The Erosion of Rules

[storeynicholas]

Nice picture but what rules are being broken here?! This is my point now: I am not sure that there is anything in this 'rules' business at all.
NJS

[Gruto]

Nice picture but what rules are being broken here?! This is my point now: I am not sure that there is anything in this 'rules' business at all.
NJS

I don't know if any dressing rules or norms are broken here. I haven't thought about it. By the way, my point with starting the thread was to highlight that dressing rules (or norms) are eroding Moreover, you were asking me what I like, and I showed a picture. Why don't you show a picture that illustrates your view on dressing? Apparently you have very strong views on the matter but it is not clear to me what you actually like, except that everything was much better 50 years ago. Why don't you challenge yourself showing a picture that is less than 10 years old

[storeynicholas]

Nice picture but what rules are being broken here?! This is my point now: I am not sure that there is anything in this 'rules' business at all.
NJS

I don't know if any dressing rules or norms are broken here. I haven't thought about it. By the way, my point with starting the thread was to highlight that dressing rules (or norms) are eroding Moreover, you were asking me what I like, and I showed a picture. Why don't you show a picture that illustrates your view on dressing? Apparently you have very strong views on the matter but it is not clear to me what you actually like, except that everything was much better 50 years ago. Why don't you challenge yourself showing a picture that is less than 10 years old

There is no point in trying to pretend that I am setting out to prove anything in this thread but if you want illustrations of my style icons they are all over the place. What is so special about the most recent ten years? I asked you to provide a photograph that shows rules or norms that were being broken to good effect. You have produced a picture of a well-dressed man. You haven't thought about whether he is breaking any rules or norms. This suggests (does it not) that your argument is tendentious and without real substance and the main aim is to draw attention to the thought of rebellion for its own sake. This seems pointless to me.

I do happen to think that most people dressed much better fifty, forty, even thirty years ago than they do now; that is to say, people in the street; people at work and play; certainly people going anywhere for a special occasion. Moreover, they dressed better as a matter of course and not as a result of endless agonizing over it all.

[Costi]

I think this picture shows how one can be free to dress elegantly today without breaking any rules: perfect cut (but it's a simple double breasted), great shade (of blue, however), shirt and tie work well in the context (but would you remember THEM next day?); the only eye-catcher is the contrasting scarf, which makes sense with the brown hat, given the place and time of the year. If I were Nicholas, I could reply with the very same picture!
However, the man's dress doesn't look like it is consciously following (or, worse, illustrating) any rules or norms, either. It's clear the man knows them and applies them out of instinct, but without being a slave to them, while at the same time not needing to overtly break rules to assert his personality.
When you look at the image, you simply don't think of rules! If this is what Gruto meant with the original post and this illustration, I won't disagree.

[storeynicholas]

I think this picture shows how one can be free to dress elegantly today without breaking any rules: perfect cut (but it's a simple double breasted), great shade (of blue, however), shirt and tie work well in the context (but would you remember THEM next day?); the only eye-catcher is the contrasting scarf, which makes sense with the brown hat, given the place and time of the year. If I were Nicholas, I could reply with the very same picture!
However, the man's dress doesn't look like it is consciously following (or, worse, illustrating) any rules or norms, either. It's clear the man knows them and applies them out of instinct, but without being a slave to them, while at the same time not needing to overtly break rules to assert his personality.
When you look at the image, you simply don't think of rules! If this is what Gruto meant with the original post and this illustration, I won't disagree.

And so we come back to square one and I agree with you Costi but I don't really see where the observance or breaking of any rules has to come into it at all. Gruto wasn't thinking of rules or norms when he picked the image but he goes on and on about their erosion, as though their erosion frees the spirit.

[Costi]

I don't really see where the observance or breaking of any rules has to come into it at all.

