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(By Babe Scanlon)
San Francisco, we need to talk. Why is it that we have to go to a crap movie like Sex and The City to see decently dressed people? People who love dressing so much that they put effort and thought into their outfits and are not afraid to be daring?
San Francisco is a big enough city; we've got all the resources and the creativity to pull together some really fabulous looks. So why don't we see it on the streets?
And, no, Burning Man attire doesn't count. No. No, it does not.
Union Square should be great people-watching but we sit down with our coffee and are disappointed every time. Even the beautiful people dress boringly. If we’re lucky we’ll see one woman sporting a fabulous pair of shoes, but that's about as good as it gets, besides the occasional pink hair, which is fine, but that hair is usually paired with old dirty clothes that look like they reek of patchouli.
We all walk a ton in this town so we understand the pull of comfort, we also understand that taking Muni is like riding in a (slow) moving public toilet, but come on, this is our life! If we spend it plodding around in ugly boring crap, we're missing one of life's great joys; to outfit one's self with care and creativity.
We’re trying to think of a way to improve the situation. So far the best idea we’ve heard is a monthly "See and be Seen" event, where people can come in their favorite, or best, or craziest, outfit and revel together in personal style. Maybe at the bar at the Fairmont on Nob Hill? It's pretty, usually empty, and the bathrooms are clean.
Usually "See and be Seen" events are about exclusivity and money, but we think it's time to take decent attire to a grassroots level; where effort and care are all that matter and cattiness is left at the door. More or less.
What we’re trying to say, SF, is that we need your, for lack of a better word but we'll use it since you'll understand what we're trying to say, fabulousness. Do you need ours?
Image: WhatImSeeing
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Oh no, I think not. I did not leave NYC so that I could be hounded by the fashion police in SF.
I'm down. Terrible dresser here, of course. But just say when and I'll do my best to help spread the word.
It's that Baby Scantron lady again!!!
scantron = hee! love it.
i used a non-regulation no. 2 pencil once during a CTBS test. ruined my life it did.
oh man this picture of the Nob Hill Twins...
...so there is a 2nd version --brace yourself-- here.
jeebus that is a nasty image to behold.
I once heard if you put chap stick down the side of a scantron sheet you would get all the answers correct. I found out it didn't work. uhh, the days of high school.
@KatyG: Same here, except replace "New York" with "LA."
Socks with sandals forever, dammit!!!!
What? they spent all their money on hats and outfits and skipped the dental work? At least they didn't hang out in tanning booth like the other woman who spends all her money on clothes in SF.
Maybe someone could get them some Crest whitestrips
for Christmas?
or some baking soda/bleach for 4th of July.
Don't blame us. Blame the damn weather! Everyday you have to be prepared to change outfit 4 times, depending the weather and depending on which neighborhood you are in.
How can you dress nicely when you have to have 4 layers of clothing to lug around?
@cowsaysmeow: Maybe it is my provincialism, but I would image it would be worse in LA. Is that a shallow supposition?
See, I like the fact that I live somewhere where I have better things to think about.
because you all are SO ABOVE having to think about what you wear? bah!
remember: whether you like it or not, and more importantly, you live in california, not just san francisco, west of i-5. what that comes great responsibility.
@KatyG: Not entirely sure as I haven't been to NYC since I was a kid, but I suspect you're probably right...it probably won't surprise you to learn that I wasn't exactly Ms. Popularity as a youngin' either. :]
@cowsaysmeow: and isn't that part of why people pour into this town, above all other cities in the state? Lack of fear of others' judgement upon one?
Brock, if you start up this monthly circus, I'll have to start up a competing "how slovenly can you be?" thing.
@Babe Scanlon: I think that you want to move to NYC. This is casual California.
No.
sheep.
I agree with Babe Scanlon 100%, and I think more restaurants should institute a dress code. I had to stand next to an idiot in Bix who was wearing khaki shorts and flip flops for god's sake. BIX!! For shame.
The last time I went to hear Carol Doda perform I had three people ask "why are you dressed up?" For crying out loud, I was wearing a dress from Banana.
Yeah, yeah, we're casual. WHATEVER. That's just an excuse for lack of class.
No, it's an excuse-cum-reason for laziness. I am a very classy broad.
One of those twins, I can't tell which one, stole my flowers when I was in the hospital. I still get pissed when I see those two.
Indeed, KatyG, indeed. :)
There is no excuse for showing up to an expensive restaurant inappropriately attired and those who do so can never be defined as classy unless it's classy with a capital K.
I think a culture’s fashion sense--despite the idiotic cliché that external appearances are shallow or “merely” about surfaces (as if surfaces were less revealing of reality than some “inner depth”)--reveals a lot about its unconscious.
Americans imagine that they don’t NEED to look good, because professional celebrities/actors or whoever are paid to do so. Infantilized spectators, Americans are entitled to wear white/neon orange sneakers, shorts (once reserved for children under 12) and t-shirts as they passively digest the glamour of expert good-lookers. Americans (even San Franciscans) are “hard workers” with no time for unproductive pleasure (even less aesthetic pleasures). If you want to see a well-dressed person at Union Square: simply look up at one of the giant billboard advertisements and let the market gratify that desire.
Also: is it just me or have others noticed that SF has a remarkably suburban sense of style for a so-called “world city”; as if the corny, homely, provincial “Bay Area” informed the city’s fashion sense rather than the other way around? Certainly that’s part of the problem: the ease with which SF allows itself to be subsumed under the Bay Area moniker rather than radiate progressive cosmopolitanism from the center. The “New York Area” is not a part of the cultural landscape of NYC, yet SF’s news sources, for example, market themselves as “Bay Area News.” SF is profoundly ill-at ease with urbanity and so everything closes at 10 pm and everyone wears ugly, frumpy sports attire as if the place were simply one more giant Bay Area suburb. Yawn.
...Or at least that's one way to look at it. Actualy, SF has one of the best "underground" fashion senses of any city I've spent time in (which doesn't make up for the soul-draining dullness of the more universal Bay Area Look, but its something). I came across this recently:
http://streetfancy.blogspot.com/
I'm not at all affiliated.
Why doesn't SFist have a Fashion Editor? Maybe post the elusive photo of a fashionable San Franciscan in their natural habitat, and break down their labels or lack thereof?
One of the biggest reasons I moved to SF was because I was so impressed that you could go to a nice restaurant in -gasp- jeans and not feel like a scumbag.
Besides.. underground fashion is always more exciting than some expensive label that can be purchased in a department store. Sex and the City fashion? Meh. I'd rather people watch on Polk Street.
You might not feel like a scumbag, but how you're perceived is an entirely different story.
Regardless of how people may proclaim to be "above fashion" or whatever as a way to comfort themselves over their unkempt appearance, the fact remains that we are judged by appearances. When you come to a "nice" restaurant dressed like an unkempt slob, that is all anyone sees, and that is how you will be perceived.
@wlynn: i don't think the authors of this post necessarily want to see more department store labels; the problem they identify is a lack of style. for some, style means (perhaps unfortunately) what's on the rack at macy's; for others, it most definitely can mean jeans, or "underground" whatever.
"Lack of style" - exactly. I'm just looking for creativity and expression, and I retract the anti Burning Man part. I love anything that's creative.
Today I'm wearing a dress I cobbled together myself and a huge, flat, round hat with a Dali moustach smack in the middle of it.
Thanks to all of you for the comments!
Babe
ps
Filling in shapes on scantron tests may well have been the most fulfilling experience of my scholastic years.