by Quentin Crisp
Previously I have stated that, had I been born a woman, I
would not have wanted to have been particularly beautiful
or striking. That would have attracted too much of the
wrong kind of attention, which would have in turn
necessitated, or at least demanded, more of me physically
than I have ever been willing to give another person.
I am not certain however that, had I been female, my
sense of fashion would be any different from what it is
now.
People have, at different times, described my look as
flashy. It is no such thing. It is merely the product of what
clothing has been gifted to me over the years. I never shop
for clothes. I am not fashionable. The pronouncements I
have made on style come not from an adherence to
fashion, but from a practical disconnection from it that
enables me to observe others.
That being said, I confess I have never understood
women’s desire to be fashionable. It is such a waste of
time, which is why I personally eschew it. But they run
towards it. They want it urgently. Fiercely. If short skirts
are ‘in’, they rush home and shorten their skirts or they buy
them in overpriced stores.
A woman once told me of her dilemma. She said: “You
think you’re impervious to fashion. When the fashion for
short skirts arrives, you think, d shan’t do anything about it.
I shall wear long skirts.’ But within about two days, you can
feel your skirt flapping about your ankles. And in some
way, you are affected to want to be fashionable.”
Thus, women are ‘victims’ of fashion. But why are men
not victims of fashion? I suppose certain men are. Actors
for example. But they are not affected to the same extent
that women are. Women are mortified when they are
caught wearing something that is not fashionable.
Make no mistake however, fashion is not equal to style.
It exists instead of it. When you don’t know who you are,
you consult the glossy magazines. Then, all we know when
we see you coming down the street is that you had enough
money to buy fAz/zz^ Fair. That’s not what style is. Style is
not stylishness. The latter of the two words has been
corrupted nowadays to mean something else.
If you base your style on glossy magazines you can, of
course, adapt the current style to yourself. You can make
use of it and remain the same. But there can be all sorts of
problems. Can you wear very short skirts if you have
terrible legs? That’s something you really have to make up
your own mind about. Women, after aU, want to be
attractive regardless of the current fad.
When short skirts above the knee came in, I was
horrified to see them sported by women with legs like
horses. They looked horrifying, but nevertheless they stiU
wore short skirts and presumably considered themselves to
be fashionable. It’s a three-way war: how to be attractive,
how to be yourself, and how to be fashionable. It’s a very
difficult equation.
And it’s arbitrary because the fashion industry is, of
course, really governed by the manufacturers rather than
designers. There is an industry surplus of wool and so wool
becomes fashionable. Some new type or color of fabric is
invented and so that becomes fashionable. All of a sudden
shops are flooded with brown - light brown, dark brown,
and so on. But why wear it if brown isn’t a color that
emphasizes your best features and detracts from your
faults?
These days supermodels have overtaken superstars in
popularity. I think this is because they are nearer to us.
Superstars live 'over there’ in Hollywood, which is at a
distance from most Americans. Otherwise they are only
depicted on the silver screen, through which one cannot
hope to get their attention. By contrast, supermodels are
walking up and down catwalks only a few feet away from
us. They appear more accessible. Superstars could only do
the equivalent with hordes of security guards to assist them.
And supermodels are so thin. Impossibly thin. So thin
that clothes can be put on them in just a matter of seconds.
Because without anyone thinking about it, they go off
stage, smiling, someone takes hold of them, rips their
clothes off and puts new clothes on them. Then they go
back on the catwalk again. But because they are so thin
nothing ever gets torn.
I’ve never seen anything work on the catwalk that
someone could wear in real life. I once saw a model
walking down the catwalk with her hands on her breasts to
prevent them jumping out from her dress. Then there was
another woman with a backless bead costume down to the
end of her spine. If she had turned a quick turn, the whole
thing would have fallen off. At another show there were
women with fringes on the front of their shoes. In
any realworld setting they would be forever saying, “You’re
standing on my fringe! Thank you.” Of course, they all
looked beautiful, but everything was always so impractical.
