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Sunday Morning Update: 12/08/24

December 8, 2024

Listen carefully to the sounds around the world. Syria’s al-Assad has disappeared. A 50-year dynasty has been deposed. What began with “Arab Spring” ended with over 500,000 dead. Some celebrate—some mourn. Others worry. Will terrorism return? Who has control of chemical weapons? Where are the Kurds? What happens to foreign bases? Humanity excels at creating complex situations and problems that are not easily solved. For all the wars and conflicts, we remain our own worst enemy.

Step away. Ignore the world and read. Spend more time in critical thought. Let the words sink deep. Mull the choice of vocabulary. Consider the implications. Parse what can be taken at face value from that which hides deeper meaning. Expand the ways you see the world.

Step away. Arm yourself with a fresh view of history. Read the books others want banned, even if you’ve read them before. Force yourself to answer the tough questions. Open more than one text at a time so that the brain in your head does not get lazy. Push your mind into unfamiliar territory. Glean wisdom from sources you’ve never known.

Step away. Give yourself time to think. Write down your thoughts. Wrestle with the words. Scratch out that last sentence and try again. Do not type with speed. Question yourself. Argue against your opinions. Let no conclusion go untested. Check the influence of your native biases. Give no ground to the mythologies of your youth.

Refill the coffee mug. The dogs that woke early now rest comfortably on the bed. Thoughts bombard my head, each fighting to be heard. What does it matter that the Eras tour has ended? What are the consequences of old shoes selling for $28 million? Fools part with money even as their own cupboards grow bare. The songs that linger now are those sung long ago. Cherished memories leave no souvenirs.

Age colours my vision. Depth of field is set by my experience. I wander. Is that the ticking of the clock or the sound of my boots as I pace the hallway? How many circles can I make before my legs collapse? I would dance but the music changes too quickly.

No one is well. We struggle to breathe. Moving brings us pain. Eating makes us ill. Medicine numbs us to the cancer that eats at our bodies. We sympathize. We empathize. Yet, we cannot help ourselves let alone give aid to others. We need… so much.

Spin around one last time. Step away.

Hold me. Close.

Art / Fashion

Burberry Adapts Virginia Woolf For Fall

August 20, 2016

There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking. —Virginia Woolf

charles i. letbetter - Burberry Adapts Virginia Woolf

Burberry blurs lines of both fashion and society with its adaption of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

An article earlier this week in Business of Fashion discusses the changes in fashion as “Fashion’s Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Everything from how material is made to how clothes are purchased and consumed is changing in ways that a decade ago would have been impossible. What we’re experiencing is a seismic shift that redefines the most basic concepts of fashion.

Burberry and its creative director, Christopher Bailey, have put themselves at the center of that change. Earlier this year Bailey announced that the label would be combining its men’s and women’s wear runway shows, shifting to a straight-to-consumer strategy, and showing current season fashion rather than next season’s, which is traditional. Any one of those changes on its own would be significant. To bring them all to bear, with much more, at the same time changes the landscape not only for Burberry but for every other British fashion label, if not the entire industry.

What Burberry announced today is that their fall presentation is based on Virginia Woolf’s 1928 gender-fluid novel Orlando. If you’ve not heard of the work don’t feel surprised. Critics has long attempted to downplay the story of gender-fluidity as they felt it was too far out of step with society. However, as gender-bending androgyny has become a major theme in both society and fashion, more people are giving the book another look. Additionally, Burberry is changing the time, place, and duration of its presentation.

About The Book

Bailey’s choice of inspiration may challenge the non-Oxford educated members of fashion society. When one thinks of Virginia Woolf, one typically thinks of her novel, Mrs. Dalloway. If one experienced Ms. Woolf’s writings, it was most likely in college and that only if one was truly attending a forward-thinking liberal arts institution. While Orlando is not unknown, it has only recently become more socially acceptable as attitudes toward gender fluidity, gender identity, lesbianism, and androgyny in general. Still, especially in the United States, Orlando is banned at more conservative-minded schools. If that doesn’t make you want to pick up a copy immediately I have to question your humanity.

