Hard News: In tha Hoodie
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Cry TV?
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A few of us at Public Address will be wearing hoodies for Hoodie Day, Friday May 30, which is one of the events for Youth Week, May 26 to June 1. The choice of garment isn't accidental: hoodies are a sort of sartorial shorthand for stigmatisation of youth ...
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That's well and good, but doesn't this, in a strange way, sort of add to the stigmatization? Rather than allowing the hoodie to be merely a piece of early-00s fashion that youth are free to adopt, or discard, as they see fit, doesn't a 'Hoodie Day' now essentialize it as part of youth identity?
There's been a weird ethnologizing of markets and consumer groups in the last ten or so years. (I blame the phenomenon of anthropology Ph.D.s getting jobs in marketing firms.) Now consumers are viewed as 'tribes' with their own customs and costumes, which it is the marketer's job to understand, co-opt, and appropriate. These poses and outfits then get packaged and sold as 'authentic' culture -- part of what Thomas Frank calls the 'conquest of cool'.
I have real problems with this whole 'hug a hoodie' movement, because of the element of covert control involved. In a way, the hoodie becomes mandatory -- a uniform. It's imposed from above (by the fashion and music industries), and then it gets taken as some kind of authentic cultural expression. It's not. It's just a piece of fashion, part of the larger phenomenon of the American cultural hegemony that we're all subject to. Why do we have to imbue it with a significance and authenticity it just doesn't have?
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Damn that shift button!
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My mum wears a hoodie. Keeps her head warm, she sez. I rekon it's 'cause she wants to look like shez down wif us PA kids...
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Rather than allowing the hoodie to be merely a piece of early-00s fashion that youth are free to adopt, or discard, as they see fit, doesn't a 'Hoodie Day' now essentialize it as part of youth identity?
I think the boat might have sailed on that one.
Why do we have to imbue it with a significance and authenticity it just doesn't have?
So 30 years from now, instead of having 70s parties with flares, we can have 00 parties with hoodies and jeans hanging off your thighs rather than hips.
And someone will come along with a plastic knife and stab anyone carrying a spray can/marker pen, because by then it will no longer be 'too soon'.
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American? In my mind the identification of the hoodie with delinquent youth is mostly a UK thing.
(This 38 year old is wearing a hoodie at work right now, as are 2 of the other 9 people I can see.)
Equally, when you see that hoodies are a rational response to the rise of the surveillance society - one where we police our own behaviour just in case we might be seen by a CCTV camera - you can argue that every dedicated advocate of civil liberties ought to wear one. I'm sure Foucault would be wearing one right now, if he weren't dead.
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Nose!!1!1 Don't want! Anyone over the age of 30 wearing a hoodie looks like a sad douchebag - unless perhaps if warn under a nice blazer or sportscoat - but Nooooooooooooooooooose!!1!1! Embrace adult life - we can drink in bars and own property, yay!
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If you're gonna wear one, wear one that is limited edition. The pinnacle of cool is exclusivity. No one want a hoodie that everyone else has.
In line with that...
http://img74.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hellsdtshirts08003iq3.jpg
...buy one of me ;P
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I was taken with a nicely done suit-type jacket with a hood on I saw in a shop recently.
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American? In my mind the identification of the hoodie with delinquent youth is mostly a UK thing.
Well, yeah, but the UK's been subject to wave-upon-wave of Americanization since the end of World War II. Hip-hop street culture is only one aspect of that one-way cultural exchange. But, yes, the 'hug a hoodie' movement is an English thing.
I'm sure Foucault would be wearing one right now, if he weren't dead.
Thanks for that image!
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Given Foucault was also into titclamps, that's not saying much.
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It includes chats with Kevin Black, Mikey Havoc, Nick D and
Damn that young Nick Dwyer for ursurping my title! (Done more than I did, mind)
A few of us at Public Address will be wearing hoodies for Hoodie Day, Friday May 30
I didn't realise there was an office - I presumed you ran this empire from home! (unless you mean you, the wife, and the kids). I'm wearing a Kangol Hoodie now, actually.
a piece of early-00s fashion
Some of us early adopters were wearing them in the mid 80's.
Anyone over the age of 30 wearing a hoodie looks like a sad douchebag - ... - we can drink in bars and own property, yay!
Careful who you're calling douchebag, spermbucket. I'm over 40, wear a hoodie, AND own property!__ (and I've a good mind to come down to ChCh, buy your house, and kick you out on the street)__ :)
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"pedophobia"
Or perhaps something like "ephebephobia", since it's fear of youthe rather than children. I think I suffer from pedophobia, as the sight (or especially sound) of rugrats is enough to send me diving for cover.
I was taken with a nicely done suit-type jacket with a hood on I saw in a shop recently.
That "tailoring with streetwear" thing seems to be making a comeback: I associate it with the early 90s, when Paul Smith & Katherine Hammnet were mixing up hoodies with suits all the time. By the time I attempted it, I'd already missed the minuscule cultural trend.
But I'm with Andrew on this: I don't wear trainers, and hardly ever wear proper jeans, so I'm hardly likely to wear a hoodie. I didn't dress like "yoof" when I was one, so I've no intention of doing so now.
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In principle, I would like to dress in the stylish and mature fashion of the dapper Mr Beard.
In practise, this requires more labour, thought and expense than I am prepared to put into the enterprise of dressing, except on special occasions. My sartorial-foo manifests only in my extensive collection of novelty t-shirts.
Every now and then I think about getting two or three good suits, since then dressing would merely be a matter of changing underwear and picking a shirt. But nice suits are expensive, and hoodies are warm and practical for the balding.
APW: surely wearing a hoodie under a "nice sports coat" combines the worst fashion-crime elements of both garments.
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Sue,
American? In my mind the identification of the hoodie with delinquent youth is mostly a UK thing.
nope in nz wearing a hoodie is very much one of those things that stigmatise youth in NZ. Just ask some teenage boys and they'll be able to confirm that one.
some places don't even let kids enter if they wear their hoodies up.
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The only hoodie I've worn was at Uni Graduation or on my raincoat.
So silk & nylon/gortex are ok, but cotton is not.
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nope in nz wearing a hoodie is very much one of those things that stigmatise youth in NZ. Just ask some teenage boys and they'll be able to confirm that one.
Don't teenage boys want to be stigmatised? Isn't being misunderstood the whole point of teeangership?
At least Jimmy donn't drag race or drive fast on the highway neither.
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some places don't even let kids enter if they wear their hoodies up.
That's so they can identify the thieving little ratbags to the police.
And Stephen, the blazer is one of the few garments that is both chic and ironic. Did you never watch Brideshead Revisited?
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Why yes, but I don't recall that scene where Sebastion languidly dons a blazer over his hoodie.
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SebastiAn. *argh*
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It keps your ears warm and rakishly resembles a Fautus hood when declaiming Eliot from the roof through a megaphone.
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That "tailoring with streetwear" thing seems to be making a comeback: I associate it with the early 90s, when Paul Smith & Katherine Hammnet were mixing up hoodies with suits all the time.
And now Paul Smith is doing cardies and vaguely 'Brideshead'-ish foppery and the kind of suits that helped James Bond save Pussy Galore from a life of lesbotic criminality. (We shall pass over the shirts that look like they were made from Great-Granny Webster's slip covers in silence.)
I guess 'Pullovers for Yooth' doesn't quite have that shwing. :)
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It's not as great a crime as the bow tie on anyone who is not a surgeon or consultant. Which are you Mr Ranapia with your big photo in Metro?
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And why do the Ten Years Younger people feel the need to dres everyone with a penis as Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served?
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I like that Juha linked to the Homepage Hall of Shame from his blog on ... Stuff.
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