Or “Culture Matters”
Once upon a time there was a gracious avenue in America that resembled the great boulevards of major European centers such as Paris and Barcelona. Well-dressed men and women strolled its length, admiring the fares on display in the windows of the elegant shops that bordered it. Some of them even wore hats.
Twenty-five years ago when I moved to Chicago, Michigan Avenue fit this description. Last week I decided to spend a Saturday afternoon shopping on the Avenue, something I hadn’t done for years.
The change appalled me.
Hordes of shoppers crowded the sidewalk, chewing gum while gaping at the Victoria’s Secret windows, electronic devices protruding from every other ear. Forty percent were talking on cell phones. The best-dressed among them wore Spandex, typically on figures that did not well tolerate the wearing of Spandex. Others displayed bare midriffs, with spaghetti strips hanging loose over visible bra straps cutting into rolls of excess flesh. Stoll others were poured intro jeans or Capris that profoundly emphasized their ample derrieres and that caused still more excess flesh to spill out at the waistline.
And those were the forty-year-olds.
No doubt most of these shoppers are good people who love their children and do their duty. But in the realm of fashioned and much more, American-style casual has degraded to sheer vulgarity.
How did this come about?
I took a domestic flight from O’Hare recently that for some reason departed from the International Terminal-not enough gates, I suppose. As I waited in mild misery in an endless security line amidst passengers dressed for backyard barbeques, a refreshing scene caught my eye.
It was a cluster of travellers from Italy, dressed crisply and with distinct sophistication: simple, dark suits but with a whiff of real fashion. Not fashion according to the Gap but real Paris-runway fashion with understated accessories and tasteful hairstyles adding to the effect. A treat to the eye and a balm for the soul.
You see, in the right way (not vainglorious) and to the right degree (not obsessive), clothes matter. Ask any actor who dons the garb of a monarch and then adopts the bearing that goes with the garb. Ask anyone who wears a uniform. When I was a little girl in Catholic school, we wore uniforms. We hated them, of course, but wearing them underscored ideas that were simultaneously being instilled in us, like self-respect and a sense of order. Years ago, the Chicago Community Trust published a report on the cover of which appeared a classroom of inner-city kids in a public school, wearing plaid uniforms. The text explained that educators had recognized that uniforms foster order in the classroom. A revolutionary idea!
Over the past twenty-five years, the stores of Michigan Avgenue have changed dramatically. Where we once saw I. Magnin and the original Marshall Field’s, stores like Victoria’s Secret and Levi have encroached. They increase the tax base, you say? You can’t stop progress, you say? Oh, but we must if such progress comes at the price of our civic self-respect.
Surely the departure of elegant stores and their replacement with the chains are connected with the state of dress on Michigan Avenue. Larger cultural forces are at work here, of course. In a society trying to be Non-Judgmental, we’ve dulled our ability to judge at all, even to discern between the beautiful and the tawdry. We’re becoming a nation of empty heads wearing Spandex and chattering on cell phones.
Thank Goodness that much of Michigan Avenue is still beautiful. There’s the building whose elegant shops include Cartier with its gracious granite facade that reminds passers-by of gentler times. There are the voluminous flowerbeds running up the center of the boulevard (wonderful that Mayor Daley made all those trips to Paris and adopted what he saw: flowers, lighting, flowers, wrought iron).
All is not lost but we need more city leaders to fight the encroachment of the chains on strips like the Avenue (those same chains are available nearby, after all), recognizing that something larger is at stake. We also need more mothers and fathers who will stand up to their daughters, bar the doors and holler, “You’re not leaving the house in that outfit!”
It’s true that appearance matters far less than substance. Some of the finest people I know dress like slobs. But to a large extent, clothes speak to the world about the state of mind of the wearer or that of a culture. That’s why Jackie Kennedy’s clothes were important. It’s also true that many women and girls are already much too preoccupied with their appearance. That’s not a quest for beauty; it’s a neurosis brought on by anorexic models and poisonous advertising.
In short, we need less flash and more real beauty in this world-in dress, architecture and in the ethos of our beloved Avenue, by which many international visitors to Chicago form their first impression of our city.
So Stand up ladies and gentlemen. Renounce vulgar dress, and rummage in the hall closet for the hatbox.
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Marie T. (Terry) Sullivan is a director at Midtown Center, a school of educational enrichment in the inner city. She is a singer and musician and the At-Large arts critic for The Observer, essentially our “Claudia Cassidy.” If any of you remember Claudia Cassidy of the Tribune you will appreciate what we’re trying to do with the arts.