Orlando is based on Woolf’s dear friend and frequent lover, Vita Sackville-West. Sackville-West frequently slipped between male and female identities, which was much more shocking in 1928 than we might think now. In fact, Woolf’s elegant telling of her friend’s life and exploits is so fantastic that censors of the time may not have even recognized much of the eroticism in the book. These are not characters who hold back on their feelings or desires. In a word, this book is hot.

We tend to see Orlando now as a must-read for women’s studies. Woolf champions not mere gender fluidity or bisexuality but a complete separation of gender from identity. In Orlando, we find a character that is neither male nor female, but both and either at the same time. Gender does not define personality nor characteristics. Everything is fluid and dependent upon the needs and desires of the current situation.

About The Fashion

There shall be ruffles. Lots and lots of ruffles. Orlando covers a 400-year time period, which is rather unusual for a biography. This gives Bailey plenty of room to play with the history of British fashion, however, and adapt it to serve his own needs. Will we be able to tell the difference between men’s and women’s wear? Does it really matter? Expect there to be an emphasis upon the androgynous aspects and plenty of sets that could reasonably be worn by either gender. Certainly, the gender of the model at the presentation is not indicative of for whom the garment is meant.

Burberry has already announced that they will be introducing a new bag, The Bridle, for both men and women. The bag emphasises equestrian and outdoor themes that are also likely to be found in several of the clothing styles. Equestrian themes are not uncommon among British fashion and the utilization of those characteristics is almost inherently gender neutral.

Burberry’s overcoats have long been without gender specification, at least from a practical standpoint. While there might have been some minor tailoring differences between men’s and women’s coats, they’ve always been practically insignificant and more than one chap has complained about a girlfriend absconding with his favorite Burberry trench. To a large degree, Burberry is well positioned to take on this shift in fashion and style.

About The Presentation

What may shock Burberry fans the most is that they’ve given up their afternoon showtime. This fall’s show, scheduled for September 19, doesn’t start until 7:30 PM London time (2:30 PM EDT in the US). What that time change might mean for local traffic I can only imagine. Getting to the Burberry show on time has always been a challenge with many guests arriving two or more hours in advance to avoid traffic congestion. The late time puts the show at odds with London traffic, so the typical 30-minute delay might stretch several minutes longer.

The Burberry show is also abandoning its traditional Hyde Park location for a place called Makers House in London’s Soho district. In addition to the presentation on the 19th, Markers House is open September 21-27 to showcase the works of the craftspeople involved in helping create the Burberry collection. Ceramicists; potters; leather, textile and jewelry designers; woodworkers; silversmiths, and illustrators are all part of the week-long presentation.

Then, to top everything off, the company plans to unveil a consumer app later in September to help make those instant as-you-see-them purchases easier. The impact of this development alone has the potential to send shockwaves throughout the industry if it is successful.

There is a lot going on with Burberry’s Virginia Woolf collection this fall. Perhaps this is the beginning of separating gender from fashion and fashion from seasons. Everything is different from this poinforwardrd. I’m sure this is just the beginning.

Advertising / pop culture / PotD

Hardcover No Longer Undercover

May 17, 2016

Getting 10,000 listeners for a free podcast novel is a lot easier than selling 10,000 hardcover novels at $25 a pop. —Jeremy Robinson

charles i. letbetter - hardcover no long undercover

Everyone was so sure that hardcover books were all but extinct. They were wrong.

My favorite people all read. A lot. The smartest people you’ll find are avid readers. The richest people in the world always have a book handy. People who don’t read regularly don’t just bother me, I find them quite frightening. Interestingly enough, I have found that those who have no hardcover books on their shelves seem to have the hardest heads, least likely to be open to information, creativity, or anything new.

For the past several years now, we’ve been told that hardcover book publishing is all but dead. Sales numbers supported that claim. E-readers were everywhere for a while, and it wasn’t all that unusual to see them on the bus, or the train, or at the local coffee shop, typically in the hands of someone young, hip looking, and wearing earbuds to avoid conversation or interruption. Going digital seemed like the environmentally friendly thing to do, too; more books could be published without killing thousands of trees. Going digital also meant one could carry multiple books with them without suffering the weight of an overcrowded bookbag. The whole premise sounded good, and to some degree still does.

What any avid reader will tell you, though, is that while digital publishing does have its advantages, there’s still nothing like the feel and pleasure of holding a real, hardcover book in your hands. We’ve always known that. We might give e-readers a try, and there are moments when they can be quite convenient, but we always come back to hardcover books because holding that physical tome of paper and ink is almost as much a part of the reading experience as is the story enclosed in the book’s pages.

