student in high school, where symbols of difference and belonging are perhaps the most closely scrutinized. As it happens, this awareness of the connections between people and place lends itself naturally to a career in architecture and design.

Back to clothing though, and specifically t-shirts, that broadcast status:

It signals localism, but a “friendly localism,” said Ms. Adams....It suggests that the wearer is in on something, has the key to what Tracy Feith, the surfer and designer who operates a shop at the Surf Lodge in Montauk, called “the authenticity everyone’s trying to find in the marketplace.”

Wearing that t-shirt ("Ithaca is Gorges," for example), a person becomes a walking billboard for a place, and all its attendant connotations, at relatively little cost. As pointed out earlier, that's actually quite powerful--it reinforces both the identity of the individual wearing the shirt as well as that of the destination in question. And as is obvious, this hunt for synthesis with place, for belonging, only expands in a networked world, making actual travel to the place in question almost unnecessary. A person can be, and often is, of many places simultaneously.

Here's a studio project that I'd like to see, one that starts with a t-shirt: design the stuff of a place--the slogan, the souvenirs, the apparel--and then go about designing the place itself. Who is your audience, and what is their back story? What will they do when they arrive? How will your souvenirs be displayed, worn, used? How does the souvenir play on or interact with the physical aspects of the place you're designing?  Is your project a boutique hotel in a global city, or a resort in an exotic location? Is it a coffee shop in a college town, or a nightclub on the beach? What is the most authentic thing about your place, and how did it become so? How would you keep the appeal fresh, even after your inevitable success?

(Related.)

Monday Links

Here's a few good picks for the week, taken from my Twitter account and my Delicious bookmarks to expand upon why they're worth your while. Now that we're resettled I am updating regularly, so feel free to check those out.

# This argument, which holds that Michael Jackson would not have become who he was were it not for the urban form of Los Angeles. Sure, there were other big factors at play in his evolution into the grotesque superstar we all knew, the author notes. But among those were the way that the environment of Los Angeles--its "feel," which is shaped, of course, by economics, culture, and geography--configures the lives of its citizens in unique ways. 

I think that the author is on to something, but her argument falters by pointing the finger directly at LA specifically--in my opinion, the real landscape of alienation is not endemic to Los Angeles, but in hermetically sealed, privacy-obsessed outlying suburbs around the country. ("Weeds" and "Big Love" spring to mind: both prominently feature suburbia and issues of privacy and alienation.)

It's interesting, this overlap between celebrity and sense of place, how the one informs the other. Yes, a place like New York, with bona fide density and a functioning public realm, does to some extent disallow the kind of autonomy and focus on the self that a town made up of "th[ose] estate[s] on top of the hill" would. But LA is also dense, more so than you may think. Its image as airy, bright, spacious--exacerbated by photographers like the recently departed Julius Shulman (above)--is myth. Or at least history.

Actually, maybe it's that myth of LA that shaped Michael Jackson and shapes countless other celebrities--that old Modernist myth that Southern California is the most perfect, final manifestation of what's American; the place you become yourself, to the most perverse Nth degree--and not LA and California as it actually is. There's that tired old concept that the defining charcter of California is its unreality; but I think anyone who has ever read Margaret Crawford or Mike Davis knows better.

# The book Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, by Paul Auge. A reprint of a 1995 analysis of the anonymous, quasi-public spaces where we spend so much time: shopping centers, airports, hotels, highways.

In other words, the Aerotropolis and its environs. The backdrop to Airworld.

From PD Smith's March review:

The forces of globalisation and urbanisation are creating ever more of these Ballardian non-places, symptoms of a Muzak-filled supermodernity in which "people are always, and never, at home". Unsettling, elegantly written and illuminating: essential reading for anyone seeking to understand our supermodern condition.

# Speaking of non-places, check out this plan for soundscaping the subway station at 96th St. in New York, featuring natural Muzak:

Chirping birds, rustling leaves, a burbling brook: not the first sounds that come to mind about the New York City subway. But starting next year, the city’s subterranean soundtrack — a familiar overture of clanks, screeches, groans and beeps — is poised to add a few noises of a more verdant variety.

The sounds will join a canopy of stainless-steel flowers hanging above the turnstiles, an abstracted nod to the station's once-rural surroundings and the tension between that past and the hustle of the station's present.

I join the author of the NYT article in wondering how this will come off during the course of a normal day's operations, with the din of trains passing through and announcements booming overhead. The only comparison I can come up with is the sounds of a ship's horn that play at the baggage claim in the Fort Lauderdale airport when one's luggage arrives (an allusion to the nearby port, no doubt)--but this comes off as silly, not contextual. But who knows--maybe the sounds of an imagined, pre-settlement 96th St. will prove soothing?

# Finally, take a look at a series of videos describing the Denver Living Streets Initiative, via Rocky Mountain PBS. More than a streetscape improvement plan, the Living Streets Initiative aims to fine-tune and revamp a range of Denver city neighborhoods, addressing "green living, community health, local economic growth, greater transportation choice and improved accessibility and connectivity for all users of the street (bikes, pedestrians and cars alike)." An impressive, holistic push to improve the quality of the built environment, tying to economics and lifestyle and corresponding with the construction of a vast new commuter rail network.  

Restart

Just quickly touching base to officially begin a new chapter in the life of this blog. It's now written from the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island, a fantastic neighborhood in a delightful city. Brand Avenue returns to New England.

As anyone who is familiar with a long-distance move knows, it is not just the physical distance that poses a challenge, but also the amount of mental space and attention that such a thing can occupy, if you let it. Needless to say I'm glad to be here, and to open a new chapter in my own life, as well.

I had intended to write a farewell note, to the overpowering civic symbol that broadcasts an image of my home base for these last two years far beyond its obstinate, staid, stable confines. It is a heavy piece of metal that makes a bold statement--one that I have spent many moments pondering over these last two years, at stoplights, seeing it in the distance; or at its base, watching the river roll past while I eat my lunch. It is a Modern architectural landmark; an act of mathematical precision, alternately graceful and agressive; a bombastic, heroic, very 20th century thing that speaks volumes about one city's competitive nature, aspirations and extreme self-consciousness. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that a familiarity with the ideas that led to the Arch have informed my approach to writing this blog; it is the defining icon of a city I know pretty well. 

But, for now, it suffices to say: goodbye, Gateway Arch. Goodbye, St. Louis. For those of you who don't know the city, I'll defer to the mixed impressions of the place that Jonathan Franzen provides in his writing, in lieu of my own narrative, to lend a sense of place. For what it's worth, the place is important to me.

So, more very soon. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the following, a 1985 advertisement for the English planned city of Milton Keynes. I love a good promotional video about place, especially when the social engineering is laid on extra thick. Like the Arch, an extremely optimistic piece of the recent past. (Via Kosmograd.)