My suspicion is that, once the fashion show is over, the
designers collect up all the fabric that’s been displayed, take
it back into the workroom and remake it into real clothes
for everyday people.
I remember once meeting Vivienne Westwood, who
was quite extraordinary. I didn’t know who she was initially,
but after we were introduced it became apparent that I
knew her in a time gone by. We met during New York
Fashion Week. Her collection was good, but the show was
not. It was a bit untidy, a bit awkward. There was a great
mock stone entrance for the girls to enter by, which
unfortunately meant that they had to stoop down in order
to enter. And that sort of spoiled everything. You can’t
really creep onto the catwalk. What kind of an entrance is
that? But the clothes were good. And the clothes were
more realistic than they are at most shows.
Ms. Westwood’s clothes were made of wool. Alas, the
models had horrible hair, which detracted from rather than
enhanced the look of the clothes. I don’t know why they
did that. They all looked like they had just got out of bed.
And there were various mistakes in the show as well that
were obvious to onlookers. Those are the worst kind of
mistakes. There was no passing them off as deliberate
actions.
I am told Ms. Westwood is very, very rich. So, I
suppose aU the effort that goes into these shows, her
collections and her public persona is worth it. But I don’t
think I would wear any of her fashion. Principally, of
course, that is because all of her designs are for women, but
there is also an aesthetic judgement I am making. Yes, her
clothes were more acceptable as street clothes than a lot of
the other shows I have seen, but they nevertheless weren’t
my kind of style. Tm sure she’s not worried. I don’t think I
am the kind of person she is designing for anyway. I
shouldn’t be as I never buy anything.
I can see why she’s successful though. If fashion shows
are meant for buyers, then 1 could see how a buyer would
look at her collection and say “I could sell that in my
shops.” Too often it seems as though fashion shows are
meant for something else entirely. They seem to be more of
a way to get your name known to everybody, with
outlandish photos in the newspapers and stunts meant
purely for shock value. And if this truly is their purpose
they are a poor form of live entertainment.
Ms. Westwood has a husband. He is a young man and
when I met him he was wearing a black kilt. He seemed
very nice. He was there at the show and he was at the party
afterwards. He didn’t say anything, not to me or anyone
else. But at both the fashion show and the afterparty, even
though both were such great to-dos, no one ever said very
much. Tm guessing he was about thirty years old. She’s
about fifty. A very spritely fifty though, and with hair the
color of breakfast food. And she’s very unassuming. In
spite of all her fame and wealth, she wasn’t flinging herself
about but behaving in a very circumspect way.
Another time I saw a Todd Oldham show, which,
though very efficient and very beautiful, was totally
impractical. Absolutely nothing worn on the catwalk that
night could be worn by real people. I said to my
companion, who sat next to me for the show, “Could any
of these girls get into a taxi wearing any of these clothes?”
He didn’t think so. It was all too much. Too over the top.
But Mr. Oldham’s show was very efficient. There were
always two girls on the catwalk, one coming and one going,
and always walking very fast. They had to walk quickly
because they had to fit the show into just three-quarters of
an hour. So, the models strode forward, they twitched in
front of the cameras, and then they scutded quickly
backstage. It was almost Germanic in its execution.
The fashion industry proves that beauty is most
definitely not in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is in the
eye of the possessor. A woman who feels beautiful can
convince other people that is what she is. The fashion
industry revolves around this point. And I think it’s a point
that applies particularly to women. Men aren’t supposed to
care whether they’re beautiful or not. I think they do, but
they’re supposed not to. But women are allowed by society
to bask in their beauty. And if they feel they are beautiful,
they have a relaxed sort of glow which spreads all around
them.
