Elements Of Style: The Importance of Looking Good
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
Discussed: Ayn Rand Needed A Stylist, Lazy One Stop Identity Shopping At The Gap, Awesome Wood Boats – I Need One, Suggested Reading Lists For Everyone, Cinema’s Modern Men, Pajamas As Clothing, German Mycologist Heinrich Anton de Bary’s Legacy
CHUCK AND CINEMA – WOMEN RESPOND TO ASCOTS
Men’s style has always been a bit of tricky thing. While certain tropes exist that we can choose to ascribe to, usually attached to one-stop-shopping and therefore tainted in a wash of bland boring capitalist nothingness.
There’s the big, brutish cut of the old monied Criss-Crafting J.Crew, the boxed silhouette of the Serengeti shooter (photographs/shotguns) in Banana Republic, and the fast unraveling tatters of the Euro-Dandie lucky enough to have valiantly battled his way to his size in H&M, amongst others offering their similarly unified lifestyle defining aesthetic.
As discussed elsewhere, one of the most affective devices of Gossip Girl is when they get all Meta on us, making Godard misty eyed from his beneath his stacks of page worn Noam Chomsky tomes piled to his Rolle, Switzerland ceiling. And nothing is more meta, fashion wise, then the immaculate, Cinema-referencing style of Chuck Bass.
One need not look further then Bertolucci’s landmark 1970 film “The Conformist” to witness the ripples that resulted in Chuck’s tailored suits of infinite refinement, accentuating not overwhelming ascots and beyond. In fact, the argument could be made, that the 65 – 72 golden age of French and Italian New Wave films form the bedrock of the Bass Style Guide, from Bresson’s “Pickpocket” to Antonionis masterpiece “The Passenger”, from Chuck’s ample turtleneck and trenchcoat collections, to his unbuttoned shirts and sports coats. But he’s no purist, and mixes it up, as the occasional pastel three piece suit and a bow tie bears 80s Southern Gentleman witness to. And while we appreciate the attempt at translating this flamboyance into Chuck’s Season 1 Lower East Side basketball attire, there are certainly more absurdly loud looks that could have achieved this – had they really not familiarized themselves with the cartoon decadence of Iceberg Jeans and nauseating plaid whirl of Phat Pharm?
While impeccably styled men have existed on television before, Chuck Bass is a perfect symbiosis of style and character. To have him dressed any other way would shatter the believability of Chuck’s every action. And therefore offers a stellar example for Modern Men everywhere. The style makes the man, and the man makes the style.
