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Men's versus Women's fashion

I used to never be interested in Men’s fashion, as I’m a woman and I wouldn’t really care to know if a man’s clothes were inspired by something he saw on the runway or not.

However, currently it is becoming more relevant to me.

First of all because I feel like every barrier in women’s fashion has at least been broken down twice. It has lost the excitement it must have had in the twenties (no more corsets), the sixties (mini-skirts and trousers for women) or the eighties (menswear for women). Secondly, because I’m starting to understand that sometimes men also want things that are only seen as appropriate for women. And one of these is fashion.

In my highschool men weren’t allowed to wear short trousers, no matter what the weather was.  Women can wear all kinds of men’s shoes, but not vice versa. Wearing a handbag is often seen as inappropriate, even though in some circumstances you really need one.

It’s remarkable how hard designers try to make groundbreaking fashion for women, while in the mean time their men’s fashion is extremely conservative. The innovation in men’s wear is in the details, the very small details, even though there are so many big changes that can be made.

However, I think times are changing. Fashion loving men have found each other on the blogoshere: from lonely outsider to fashion insider. Fashion brands are targeting these men and they are moving away from the formula of the obligatory suits, casual streetwear and a few looks that are original, but are obviously just supposed to make the entire collection look less boring.

Most fashion brands had handbags for the next season, even though I think handbags hold only a small risk. You can easily move these handbags to the women’s section if they don’t appear to be selling.

I think Raf Simons’s has made the most groundbreaking collection of all. First of all he’s one of the many that seem to have responded to Scott Schuman’s pleas to let short trousers enter the formal wear. Only those of Raf are a bit shorter than those of others. He also has included many elements of women’s fashion, but in a way it looks like a statement, not in a way it looks like they are dressed in drag.

Next to the men’s collection for his own brand his Haute Couture show for Dior looks extremely safe, but I think women deserve beautiful high quality clothes just as much as men deserve progressive clothes. For the past decades women have been under so much pressure to change, while men were told to remain the same. I think it’s time that men are allowed to change as well. 

Learn some Antwerp sayings to impress the Antwerp fashion world

Are you visiting the graduation shows of the Antwerp fashion academy? Do you want to act like a local, but are you incapable of pronouncing names like Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester or Olivier Theyskens? Learn some sayings from Antwerp instead. It would surely impress the locals.

Guess what they mean and scroll down to see if you’ve got it right.

• She’s got pepper in his ass.
• He’s under the slipper. 
• The rabbits are loose in the hutch.
• He’s got water in his basement.
• Like an angel that pees on your tongue.
• My coin just dropped.
• She spent a lot of time in the garage.
• They can’t smell or see each other.

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• She’s got pepper in his ass. = She’s in a hurry.
• He’s under the slipper. = He doesn’t have anything to say at home.
• The rabbits are loose in the hutch = She’s not wearing a bra.
• He’s got water in his basement. = His pants are too short.
• Like an angel that pees on your tongue. = a delicious beverage
• My coin just dropped. = I just got it.
• She spent a lot of time in the garage. = She looks pretty for her age
• They can’t smell or see each other. = They can’t stand each other

Did anyone step on your toes and do you feel like telling them off? Do it like a real “Antwerpenaar”!

• Put your brain in a bird and it will fly backwards. (if you think someone is stupid)
• Your nose is so big, you can smoke a cigarette under the shower.
• If I had a face like yours, I would shave my ass and walk on my hands. (only applicable if you’re a man)

Have you met someone you really like? Tell them they are in your top drawer.

Are the new adaptations of the Snowwhite fairytale better than the original?

Fairytales are fictional stories that teach us a valuable lesson on the real world. When it comes to the fairytale of Snow White, many people seem to think that the moral of the story was that women should clean the house and that they should wait until prince charming saves them. Many people find this offensive because it would be a very suppressing and patriarchal view on women, but these people don’t understand what the fairytale is about.

The central figure in the fairy tale is the evil stepmom, not Snow White. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t envy those that have more, but that you should be satisfied with what you have, especially when you already have a lot. The extreme passiveness of Snow White is just to emphasize that Snow White is innocent and did in no way deserve the way her stepmom treats her.

Because so little people seem to understand what the tale of Snow White is about, people keep on adapting the fairytale, so it makes more sense to them.

Disney made Snow White the leading character and pushed the evil stepmom to the background, because Disney only makes movies with ‘good’ people as the central figure.

In the Disney movie Snow White also is a more ‘real’ character than the evil Stepmom. In the fairytale Snow White is created to answer the prayers of a woman and the evil Stepmom her ‘witchcraft’ is limited to poisoning and owning a magic mirror. In the original fairytale the evil Stepmom is a real woman with feelings and Snow White is a kind of magical creature. In the Disney version the evil Stepmom turns into an evil witch with magical powers and no feelings and Snow White becomes a beautiful, innocent human being.

The latest two adaptations of the movie are a response to the desire to make Snow White less passive and they have turned Snow White into someone that fights back. In a way this bothers me, because Snow White now is just another story that emphasizes that you should stand up for yourself and I would rather see a movie that would make people want to stand up for others.

