Tuesday, October 6, 2009

But where’s Olivia Newton-John?

I have yet to get someone else to verify this report, so it could be as hallucinogenic as Man Uggz but it would appear that, at least among the male student-architects, it has become popular to dress up as a greaser.

I’m talking full-out greaser: light denim jeans, white t-shirt, black leather jacket, oily oily hair. At first I thought there was only one, which was still cool in and of itself, but today I saw one, his bangs so tightly curled around each other he could jump a shark no problem, and then a second, his bangs not left to glue to one another all night, but stylized more like James Dean.

Really. What? I have a few hypotheses but no answers (and no pictures):
1. This is a result of the retro-greaser-coolness experienced in America right now. Cf. “A Dustland Fairytale” music video. Vaguely understandable, but implausible. Although The Killers sound like they fit into the British-European scene, they are not very popular over here.
2. This is independent of the American return but is following the same irrational nostalgia for all things Americana, and to try to figure it out is to stare directly into the Time Vortex.
3. This actually has a perverted rationality of its own.
Smotri [Look] – Let’s take women’s fashion as the base of our analysis. I’d peg that as America, mid-80s to early 90s. Lots of bright, flashy colors. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were certain colors for every season, too (walking down Kuznetsky Most today, every single store window greeted me in shades of poisonous green).

Next, we have men’s (and some women’s, if they have feathers and/or braiding) fashion, which was tight skinny jeans and mullets à la Dima Bilan. Late-70s to mid-80s.

And now we have the greasers. What does this say to us other than Grease? Nostalgia-for-the-nostalgic-mid-70s, people! We’re just going retro. Next we’ll see people putting on prosthetic Brezhnev eyebrows that’d make Vulcans jealous, and after that it’ll be the fro, all day, every day. Elton John is coming to town soon, “straight from Las Vegas,” anyway.

It’s only a matter of time before Russian Woodstock.

I wonder how long this’ll all last, too, and how far back it’ll go. I just hope I’m in town when it becomes vogue to wear woolen overcoats again. Ekh ekh, bez kresta! TRA-TA-TA

ROD

smotri - Look, Check it out, See here…
nasledniki - inheritors, followers
khvostik - little tail; mullet; rat tail
moda - fashion. Usually…not…to my tastes.
Ekh ekh - a repeated line from Blok’s poem, “The Twelve”

No comments: