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Dress codes and Englishness

Читайте также:
  1. BRITISHNESS AND ENGLISHNESS
  2. CULINARY CLASS CODES
  3. FOOD RULES AND ENGLISHNESS
  4. HOME RULES AND ENGLISHNESS
  5. LINGUISTIC CLASS CODES AND ENGLISHNESS
  6. Modern Hairdressing Procedures

Oh dear. Dress seems to be yet another thing that the English are not very good at, yet another important �life skill’ we have somehow failed to master. Unless we have strict rules to follow – either official uniforms or tribal-sub-culture uniforms – our sartorial statements tend to be at best inarticulate and at worst downright ungrammatical.

Of course, there are a few exceptions, a few English people who speak the language of dress with effortless fluency. But on average, as a nation, our grasp of this idiom is poor. More evidence, if any were needed, of the social dis-ease that seems to be the most distinctive of our national characteristics.

My attempt to dissect English dress codes has also helped me to �get inside’ a stereotype: that of English eccentricity. Under the microscope, our much-vaunted eccentricity is not quite as admirably individual, original and creative as we might wish. Most of what passes for English sartorial eccentricity turns out, on closer inspection, to be a rather sheep-like conformity. But still – we do at least appreciate and value originality, and we can take some pride in the collective eccentricity of our street-fashions.

We are at our best when we are �in uniform’ but rebelling just slightly against it, refusing to take ourselves too seriously, indulging that peculiarly English talent for self-deprecating humour. We may lack the sartorial fluency of other nations, and our dress sense may be laughable, but fortunately we have a sense of humour, so we can always laugh at ourselves.

56. Almost all of these will probably be out of date by the time you read this – some are already, in the current jargon, �so last week’, or even �so three minutes ago’ (these expressions themselves give an indication of how fast the music fashions change).

57. These are from the magazines Muzik and MixMag. The current music-based sub-cultures have a penchant for cutely misspelled words, wherever possible involving the letter �k’, as in Kamaflage, Nukleuz, old-skool, Muzik, etc. �Old-Skool’ means pre 1993/94, usually House. �Floors’ are people on the dance-floor, people who are into dancing. �Purist swots’ are anoraks, trainspotters, who instead of dancing to the music develop an encyclopaedic knowledge of every aspect of it, which they bore you with at every opportunity. �bpm’ is beats per minute. The rest is a bit of a mystery.

58. At least, this rule applies to punk and to the current black-American gangsta/hip-hop fashions, but a relatively high proportion of Goths are middle class, as were most grungers, so there are exceptions.

59. Apologies to those too young to remember Shirley Williams in her heyday, but I could not find a good contemporary example, as all female politicians now seem to dress in a rather lower/middle-middle manner – or at least I have seen none with Williams’s unmistakably high-class brand of unkemptness.


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Читайте в этой же книге: Class and the Vestigial Trade-prejudice Rule | THE MODERATION RULE | THE FAIR-PLAY RULE | The Monday-morning Moan 1 страница | The Monday-morning Moan 2 страница | The Monday-morning Moan 3 страница | The Monday-morning Moan 4 страница | The Monday-morning Moan 5 страница | The Monday-morning Moan 6 страница | The Monday-morning Moan 7 страница |
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