Fashion crimes against humanity

All y'all know I love the '70s, for lots of reasons but especially for its politics of dancing, which for me encapsulates the decade's open and relaxed attitude, its positive vibe, and its diversity of ethnicities, sexualities, ages, income levels, social strata, body types, and more. It was OK to be gay, lesbian, straight, and bisexual. It was OK to be African-American, Latino, Anglo, a woman, a man, rich, poor, middle class. It was OK to be. At least that's how it seemed from my vantage as a boy and then a teen. There were lots of possibilities, lots of positivity. The horizon was endless, the future bright and welcoming.

And the music--such a mix! Glam, pop, rock, Southern rock, punk, new wave, soul, funk, jazz, and, yes, disco--and some or all of it coupled together in the same song.

All y'all know as well that disco is one of my favorite genres. I like it in part because of the diversity it embraced and represented but also in part because of the beat. I, for whatever reason, have always been a slave to the rhythm, even though my Anglo-Saxon culture too often seems to fear, reject, and denigrate it. Considering the beat . . . what? Too "ethnic"? Too feminine? Too gay? Too queer? Disco was about the party, sure, about self-focused dancefloor fantasies and glamorous excess. But I think there was some love and kindness there, too. Joy, happiness, and community. And sometimes even more depth than it's give credit for.

I don't think this is just my fantasy either. I'm currently reading excerpts from Vince Aletti's The Disco Files 1973-78: New York's Underground, Week by Week, a compendium of articles and charts from the '70s disco scene, along with some before-after-the-fact interviews with Aletti (a columnist, scene-chronicler, and record distributor during the era), who describes what the disco heyday was like:

There's this scene at the end of [the movie] The Last Days of Disco, one of the characters has this very idealistic speech where he says disco was a whole movement. It was funny, but it was really true and people felt that. They felt disappointed that the idealistic quality of it was being trampled over, in favor of money and celebrity. As much as disco was glitzy and certainly loved celebrity culture, there was never a sense of it being driven by that. It was much more driven by an underground idea of unity (Aletti, 1998, p. 466).

All to the good, and all to the sad and the bad that that feeling was lost due to the "disco sucks" backlash, Anita Bryant, the Reagan and neo-con era, HIV/AIDS, and the fierce, sometimes hate-filled reaction to the culture of the '60s and '70s. Those were "Good Times," and I'm so sorry that they disappeared in a huff of money-grubbing, wowserism, and not-in-my-backyard bitterness.

Nevertheless, despite my love for the era, there's one thing I cannot abide about the '70s: The absolute vileness of the clothes. The colors, the fabrics, the cut, and the style. Profoundly horrid, incredibly tragic, viscerally repulsive.

Oh sure, you could slap a Gucci-Pucci-Fiarucci label on it, but there was nothing flattering about it, except maybe that the clothes did allow for a diversity of body types more so than today's lines. You could be heavier in a caftan or hairier in a leisure suit, but if that's your only saving grace, you probably need to go back to design studio and the catwalk and try, try again.

I hate to go there because it is so so easy, such a cheap laugh, the ugliness of '70s fashion. Mind you, I don't think the '80s, in retrospect, were any prettier. Edgier and sleeker perhaps but still, ultimately, hollow and very dated-looking nowadays--that "triangle" design motif with the broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist pervaded every piece, all of which were shaded in equally decade-giveaway colors.

I favor a lot of '50s and '60s design. It must be the MadMan in me, but that era looks so much classier and classic (albeit preppy-conservative at times), even if the experimentation of the late '60s often looks clownish and tawdry nowadays, an odd mix of Dacron and denim, in organic shapes and lurid colors.

A couple of cases in point--the dancers in the video above by Spanish pop-rock-disco combo Barrabás and this one below by the oddly named Spanish/French band Bimbojet.



Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Fugly foxtrot at that. Nothing you'd ever want to wear yourself, let alone see on anyone you know, except maybe on someone who dumped you for a Solid Gold dancer.

But, again, no cheap shots: Rather than blaming disco, the '70s, hedonism, the Gay Agenda, a mass outbreak of vision and taste impairment, or any other easy-ways-out, let's call out the real culprit: Tacky couture and fascist glamor, courtesy of one Generalísimo Francisco Franco.

I'm (mostly) not making this up and only being slightly ridiculous: Dictatorships do seem to have a certain (horrid) fashion sense. Rarely is it good, with the possible exception of you-know-who. More often it is simply, cruelly vulgar. Really, how often do you need to look at photos of Eva Braun and Marlene Dietrich side-by-side to see that La Dietrich not only left behind a genocidal maniac with a really stupid mustache but also lots of treacly, frilly Berliner Alexander-plotz hausfrau drag? And how many times do you have see a certain V. Putin shirtless on the back of the people's long-suffering horse to long for the days when horse-drawn carriages pulled up to balls and banquets and gentleman sauntered about the manor house in well-cut Eugene Onegin-inspired shirts, trousers, and suits?

It's bad enough that these anal retentive mass murderers abuse their citizens' basic human rights--must they also destroy their nations' innate sense of style? The Italian working class had it going on with its headscarves, neck kerchiefs, and wrap dresses. Bendito Benito "Muscles" Mussolini, with that lampshade pull on the end of his modified fez, so did not.

During a fashion war, intervention and action are vital now, not later. Where is the UN General Council when you need it? No doubt helping victims of famine, conflict, disease, and the like. Yet while the UN dithers, miserable wretches must dance around in jewel-toned Arabian Nights' fantasies and mustard-yellow-and-sage-green baby poop-striped travesties, with no one caring, no one coming to their rescue, not even Couturiers-sans-Frontières.

Clams on the half-shell and roller skates? A rumor has it that it's getting late. Time marches on, just can't wait. There's not a moment to waste when the survival of humankind's fashion sense is at stake!