Now, here’s the surprise: Hardcover books are coming back, both in terms of what is fashionable as well as hard sales numbers. The numbers are not huge, yet, according to Publisher’s Association; some $50 million or so out of a $7 billion-plus market. At the same time, though, digital publishing took a similarly-sized downturn. Put the two together and one has to optimistically consider this a trend.

Oh, and on top of that, the British bookseller Waterstones stopped selling e-readers, converted the shelf space to hardcover titles, and saw a five percent increase in sales! Considering the complete demise of Borders books, and how other booksellers have struggled, one has to wonder if perhaps those in charge of such operations might have given up a bit too quickly, tossing in the towel without putting up a sufficient battle.

What has pushed the trend back toward ink-on-paper books? Some point to an increased popularity in lifestyle titles such as Andrew Weil’s Spontaneous Happiness and Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover. The popularity of coloring books among young adults hasn’t hurt sales, either, though that hardly counts as a literary genre. Ultimately, what has brought us back to the hardcover is emotion and practicality. We love our books. We love how they feel in our hands. We love turning down pages. We love decorative bookmarks. We love that ability to make sure everyone sees the dust jacket so they know what we’re reading.

We’re also more keenly aware of the shortcomings of e-readers. The portability is great for the first couple of hours, but battery life is limited and no one likes to be tethered to a wall outlet while they read. Environment is a problem, too. Too much or too little sunlight and you can’t see the screen, and the quickest way to ruin an e-reader is to take it into the kitchen while you’re cooking. Drop your Kindle? Sorry, you’ll have to buy a new one. Set the reader too close to anything magnetized and you lose your entire library.

Books are back. We’re not really surprised, are we? While this does not necessarily mean brick-and-mortar bookstores will return in the fashion we once knew, we can be certain that hardcover books are not going to disappear anytime soon. Probably never. Real readers know this. We love our books.

Art / Fashion / Music / pop culture / PotD

Popped Culture Implosion

February 29, 2016

Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it’s produced the most extraordinary results in human culture. —Ken Robinson

There is a lack of truly defining moments in contemporary culture that dooms us to boredom

No, I did not watch the Oscars last night, and no, it wasn’t because of any boycott, though the issue of racism in Hollywood needs a lot more than just platitudes thrown at it. I didn’t watch the Oscars last night because there was absolutely nothing about the show worthy of holding my interests for three-plus hours after a long day that started at 3:00 AM EST. To have stayed up that late would have required feeling passionate about some element of the show and there was nothing deserving of my passion. I had a much better time putting my head on my pillow and going to sleep.

2015’s Oscars views were off by 18% from the previous year, hitting a six-year low. Last night’s numbers aren’t in yet (7:00 AM EST), but I will be tremendously surprised if they’re all that much higher, if any at all. And while it might be tempting to blame things such as #OscarsSoWhite, the reality is that popular culture has popped, imploded into a pile of monotony that is about as exciting as the underside of a dog house. There was no reason to stay up and see what won the Best Picture award because I hadn’t bothered to see any of the nominated films. Spotlight, the film that won, hadn’t even managed to cross my radar before last night. What is it about? Apparently journalists at the Boston Globe, from what I’m reading, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who think it is a very good film, but am I going to drop $20 and an afternoon to see it? Probably not.

This period of cultural boredom isn’t just limited to film, unfortunately. I have spent the past three weeks totally consumed in covering ready-to-wear fashion for Pattern magazine. Earlier today, we finished up the shows in Milan, which should have been one of the most exciting weeks of the year. It wasn’t. If anything, it was anti-climactic at a level that I don’t remember having seen before. Worse yet, this has been a five-year trend that isn’t showing any sign of improving. An article in Business Insider this morning addresses the problem that such complete and total boredom with fashion is a leading cause of declining sales at department stores. Why shop when what we see on the rack is not substantially different from we already have in our closet?

