A more precise definition of "style" and "elegance"

[NJS]

Possibly, one of the greatest voices in the history of recording; still, well beneath Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse in listening history ratings on Youtube: the trouble is that we don't believe in Angels anymore. That is why so many are thrashing around looking for the phenomenon of Style: it is, in fact, all around us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_IS6sg_0Nw

All you need to do: is open your eyes; your ears, and your hearts and minds to all its reality; which is well evidenced, and in our grasp of apprehension. Kathleen Ferrier is very long physically dead: what she wore is long rotted but the recordings of what she was remain and can still move us; who are so far beyond her physical reach.

Or, again, Marlene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH8Xja2ItXI

Or even Coward's introduction for her:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoCrr3wl0o4

All very different. Each sui generis. But they all appeal to us as human beings - well they all appeal to some of us. Too few perhaps: I even think that Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga can sing but you can never lexicogaph any of it! All that you can do is: watch it; listen to it and....if you are alive and hangin' on in there.... just hope that some of Lady Gaga rubs off on you...

[Rowly]

The modern delusion that sex is a question of lighting....Coward's comments, I suppose, could apply to what many think style is. They think that the most photographed is the most stylish.

[NJS]

The modern delusion that sex is a question of lighting....Coward's comments, I suppose, could apply to what many think style is. They think that the most photographed is the most stylish.

Yes, and then there are the lists of the world's 'best-dressed'. What Tommy Rot all that is! Clueless celebs; promoted by 'star'-struck crawlers. There are men who walk around many a city every day who could knock the lot of them into a cocked hat.

[hectorm]

I even think that Lady Gaga can sing but you can never lexicogaph any of it!

She can sing when she wants. She has her style and has her moments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPAmDULCVrU

[NJS]

I even think that Lady Gaga can sing but you can never lexicogaph any of it!

She can sing when she wants. She has her style and has her moments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPAmDULCVrU

I agree. I also see that I can't spell...

[Costi]

Right, it's lexicogaffe

[Costi]

Of course we judge others by appearance (how else? - at least when we don't know them better). Nothing wrong with that.

When we have accepted the surface, next step is accepting that the surface has its own history. A three-piece suit has its own history indpendent of a specific person. The peculiar pattern of a glen check has a power of its own. "A tight fit", "drape", "vents", the rounded shape of a lapel, horn buttons, a way of walking, talking ... everything was there beforehand. There is a style already given by history, which we must use to create our own style. In that sense, our own style is a peculiar interpretation of what is already there, which in other words means that our style cannot be cut off from people and history around us. THAT is the paradox of style: It is in-dividual and an imitation.

Robert De Niro says that the talent is in the choices an actor makes.

[Costi]

Style has nothing to prove.
Unlike style...

[alden]

never fixing itself upon a solid bough but flitting around like a firefly, brilliant but random.

Luca, a masterful description of Style. It reminds me of Yeat's butterfly image.

Maybe we should forget the words style and Style because alot of the discussion here is about looks, surfaces, three piece suits, history...all of which make perfect sense in a discussion of fashion or the anthropology of fashion. But it has nothing, as in zero, to do with and does not improve our understanding of magnetism. So maybe we should rename the magic something else so as not to be confusing. True, the "Alden boson" is not ready for use due to insufficient scientific trialing. Maybe we should be searching for clues about the S-Factor!

Cheers

[Gruto]

Insisting that style/Style is fully beyond any social or historic force is okay. It just leaves us with limited tools: half religious babbling, quoting Hamlet and biological explanations.

By the way, I think we shouldn't get stuck with the Hollywood 1930s and Agnelli references. There is more to style and elegance and magnetism. An example, which makes most Hollywood icons look like plastic dolls:



Weimar painter Otto Dix by Hugo Erfurth

[alden]

By the way, I think we shouldn't get stuck with the Hollywood 1930s and Agnelli references. There is more to style and elegance and magnetism. An example, which makes most Hollywood icons look like plastic dolls:

We tend to use celebrities as bench marks because we have them in our collective consciousness. It is a decidedly bad habit. And in any case there are only about a dozen or so of them from the last century worthy of discussion.

Better to be open to Style everyday, amongst the living, surrounded by things that speak to us.

Cheers

[NJS]

Another example of styling supplanting Style is here:

http://www.the-connaught.co.uk/about-the-connaught.aspx

The old Connaught was a perfect example of rus in urbe - and now it is in the style of a tart's boudoir. Moreover, this kind of sterile interior, with curtains that feel as though they are made of cardboard and pillows so thick that they threaten to dislocate one's neck are just about everywhere now in the great hotels of the world that have been taken over by gormless corporations and their 'design teams'. Even the poor old Savoy looks as though it has been 'madeover' by a designer from Dubai.
NJS

[hectorm]

Another example of styling supplanting Style ....

I didn't get to know the old Connaught but I think that what you are missing there could still be found at The Goring. My favorite hotel in London. Not utterly rus in urbe but still stylish and elegant in an understated way.

http://www.thegoring.com/gallery.aspx?Page=4&id=1726

[NJS]

Yes, that is something like it but it needs to be a bit more beaten up - as though it were nearly just a house. There is far too much sterility and neatness about these places. They need a broken fixture or two and club chairs with creased and stained leather and old tables that have been polished for a few decades with linseed oil; scratched cutlery and worn plates and old chests in the hall with spur marks from the kicking heels of officers in dress uniform waiting for their ladies, and characterful hall porters, like Rosa Lewis's 'Dirty' Scott and his terrier Freddy; just something to show us that these places are not like bacteria-free space stations.
NJS

[davidhuh]

Reviving an old thread with a nice Dorothy Parker quote:

"Once I was coming down a street in Beverly Hills and I saw a Cadillac about a block long, and out of the side window was a wonderfully slinky mink, and an arm, and at the end of the arm a hand in a white suede glove wrinkled around the wrist, and in the hand was a bagel with a bite out of it."

Cheers, David