The First Steps in Style..a primer

[alden]

A few words to give those of you interested in developing your own style a few practical ideas and exercises to train by.

But first, have you ever gone on a nice vacation to the hill country of Texas, or the lovely slopes of St. Anton, the splendid avenues of Paris? When you were in Texas you might have purchased a handsome ten gallon cowboy hat or boots. In St. Anton a set of gorgeous hand sewn Trachten mode might have tempted you. A chic beret in Paris? But when you got home and put these on to show your family and friends, did you experience a shyness, a feeling of self consciousness when you did? Almost all of us do. No shame in it. But that self consciousness and timidity that you felt is our enemy. It is the one thing we need to learn to combat and vanquish.

The first thing I would like you to do is to dress yourself in your favorite way and stand in front of the mirror a few minutes. What do you feel? Do you feel confident? Is there a radiant, cocky smile on your face? Do you feel buoyant and ready to tackle the world? Well you surely feel something positive if it is your favorite wear. Now I want you to remember this feeling. I want your to remember how it physically makes you feel. Physically is very important. What do you feel in your body? What does this dress make you want to do? Practice this for a few days with the same dress. Are new things happening? Note them if they occur to your spontaneously. Let the feelings come to you, don’t chase them.

Lets try something new, another item of dress. If you need to wear a suit for your work, lets start with a suit, shirt, tie and shoes. Pick one that makes you feel the same way as the other clothes you practiced wearing previously in the first exercises. Do you find something that makes you physically feel the same thing when you are wearing something you have to wear instead of something you want to wear? Keep changing your clothes until you start to feel that good feeling physically. Remember the feeling, practice feeling it.

Now if we have one suit that works well to the degree that the physical feelings and impulses are there, we can proceed to the next step. By the way, most of you have something like this in your closets now to work with in these excercises, if not you will have to buy, beg or steal something. More on that later.

When you leave the mirror in your room or home and see your family in the house, do you still have the same physical feeling as when you are alone? You may or may not. But note the differences keeping squarely on the mainline feeling of your favorite dress. If you have practiced you should feel exactly the same buoyancy and zip but other things might occur to you. Maybe your sister is teasing you because she thinks you look great and if she does so will other ladies. Keep the feeling with you and take a step into the real world filling your sails with it. Is that a quick lithe step you notice? Are you dancing along the pavement? Every day something new will “occur to you.” Listen to that inner voice. Enjoy it.

Now once you can do the above with your favorite things and you have practiced for six weeks or so every day. Lets try something more complicated. Let's start from scratch in front of the mirror and make a new combination. Put the things on until you physically feel the things you did with your trusted favorites. You will feel things. Your inner voice will counsel you.

You may have to put on a variety of things. But when you find the same feeling, go with it. Try another combination always working towards the physical feeling and responses you have trained with previously. Don’t be surprised if they change over time. They will change. But always from the baseline of You that you are learning to recognize physically not intellectually. Don’t try to reason with it. Learn to feel it. You are learning to use your instincts. They come from deep within you and you are learning to surface them. Your eye is developing. This is the lifetime of enjoyment that awaits you as you explore the art of dress. You are the creator, the designer, the master builder, the magician of your own style.

As your interest develops, you will see pictures, read books, you will notice things. Good, keep your brain at bay. Just feel what these images do to you physically. Take them inside you. Listen to the voice. Leave the images where they are, never try to copy them. Let elements of them resurface by themselves if they stick with you physically. They will resurface by themselves, if you allow them to. Allow is a key word we will come back to often.

You will very surely physically feel the same self consciousness as with the ten gallon hat when you see some things. Good, that is you saying “No!” You are learning to recognize what we call affectation. When men have no training and live parasitically from others, they are affected. They have no you. They waste entire precious lifetimes trying to be something they are not.That path leads to unhappiness and the death of the soul. Flee from it.

Wait until and if any image creates the positive physical feelings you have trained yourself to feel. Now this seems like a lot of work, but it is fun since your discovering. Remember your earliest memories, what were they, what do they make you feel physically? Was it a walk in the park with your mother? Go there. Hear things, let it affect you physically. You are training your eye. What were the colors, the sounds. How did they make you feel? All of this kind of work is good. Always let yourself be surprised by this exploration and banish any a priori. You are a butterfly and not a gloomy bird of prey. Like a bee take from each flower within you as it presents itself to you.