Perhaps in the fact that our times are BEYOND dress rules, we are free to choose, so the responsiblity is greater. Social pressure (and social sanction) are no longer what they used to be. Therefore, using this freedom wisely is rare, as it is always the case with freedom...
This sounds a lot like Angst, doesn't it, Gruto? The freedom, the responsibility...
BUT - now that we are beyond RULES, we can also rise beyond ANGST, through Style: Style is not really a choice, an option, it is a guiding light that is there, inside, or not. We can help it come out, manifest itself, but we cannot CREATE it. So instead of reasoning what to do with our freedom, let's play by our instincts, our intuition, let ourselves guided by that inner voice.

[Gruto]

Gruto wasn't thinking of rules or norms when he picked the image but he goes on and on about their erosion, as though their erosion frees the spirit.

I have no idea why this gentleman hasn't yet been arrested. He is committing two serious crimes at least. First of all, he combines a fine worsted db jacket, a symbol of civilized man, with a pair of rough denim trousers, a garment soaked in rebellion. Secondly, he has no respect for the importance of contrast when wearing an odd jacket. The difference in shades between jacket and trousers is way too subtle. The only problem is that he is rather dapper in that dress. In fact, it looks good on him. But, as we all know, we cannot mess with sartorial laws, and we can have no mercy with him.

[storeynicholas]

I don't really see where the observance or breaking of any rules has to come into it at all.

Perhaps in the fact that our times are BEYOND dress rules, we are free to choose, so the responsiblity is greater. Social pressure (and social sanction) are no longer what they used to be. Therefore, using this freedom wisely is rare, as it is always the case with freedom...
This sounds a lot like Angst, doesn't it, Gruto? The freedom, the responsibility...
BUT - now that we are beyond RULES, we can also rise beyond ANGST, through Style: Style is not really a choice, an option, it is a guiding light that is there, inside, or not. We can help it come out, manifest itself, but we cannot CREATE it. So instead of reasoning what to do with our freedom, let's play by our instincts, our intuition, let ourselves guided by that inner voice.

Most people are beyond uniform but I maintain that this has a downside too as the ties between members of society and groups within it are strengthened by shared ideas, values, aspirations, artistic appreciation, morals, laws, religion, purpose, expectation and even dress and, as many societies go into the freefall of multi-culturalism (which is increasingly seen to be a euphemism for takeover by minority interest groups), we will find that the Iron Lady has been proved right and there is no such thing as society just a bunch of self-seekers out for all they can get and 'beggar thy neighbour'. That's a pity.
NJS

[Costi]

Social cohesion regards what people have IN COMMON, of course, while individual members of society remain free to have their particular ideas, shared with interest groups or on their own. Taken over by minority groups? - see how society fights the smoking minority interest groups with rules. We are in no danger
What to do so that members of society have more to share and less to to differ? That is a good question, but imposing rules and enforcing them seems to defeat the purpose.

[storeynicholas]

Social cohesion regards what people have IN COMMON, of course, while individual members of society remain free to have their particular ideas, shared with interest groups or on their own. Taken over by minority groups? - see how society fights the smoking minority interest groups with rules. We are in no danger
What to do so that members of society have more to share and less to to differ? That is a good question, but imposing rules and enforcing them seems to defeat the purpose.

Yes: being taken over by minority interest groups and they are actually obvious. The UK government has recently acknowledged that there has been too much notice taken of minorities at the expense of the majority. Smokers are not such a minority interest group that the public purse would not be in serious trouble without all the revenue that tobacco taxes generate - and the regulation that is in the pipeline on smoking now is beyond Stalinism.

Who says that dressing norms were ever (certainly after sumptuary laws ceased to have effect) imposed, as such : surely they were adopted as part of the social contract when society used to have stronger bonds. Having stronger bonds between members of society strengthens society: loosen the bonds and you become a motley collection of people: one group seen by the 'other side' as old fogies; the other side comprising yobbos. Social dysfunction and breakdown is the result.

[carl browne]

The most successful rules are unwritten. There used to be a word for these unwritten rules, they were called "manners."