Of course, people say that beauty is in the eye of the
beholder because some will find beauty in others whom no
one else thinks is beautiful. But such situations ignore the
general consensus of what makes someone beautiful. It’s
easy to create a list of these attributes, but these are
essentially the commonalities you see between models and
television and film stars. I don’t know how we’ve come to
have a universal view of what is beautiful but, by whatever
process it is, it’s also true that every age has had a different
view of what beauty is.
The previous age to ours admired women with sloping
shoulders and rather large arms, so that you couldn’t see
the elbow or the wrist. Consequently, aU the women wore
dresses that best displayed these qualities, if they had them.
And they had smooth necks, small hands, small feet, small
waists and wide hips. These days, of course, in order to be
considered beautiful you’re meant to be stick thin, straight
up and down.
From time to time. I’m asked if I have any beauty tips.
I do not. My only advice is rather general, which is that you
should keep on applying make-up until you look the way
you want to be. Then you should stop. The mistake that
people make is to pile on more and more make-up as you
get older. This is a great mistake. You don’t end up looking
younger from this kind of heavy application, you end up
looking like other old people who are trying equally as hard
to look young, which is to say you look old. You actually
need less as time goes by, not more.
I’ve also been asked my opinion on tattoos, which to
me is a form of bodily disfigurement rather than
enhancement. I have never been able to fathom why
anyone would wish to have his or her body permanently
spoiled and scarred by a tattoo artist, but it is a practice that
is increasing in popularity here in America, and one that a
great number of women have now also decided to
undertake.
When I had any pride in my body, I wanted it to be
totally my own. Not disfigured by strange mottos or
rudimentary sketches of fish or birds. Of course, now that I
am old, ‘the great tattoo artist’ has marked my skin in all
sorts of unpleasant ways. I think my own reluctance to get
a tattoo, when perhaps 1 was closer to the right age for one,
was that such an action was too manly a practice to suit my
idea of myself.
Tattooing was originally done by sailors who wished,
for some unknown reason, to be identified should they
wash up on a foreign shore. But now that nobody washes
up on a foreign shore, I think tattooing has just become a
sort of a peer-group test. Most tribes have tests for would
be warriors, and I think getting a tattoo has become a
modern-day equivalent. It’s a test of endurance, because the
application of a tattoo is painful. The less you flinch at the
pain the more manly you are considered I would imagine,
or something like that anyway.
You see, in primitive life when the tribe was perpetually
threatened either by nature or by some other tribe.
everybody had to be strong. Everyone had to be ready to
take up their arms, or whatever it was that they fought
with, and fight. They didn’t want anyone who was going to
turn and run away. So, that’s why they had these rites of
passage. Nowadays the motivation of peer pressure within
groups of friends, which are our modern equivalent of
tribes, is less obvious. It seems more like herd mentality to
me.
1 had never met a tattoo artist until I was introduced by
a German film director to Mr. Spider Webbh When I told
him that I thought he was weird, he said to me,
“If I seem weird to you, then Tm really worried.”
But now that I know that he is a real artist. I’ve revised
my opinion of him. I think that he uses the backs of his
friends as a sort of sketchpad, where he works out the
designs of his real pictures. His tattoos are mainly abstract
but resemble certain forms of plant life. This I know
because his victims are forever stripping proudly in public
to display his handiwork.
I don’t know how far Mr. Spider Webb goes, but I
have read a fascinating book by a writer called Mr. Samuel
Steward, who, under the nom de plume Phil Sparrow,
earned his living as a tattooist. In this capacity he is said to
have tattooed the penis of a policeman, during which
process the officer - off-duty one assumes - ejaculated.
One can only assume, given the outcome, that pain had
become his true pleasure and he was a bona fide masochist.
Nevertheless, it’s a little difficult to understand what
purpose such a tattoo would serve, since the picture or
message could only be fully seen or read when the
gentleman’s penis was in ‘fuU bloom’. Not exactly the time
you would want to enter an art gallery and be seen. Well,
not for most people, anyway. The policeman may have
thought differently.
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