Judging from the trailers they also have changed the role of the evil Stepmom. I have the feeling they’ve given her a sense of humor. And in both adaptations the evil Stepmoms don’t act out of envy anymore, they want to kill Snow White because she is a threat to their throne. Both adaptations move the fairytale even further away from its original value and I regret it, because the fairytale of Snow White could teach this world a lot about the difference between ambition and envy. Ambition is striving to be the best you can be. Envy is striving to be better than anyone else by taking others down, but in a world with 8 billion people it’s a battle you’ll never win. 

Fashion hypocrisy

Sasha Grey for Equal Pay Day

Sasha Grey (a former porn star) is starred in an ad to draw attention to the fact that the only place where women make more money than men is in the porn industry. The goal of the entire campaign is to make girls aware that the study choices they make today determines their pay in the future. This however isn’t clear in the clip.

Their objective is to stimulate highschool girls more to choose for studies that are dominated by men, like engineering, and that boys should be more stimulated to join the care sector. And I have to admit that as a kid I was good at math and sciences and I would read books about animals and science all the time, but somehow I did end up studying Psychology. And it’s a choice I made, but I can’t really say that anyone ever really tried to convince me otherwise. I do am stubborn like hell, so most people that know me should know that changing my mind is as easy as turning water to wine, maybe that's why  nobody ever tried.

Here are some things that do make me think that it wasn’t entirely just my choice.

As a kid I once told my grandmother that you shouldn’t get to good grades, because else other kids don’t like you. I do think this is the same for men as well.

At highschool I’ve heard a guy that was in my class in primary school bragging about how he nearly always was the first to finish his test at primary school. It stunned me, because I would always wait until someone else would give his test to the teacher. When I would finish my test early, the teacher would tell me to go back to my place and check my answers, which I hated, so after a while I would just wait until someone else (usually him) gave his test to the teacher.

I’ve spent my senior years at 2 different colleges. One of them used to be a boy’s school and the last one was a girl’s school. So in the first one there still were more boys than girls and at the latter it was the inverse. At both schools they would give advice on what college degree was right for you. At the former boy’s school they would emphasize how much money you could make with each degree, how secure you would be of finding a job and they would rank all different engineering subjects based on difficulty and students were stimulated to choose the most difficult study that was within their capacities. At the girl’s school they wouldn’t talk about money or job security, they would help you to find what interests you the most. When I told them I wanted to go to the university to become a psychologist (master level), they’ve told me that you do would need to study there a lot and that it might be better to study for psychology assistant (bachelor level). I do think they’ve told this to everybody. They would also emphasize that you need to make sure it’s something you like doing, because you would need to do it for the rest of your life.

Women are barely stimulated to choose a well paid job, but men aren’t stimulated at all to do a job they enjoy. They are stimulated to do a full time job that gives them a nice paycheck every month. And this is what I like about the campaign. It’s also focused on giving men more opportunities to be more involved in the family life and to give people more opportunities to combine work and life. Working fulltime and overtime in a job you don’t enjoy and not being able to spend time with your children is not a privilege. Even though women are still under pressure to confirm to their traditional roles, men are under an even higher pressure. As long as a man that says he would rather spend more time with his children is called gay, a wussy or a paedophile you can’t talk about equality.

Look up how you can recognize a paedophile, apart from the obvious ‘they get aroused by children’, you also find things like ‘they regularly attend children’s events in the community’; ‘They volunteer in youth organizations’; ‘They seek jobs where children are easily accessible’ and so on. This seriously discourages men to do anything with children. If you go to the playground with your kid and moms warn their kids to stay away from you, you're not going to do that twice.

Note: When I would google ‘how to recognize a paedophile’, I saw that google suggested me ‘how to recognize a virgin’ and than I’ve found this: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Spot_a_Virgin In one word: ugh. It’s not really that hard though. Ask her birthday. If she’s born between the 22^nd of August and the 22^nd of September, she’s a virgin for sure.


The website of the campaign: http://www.equalpayday.be
The website of the organization behind it: http://www.zij-kant.be/ (not in English)

Milan fashion week Spring 2012

Milan was inspired by the romanticised gypsy woman, a woman that loves her freedom, her family and her tradition, a woman that dances with her chin up instead of her ass up, a seductive, sensual and mysterious woman.

Blumarine had a bright colourful gypsy flowing down her runway. The cut-out flowers and the raffia gave it a playful feeling. It looked like something you would do yourself if you would want to personalize your outfit. And one point extra for Anna Molinari that would greet the audience with a smile that made you feel like she was very proud of her collection and that she enjoyed making it.

Peter Dundas (Pucci) had a more dark gypsy in his mind: torn between her religion, her tradition and her bodily desires. I’m also a big fan of the blue cloudy dress. It’s definitely a piece you’ll see in many fashion editorials. If I were rich, I would buy it and I would play Pucci ghost all day in my big empty house.