The generation that came of age in the 1960s in America was rebellious. It is not clear whether its members were this way because they were indulged as children, or weather they were sensitive to the injustice they saw around them. But they changed things. They abolished segregation and made our society more egalitarian. This was for the good, but in their enthusiasm, they also tore down many of the unwritten rules necessary in civil society. Manners died. Life without manners became ugly; hopelessly vulgar. Something had to be done. Laws were promulgated. Now instead of smoking etiquette, we have smoking bans. Instead of tact, we have Political Correctness and Speech Codes. Instead of taking responsibility for our own actions, we have the Nanny State and the Class Action Lawsuit. Laws are a poor substitute for manners, as the rebels-now grown-have discovered too late. We have lost many of our freedoms, and our society is still hopelessly vulgar. I note that today in California I may be arrested if I choose to smoke a cigar as I walk my dog on the beach, but have no right to object to shorts and t-shirts at a restaurant. I am guilty of a felony if my toilet uses more water than prescribed by law, and my club is subject to legal sanctions if it dares to discriminate in any way that suggests that it might actually be a PRIVATE CLUB. Yet surveys regularly show that my home town, Los Angeles, is now the rudest big city in America.

For God's sake: grow up! Put on a coat and tie. Wear real trousers. If someone annoys you, hold your tongue. If you make a mistake, acknowledge it, and live with the consequences, and above all, read Emily Post-preferably a 1950s addition--and take it to heart!

[storeynicholas]

Well said, Carl. I did write a longer reply but the system lost it, because I seem to be logged-out everytime I leave the site. It went something like this, in summary: there were different 'liberating' events in the UK, such as the abolition of the death penalty but few people now would accept that the generation that achieved these reforms also, in certain respects, threw out the baby with the bath water when it lost the sense of form and decorum; as Carl says, manners. History forgets that the old standards did survive for a few more years because history remembers the winners but the old standards faded eventually.

Then, as they were increasingly jostled in doorways, or pushed on the pavement, or smoked over by inconsiderate smokers, people gradually came to realize that the world has lost something and that it is the poorer for it but they are uncertain as to what exactly the world has lost.

That is why there is so much legislation to regulate purely personal conduct and why there are so many blogs and websites (and even books and magazines) on Style and why people are rushing about with their own personal revelations, seen through a glass darkly. In one hand they hold AA and Esky illustrations and, in the other, a butterfly net, casting at shadows; and people gather around the butterfly rooms to admire the collections and we are told that the brightest, captured phantoms of butterflies are those that have lost form but retained beauty. I don't see it.In fact, I don't see the butterflies.

We are told that style has cycles (it certainly has bicycles ) and the twenty to thirty year olds reinvent style every year, according to the Parisian system for women's fashion, and the designers have taken to reinterpreting the meaning of 'bespoke'; ridicule and revile those who guard and pass on its real secrets, even convince some of them to come onboard the brash, bright, noisey Ford-Lauren-Armani-Abercrombie & Fitch bandwaggon and they do: Kilgour, French & Stansbury becomes the trendier sounding 'Kilgour' and E Tautz gets so excited that he even jumps out of the grave and puts off his shroud; and they all join together and devise events at which skinny, epicene models swagger up and down catwalks in skimped, tight, trendy, vaguely weird RTW clothes that no one in his right mind would wear in real life, and they clink champagne flutes and explode in self-congratulation at having redeemed, by re-invention, the world of bespoke, while those who regard their trade as one for the expression of high skill to provide a decent living and customer satisfaction, are increasingly side-lined because they won't or can't get their old legs up high enough to jump on the bandwaggon and schmoze with the rest of them, for a bigger dollar.

And we are bludgeoned with the blunt instrument of commercial interest to believe that rules or norms and, by necessary implication, the need for form and decorum, have been 'eroded' and we are also told what a good thing that is too and some even convince themselves that they have seen the Piper at The Gates of Dawn at The Golden Shears and write up an account of it as an 'advertorial'. Maybe you have but it is the trippy Piper of Pink Floyd's 1967 cover rather than the more charming Piper of Kenneth Grahame's 1908 classic The Wind in The Willows and I know which I prefer.

