What Do We Mean by Classic Clothing?

 What do we mean by Classic clothing?

  This is my impressionistic reflection on what it means. I’ll start with what classic isn’t. Classic is all too often a marketing word. Call a design a ‘classic’ or describe it, as having a classic style, and it becomes a commercially viable product. Often, it is merely an ordinary mundane modern product packed out with a few bells and bows. The use of the word ‘classic’ is often simply false advertising.   Classic isn’t just old, chic, or vintage.   We all too often do associate classic with old. Classical literature often means the works of Plato and Herodotus to many. Classical music makes people think of Beethoven and Mozart even though Philip Glass and Paul McCartney have composed classical work.   SF fans talk of the first Star Trek series as Classic Trek. They feel as though the modern generation shows have lost something in their expense and reliance on CGI effects. Trouble is, in trying to look and act out the classic Trek style, and by wearing old Starfleet uniforms and Spock ears, the fans don’t look retro, but sad and weird.   If you want old clothes how far do you go back? Mammoth skins? Roman togas? Sackcloth and ashes? Edwardian swimwear? There were and are ways to wear such apparel that would make you stand out from the crowd, but most of us would just look foolish.   Old isn’t classic. The Morris Minor brings nostalgic tears to many an eye though few would find it a practical family runabout.  Its delight to the driver was its reliability. The Hillman Imp was a dreadful car, the English equivalent of the Russian Trabant. The Rolls Royce looks timeless but beyond most people bank accounts.   A great fashion look requires a great looker. On a beach where every girl wears white Ursula Andress style bikinis, imitating the Dr. No rise from the waves, all eyes would turn if Andress was to do so (possibly even now the actress is somewhat older than then. Me in ‘that’ bikini does not bear thinking about.   The main thing to remember is that 1920’s flapper girls found their tight figure hugging shimmying dance dresses beautiful, but never thought of them as classics. It is now, that we think nostalgically of the age of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Great Gatsby style parties that we call such a look a classic.   The classic look is often associated with retro-vision, and a sense of Golden Age yearning. It’s a conscious desire for sartorial elegance over mundane clothing or purposely-garish styles. Modern fashion has gone through an uglification phase, punk-arrogance, Emo-Gothic doom & gloom despondency, heroin chic, and the grim spectacle of anorexic super-models looking like human stick insects. Fashion goes to extremes or into laziness, jeans, tee shirts, grunge and plain-ness. A lot of street fashion is nondescript. A girl in army fatigues and baggy jeans purposely doesn’t stand out from the crowd and attract the attentions of so many pestering chancers. There is something anonymous and safe about much of what we wear today.   Sportswear for non-sporting folk gives a sense of the pace of modern life, as we try to look both lazy and capable of sudden bursts of athleticism. People often look like they’ve just thrown clothes on, mix and match with no care of what the clothes are. The only rule seems to be a functional one of ‘add more layers if it gets cold’. Fashion seems to say it doesn’t matter what we wear if it’s not a special occasion. Neo-Classic fashion is a counter-blast to that. It consciously reverts to colour, glamour and pride in style.  Modern burlesque performers go for the most stylish corsetry, and petticoats, and wear enough make up to highlight the eyes and lips rather than burying their faces. The removal of the clothes celebrates them one by one, and the final layers, though minimalist, stay in place. This isn’t strip tease, which holds clothes as a barrier to be jettisoned as quickly as possible. Burlesque draws attention to the finery and colour of every garment without ever letting you forget the woman (and occasional boy-lesque performer) involved.   Neo-classical doesn’t just dress 1940’s. It captures a sense of the 1940’s and seems to move you back in time. You see a lady in a swing-jazz dress and you feel transported. You almost expect the dance to be interrupted by an air raid siren. They don’t look like they are imitating the Golden Age, but as if they belong there. When you meet her later in their practical jeans and tee-shirt look, the image of the silk stockings, gravy browning seam lines, and that glimpse of garter stay with her. The classicalism has leapt from the clothes into her; she is ‘the classique’ personified. If she doesn’t carry that effect, she was just wearing a fancy dress retro outfit.    The 40’s look (which I’m only using as an example as there are other classic styles) took effort. It was never just chucked on. Hair styling was almost a work of engineering, created in curlers worn over hours. Men had to look smart in their uniforms, and women’s fashion was kept ultra-perfect to match it. Everything was ironed, starched, or polished to perfection. Women also looked more masculine, wearing trousers was practical for the home front labouring work they took on. Shoulder pads came into style to give women a greater build and aura of strength. Retro-forties fashion is a great counter-blast to the half-emaciated wreckage that often struts the catwalks of the 21st century.    So classic style is a conscious choice of protest against hipsters and panties worn visibly half way up the back. It says they did things better in an earlier age, and somehow brings that bi-gone era back to life. To look classical you need to bring time forward with you. This is why the burlesque dancer succeeds and the Classic Trek fan fails. Both hark back with affection to a finer age, but the Sci-FI TV fan looks like a caricature, and a little sad – someone unable to let go of a past vision of a never-never future. The burlesque model is very much in the present, and the past snaps back at us round her, leaving us feeling sad, as we don’t quite have what she carries – an aura of timeless gold.   

Arthur Chappell