Is music any different? Regrettably no, and music is the one place that our culture should be constantly reinventing itself. This year’s Grammy awards, which should be the biggest night in music, lost a half-million viewers from last year, which wasn’t exactly the most stellar statistic in the first place. With autotuning and digitally precise engineering, all new music has begun to sound too similar for anyone to care all that much about buying new albums. Scream all you want about how streaming services are cheating artists, what really matters is the fact that no one is buying the latest album because it sounds exactly like the one before it and the one before that and the one before … you get the idea.

What has happened to American culture? Where are the distinguishing artists that once shone out like beacons, names like Elvis, Hank Williams, Three Dog Night, or Ray Charles? Where are the icons of culture such as the Dorsey Brothers, Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, and Norman Rockwell? Who is replacing Edward R. Murrow, Huntley & Brinkley, Bob Woodward, and Norman Mailer? Where are the underpinnings of our culture that give definition to this second decade of the 21st century? So far, all we have are hipster beards and oversized eyeglass frames and, quite honestly, both of those have lost their panache. We need more. We need something new to help define the next four years.

Why is our current culture not more significant? I have an interesting example. Tonight begins a new season of The Voice. Approximately 40 outstanding vocalists will be given a chance to work with experienced professionals, presumably to help get their music career jumpstarted. This is the tenth season of the show, which is a ratings hit for parent network NBC, but when we look at its actual impact on our culture, what have been the results: Nothing. Zero. Why? Because by the time the contest works its way down to the final four artists, the unique voices that started the show are gone. In their place are packaged, over-produced, tightly managed singers who are fed into a corporate music machine and promptly spit out on the other side having had little to no affect on our culture at all. Everyone sounds the same.

American Idol closed under exactly the same fate. While finalists from the first two seasons have done well, no one from this decade has managed to even get a glimpse of the Billboard charts. Nada. Zip.

Why was the literary world so wildly excited about what was ultimately a disappointing new book from Harper Lee, one which she had, presumptively, never wanted to be published? Because even contemporary literature is in the doldrums. We were wildly hopeful that a writer who had set culture on fire back in the 1960s might possibly be able to thrill us where more contemporary authors have failed.

Our culture has become far too boring. We, as creatives, have become too risk adverse, too unwilling to rock the boat, and the corporate entities that now control most everything we consume have choked the life from our movies, our music, our literature, and our life. We don’t need more Jackson Pollock, thank you. We need the next iteration of Pei Wei. We need people who can turn Banksy on its ear. We need people who give Giorgio Armani a reason to retire.

As I sit here ranting, of course, I have to ask myself what I’m willing to do to become part of the solution. I have some ideas. Who’s willing to help? Our culture is deficient of creativity. You and I can make a difference. Start now.

Art / PotD

Smelling of Flowers

August 25, 2015

charles i. letbetter - smells like flowers

charles i. letbetter - smelling like flowers

The Private Garden (2004)

Just because people throw it out and don’t have any use for it, doesn’t mean it’s garbage. ― Andy Warhol

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Flowers carry a lot of meaning and subtly hold a rather strong and dramatic place in art, literature, and song. Three books that immediately come to mind are The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Emmuska Orczy, which thrilled me as a teen, and the one book I read in high school that still makes me stop and thing: Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. In all three the flowers are highly symbolic, subtle undertones that hold deeper meaning than one might suspect.

Musically, flowers are used to invoke a specific imagery to help make a point. I looked through my various playlists and see titles ranging from Henry Mancini’s Days of Wine and Roses (which will be playing in my head the rest of the morning now), to the Statler Brothers’ Flowers on the Wall to The Foundations singing Build Me Up Buttercup. There are myriad songs about roses, which I suppose is appropriate given their sentimental relationship to love, but I think it’s the non-rose songs that perhaps hold a stronger imagery, such as Edelweiss from The Sound of Music, and Tip Toe Through The Tulips by Tiny Tim.

My mother was always one of those people who said, “Give me my flowers while I’m alive,” and we tried to do that, but when she passed the church was so full of bouquets and sprays I’ve no idea whatever happened to them all. While flowers do, in some aspects, represent the temporary nature and frailty of life, I’ve never understood why we feel the need to inundate a family with them upon losing a loved one. Most cemeteries through them out after a week or so and for grieving families they can be an unwanted reminder of their loss. While their origin dates back to a time when bodies were not embalmed and would smell as they decayed, that’s not exactly a problem we face much anymore and too often the flowers are overwhelming, or a reminder in some cases of how few friends a person had.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]When flowers appear in artwork, however, I fear we are often too dismissive of their presence. We tend to think of them merely as decoration, or perhaps something to hold so that one’s hands don’t look awkward. Yet, flowers in art are symbols of femininity, virtuosity, and in some cases even conniving. Flowers have symbolized everything from a family’s wealth to the subject’s religious beliefs and in some cases even political affiliations. Present in almost every form of religious art, flowers serve as powerful metaphors for matters of significance.