Challenge yourself with new combinations of dress always waiting for the physical feeling, the YOU in them. Be relaxed and patient each time. Let it happen to you. Never try to force it to happen with your brain, the terrible tiger of Will lurking in the bright of the night. Follow your physical impulses with every change. Trust them. They are you.

It is quite possible you never knew you. Most men never know themselves. You do. Embrace you. It is the guide that will never fail….You!

More to follow….

PS I insist on stating that none of the techniques described above are original. They are techniques used by artists, creative and performing, from time immemorial and can be found in the writings of masters. Today they are taught to actors, poets, novelists, sculptors, musicians, painters in master classes all over the world to incite spontaneous, organic creation. I have merely adapted these techniques to the “art” of dressing. And that is exactly what I consider dressing to be when it is done at the highest level, an artistic form of self expression.

[Luca]

Marvellous.

This generated many reactions but I will let them settle for a while.

[alden]

I am going to take a step back in order to make a few things more clear regarding the first exercise in the mirror. This first piece of work has been adapted from the teaching of Michael Chekov, the Russian actor and teacher, who taught performers like Gary Cooper, Yul Brenner, and Anthony Quinn.

The technique itself ,called the ‘psychological gesture”, was most notably used by Jack Nicholson in his creation of the Oscar winning character in “The Shining.” But our aim in this work is not to create fictional characters, but to come into deeper contact with our own character, our own identities, ourselves using our bodies as the conductive material.

Now I have suggested you wear clothing that you have that makes you feel the very best you have ever felt or imagined but you can just as easily stand perfectly naked.

What does your image make you feel physically? What does it make you want to do? This is a moment of complete truth. You are alone. You are safe. What do you feel? Let yourself go. Do you want to move? Move. Do you want to fly? Fly. You may close your eyes and feel you can reach with your arms bursting your fists through the ceiling into the dark of the night and gather bushels full of stars? Reach up and grab them. Live it. You may become a tree, your roots digging deep into the earth pulling gallons of moisture into your limbs. Feel it fill you with power. Let your imagination go. Let your image inspire you to see and feel what you truly are. Now remember these feelings, burn them into your muscle memory. These feelings and the resulting gestures, and movements are a path that leads to you, to the essence of you. We will need to engage this path often, so this first piece of work is crucial.

And consequently we will spend a great deal of time exploring the physicality that leads us to the essence of ourselves. We will enjoy going there. These moments are a great resource, they fill us with positive creative energy. And with them we will improve the way we look at and react with the world.

Gary Cooper during the filming of “The Fountainhead” had a particularly difficult time with a very emotion packed scene. The director shot the scene fifty times and Cooper could not make it happen. Finally has asked to be excused and went outside. He stood by a tree and executed his physical gesture. Cooper saw a cable leading directly to the center of the earth. He reached down and grabbed hold of the heavy cable and pulled it all the way from China up to his waist and above his head. Cooper then went back into the studio and performed the scene perfectly on the very first take. Through this physical work and imaging, he came into direct contact with his character. You can learn to do the same.

Now some of you, in this exercise, as a response to your own image, may feel disgust, loathing, fear, terror, longing to be someone or something else. Many people feel this kind of anxiety. And it is clearly beyond the scope of this discussion to address these issues except to say that the purpose of this first work is not to make a judgement about ourselves with our brains but to identify ourselves in a way that is physical, and as a result, traceable.

Just as a reminder, there are many practical applications that can be derived from this work, and I realize that most of you are very interested in those relating to dressing as described in the first installment of this thread. But let’s restate one of the obvious advantages- when you are able to truly recognize and trust the image of who you are, when you try on clothes you will know what is right for you and what is not instantly without thought, without asking your favorite blogger, your wife, your tailor, the department store salesperson, your mother, anyone. You will arm yourself with the remarkable vision that Balzac describes in his treatise on Elegance:

“It is an exquisite sense of tact, whose constant use and practice allows us to see otherwise hidden relationships, predict consequences, imagine the true dimensions and import of objects, words, ideas and beings, for, to summarize, the principle of Elegance is the vision of order, balance and harmony that reveals the intrinsic poetry of all things."


Have fun with your work,if you choose to undertake it...Cheers!