thinking is the new black

Despite it being London fashion week, I spent most of last week in the sunshine having a tres bien temp en Paris mooching around the Sorbornne.

I kept it cheery by going to a graveyard.
Although they’re two theorists I don’t deal with much in my own work, I popped along to see the burial place of the greatest French existential polo neck wearing lovers of all time Simone De Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre.

Now, I am absolutely convinced that the Parisian tourist board pay this darling French couple to sit on the bench. They certainly do not need a passport.

Jumpsuits are on trend, official.

The last time I wore a jumpsuit was in the 1980s, to Elizabeth Eslers’ birthday party where we went to see Sootie “live”. My passion for fashion and natural inclination towards celebrity began at an early age, since I remember making my poor mum trawl around the shops to find some leather dye to match my party shoes to the jumpsuit just in case Mathew Corbett invited me up on stage.

One of 2008s key looks will be the jumpsuit as reported by Vogue, The Sunday Times Style supplement, Grazia and me. I am a little unsettled by this. Not sure adults should wear jumpsuits unless they’re a forensic scientist or a skydiver /human cannon ball. I wish to focus on another key trend this year, not the clutch bag, not The Macintosh (raincoat not computer), but having its’ turn on the catwalk, fashion fast-forward – it’s communication theory. Hurrah and Hurraz.

It’s written on the wind
It’s everywhere I go
So if you really love theory
Come on and let it show
You know I love theory, I always will
My mind’s made up by the way that I feel
There’s no beginning, there’ll be no end
‘Cause on theory you can depend la la la la repeat x’s 10.

In the month where I’ve been contacted by someone who described themselves as a discourse consultant and have been doing tricksy things with reflexivity in one of my chapters, I’m happy to commune, communication theory is having its’ day.
Check out the great blog by Grant McCracken (thanks to Mr Mustoe for alerting me to this). The inspired Anthony Mayfield has been discussing communication revolutions and Ian Delaney draws on some of the greats such as Marx & Althusser. My favourite find on this is a brand agency who are recruiting for a semiotician ( true!) with 5-8 years experience. Genius. “I am a practiced decoder of cultural signifiers, and am used to applying the trichotomy of the sign and syntagmatic dimensions in a fast paced environment”. So my style tip for a day through to evening look is slip a copy of Das Kapital under your arm, team with a copy of “For Marxs” by Althusser and you’re good to go.

Very briefly – I have an iPod Touch now. It rocks.

Also thanks to my technical consultant at oneidea.co.uk for their help migrating thinking is the new black to its’ own domain finally. You rock too.

I’ve been reading the fabulous paper by Neil Maycroft on ‘Cultural Consumption’ which appeared in the Capital and Class journal in 2004. Even though it’s quite old he offers a 1st class critique – though I am not in agreement.

“The concept of life-style seems to have been thoroughly naturalised, both academically and in common parlance.” (Maycroft 2004 p61).

Indeed, a quick internet search using the term ‘life-style’ produces immensely varied results from sources such as the BBC on gardening, home interior magazines, online fashion stores, motor enthusiast clubs, and even horoscope websites. Thoughts spring to mind not just of the ways magazines are categorized in a newsagent, but also of a way of being, but more so, a way of a mediating a way of being, through consumption.
Maycroft details how Alfred Adler originally used the term in 1929 in a psychological context, until it was appropriated in the 1970’s by market research, and thus became bound to the practice of consumption.

“Although many definitions of the term are to be found in literature on consumption, and as components of the promotional culture of capitalism itself, a generic definition of the term can be arrived at: a reflexive, biographical project of identity-formation ad self presentation, based upon the consumption of the symbolic dimensions of consumer commodities, particularly cultural products, services and experiences”. (Maycroft 2004 p63)

Maycroft’s main objection in his critique it that the term has been absorbed into conversation and writing in a very flippant way, though firmly located it “within the nexus of consumerism” (Maycroft 2004 p24) and what follows in his paper is a call to arms for the term to be used with much more caution and consideration of what it really means, if it means anything at all. He looks at various examples of use or modes of life-style, from work, life-styles of the rich and famous to ethnic, digital and unhealthy life-styles in a fairly damning critique.

His assessment raises some valuable questions, but it is a little short on alternatives or answers, perhaps failing to address in any detail the notion of discourse, and it’s relationship with the construction of knowledge. Life-style is plainly not the same as life; without spiralling into an in depth philosophical discussion on what it means to have life and experience life trajectory, it is clear the two are not the same, but Maycroft is not persuasive enough in his argument for me to reject the concept of lifestyle entirely. Once one recognizes life-style as a construct, or an aspect of presenting the self, then it’s not an empty term. As with any type of discourse it depends on the context of production, circulation and use, in the way it shapes how certain things are thought about and in it’s ability to be meaningful.