So, where are we going when we pick a couple of dyed daisies and use them as we have in today’s photo? Daises traditionally represent innocence and gentleness. Given the implied placement of the flowers here, innocence and gentleness is certainly a preferred way of looking at the matter. However, that would really only apply were the daisies white. These were dyed red and orange. Red daisies represent a beauty the possessor doesn’t realize. Orange, while not natural in daisies, generally represents warmth. I’ll just let your imagination take it from there.

Flowers are so very fragile, and at the same time so very powerful. They are a simple way of infusing deeper meaning into an image that possessed little. Their mere presence can write stories that would go on for pages. They spark our sense of the romantic and the poetic. And occasionally, in certain circumstances, the flowers seem to beg us to pick them. Should you choose to pluck these, I strongly recommend handling with care.[/one_half_last]

Art / pop culture / PotD

Varying Success

July 18, 2015

Aliens Among Us

The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren’t any space aliens. We can’t be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we’re not all there is. If so, we’re in big trouble. ― Ellen DeGeneres

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]One of the most potentially disturbing questions for humanity is whether we are alone in the universe. Many are sure we are not. Many are equally certain we must be. No matter where one stands on the issue, though, the question remains fascinating, one that dominated movies and literature in the 20th century, and is almost considered matter-of-fact in entertainment today. Through the safety of special effects, we’ve explored, with varying success, just how other species of beings might look, how they might behave, and how they might interact with humans.

Almost everyone we meet has a pre-existing concept of how aliens might look, to the point that should we ever actually meet one we might be disappointed; rather like meeting a movie star without the glamorous makeup. What amuses me is how much we want them to look like us. We want them to be bipedal oxygen breathers with, at the very least, two eyes and a mouth on their heads. We prefer them to have arms and legs and walk upright as we do. Movies that present aliens in any other form are rare, with Jabba the Hut from Star Wars being one of the more notable exceptions.

Every day, there are thousands of people attempting to search for and attempt to make contact with alien life. On the opposite side there are hundreds of people whose job it is to debunk any theory of extraterrestrial communication. Both meet with varying success and no small amount of skepticism from the general public. Some think that to make contact with another race of beings could be exciting and propel humanity into a great new leap of evolution. Others fear the chaos that would ensue should alien life actually make its presence known. Some notably intelligent people, such as Stephen Hawking, warn that, should we make alien contact, they may consider us too inferior to be anything more than food, much the way we look at cattle.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Creating alternate worlds and transforming humans into alien beings is something at which Photoshop™ and similar programs excel, if one has the patience and understanding of the tools. Even with a detailed concept of what I wanted to create, there were still plenty of challenges that consumed a great deal of time. Eventually, one has to say, “Okay, we’re done with this project” and move on. I could sit and tweak the image for weeks and chances are I would be the only one who would notice the difference. Almost immediately after declaring the image done, I thought of things I would do differently.

I’m one of those people willing to entertain the possibility that not only does alien life exist, but that they’ve likely made communication with us before. I’m even willing to consider the possibility that we ourselves are some mutant strain whose evolution was hijacked by visitors from another planet conducting a giant science experiment. Given how we approach other planets and our exploration of things, we cannot consider such tampering to be impossible. We may, in the grand scheme of things, be the equivalent of algae growing in some cosmic petri dish.

Experiments such as these, whether in real life or digital imagination, come with varying success and as we’ve seen in our look at variations in photo processing and manipulation, some things work better than others. Processes that may work well on one photograph might totally ruin another. Batch processing photos is hazardous and sometimes careless and irresponsible if one has not carefully curated the images beforehand. What we want is not always what we get. One thing for certain, though, is that as long as we have people with active imaginations there will constantly be the desire to manipulate photographs and see exactly how far we can push reality.[/one_half_last]

Standing Nude (2010)