[alden]

I have moved this thread out of the Style forum as it is more a discussion of etiquette, manners and good behavior than one of style. But it is an important subject and relates more to Elegant living than it does to Style.

A man can be dressed by an army of tailors, belong to the best clubs, possess a thorough knowledge of etiquette, a great education, impeccable taste and manners and still not have an ounce of Style. And a ruffian with none of the above can blind us with it. I don’t know why this is, just that it is. And the discussion in Style is trying to understand this mystery.

If you are interested in etiquette this is a great source of information:

http://www.bartleby.com/95/

Cheers

Michael

[alden]

Those who slavishly follow the rules are doomed to be mediocrities like Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope!

Carl

I agree with what you say but viewed in another light Shakespeare is not the best example of adherence to rules.

In fact, Shakespeare was criticized precisely as a rules breaker in his time and centuries afterwards by writers, playwrights and literary critics. Pope, an editor of his works, was one of his most vigorous critics. Samuel Johnson proposed a defense of the Poet in the preface to his 1765 edition of his work. Not only is this essay a notable contribution to English literature and criticism it is a highly entertaining read if you substitute notions about dramatic rules with those of dress.

“Such violations of rules merely positive, become the comprehensive genius of Shakespeare.”

“Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me…..The result of my enquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boast of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not essential to a just drama, that though they may sometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction; and that a play, written with nice observation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as the product of superfluous and ostentatious art, by which is shewn, rather what is possible, than what is necessary.”

-Samuel Johnson, "Preface to Shakespeare"

Johnson wonders whether Shakespeare even knew the rules of drama, he so abused them. And this statement makes me giggle while reflecting on the oft quoted platitude that “you have to know the rules to then dispense with them.”

To summarize Johnson’s “Preface to Shakespeare”, the Bard preferred expression of truth to any of the laws and conventions regulating drama set down by the Ancients; he had little interest in unities of time or place; he mixed Tragedy and Comedy fluently; his characters came from all walks of life and did not always behave as convention required; his language was often improper, his metaphors inconsistent; he tired at the end of a play and ended them too quickly. Dear Will was a real mess of a writer. It’s a wonder anyone read or played his work at all.

“The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished unto brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.”

-Samuel Johnson, "Preface to Shakespeare"

Not to worry, as long as the sun shines, people will find themselves in Shakespeare; not because he was rule breaker but because he preferred illuminating truths about our nature to rules of form, he used the form that was "necessary" in the pursuance of this objective. He was a very stylish writer, undisciplined, but stylish.

The two most influential men of style in recent history both challenged and defied rules and convention: Brummel and Windsor. It helped that one was a king and the other had a king as a sponsor, without whose support and station their trifling with convention, that advanced style light years, may have been so many seeds lost in the desert.

That does not mean that wanton disrespect for the governance of private clubs, events, or etiquette is something to be encouraged. But it is true that rules, conventions, even good taste do not necessarily lead to manifestations of Style. It is entirely possible and moreover probable that a man with excellent taste appear merely “well dressed." And in many circumstances that good dress and behavior has been lost over time. There is not a doubt about it and there are volumes of prosecution on this forum that serve as a testimony to the decline. It is an affront to elegant life in every possible way, but it is not an affront to Style.

Cheers

Michael

[carl browne]

Michael, I had something far narrower and less profound in mind.

I was simply trying to point out that a sonnet that does not follow the rules of that form cannot be a sonnet.

A private club that does not discriminate in its membership is not a private club.

A civil society that does not expect its members to treat each other with respect is not a civil society.

A Martini that is not made from gin and vermouth can never be a Martini.

And a dinner jacket with three buttons and a white four-in-hand tie is not a dinner jacket.