Soft and romantic again

Venus Day
To understand what I am talking about here you have to visit a wonderful blog called "The Sartorialist". He posts pictures of people he thinks look great whom he finds mostly on the streets of New York but also from big European cities and sometimes even small towns. I'd like to include the pictures here but he, as is his prerogative, asks that we not do this.

I love him for a number of reasons. First of all because he is positive. I can snark at stupid celebrities and the way the media fawns after them too but how many times do we have to be told, for instance, that Anne Hathaway is a shameless exhibitionist? The second thing I love about the Sartorialist is that he lets others drive his taste. He is always open to men and women on the street showing him beauty that he might not have noticed without their help.

Anyway, here are the two pictures I'd like you to look at..

I love that girl. Don't you? Anyone can look soft and romantic in a long, flowing princess dress but to pull it off in a sweater, jeans and clogs is a major feat. She manages it because of her hair, the colours she has chosen and her accessories. Her hair is full like only a young woman's hair can be. The colours are rich and full too. I love the socks. The funny thing is that those socks wouldn't look romantic on most people; goofy is the more likely result. Why does it work for her? Well, the answer to that is in the accessories. The scarf is an obvious romantic accessory but check out the Celtic-style ring on her left hand and the elbow patch on her sweater. Any of those details by themselves would not have been enough but just two or three together make a look.

Looking at the picture, you have no idea about her face and you can't even tell much about her body either but you really want to know don't you? That's magic.

I think every generation of women grows up watching the older generation with two, contradictory, sorts of feelings. That's because sex is like a chocolate dessert. It's the blatant, easy option.  If you have ever showed up at a potluck with an elaborate strawberry trifle you have ever laboured over for hours only to have someone waltz in waving a triple death by chocolate cheesecake you will know what I mean.

Every generation of young virgins looks at slightly older and more worldly women being too obvious with the chocolate cheesecake and they think, "I'm not going to be like that". The generation in their twenties now, for example, grew up watching slightly older girls flashing around their thongs that crept above waistbands and nipples that poked through bras and shirts. And they said, I'm not going to be like that. So, when their turn to push the older girls off the stage came along, they chose panties that didn't show and wore more elegant bras that teased with cleavage instead of hitting you in the eye with erect nipples. But, as time went along, they started pushing those bras and the cleavage to the point that it looked ridiculous.

And hard. The women who walked past my house on their way out of the nearby university the last few years have all looked like very hard women.

So now, we move towards soft and romantic. If you go to The Sartorialist, and I highly recommend that you do, you will see page after page of girls with romantic looks. Cleavage is much less in evidence.

I saw the same going downtown yesterday on the bus that had just left campus. I saw long, romantic boots everywhere and those boots were at the end of legs in leggings or in richly textured stockings. The hair I saw was long and full and skirts are creeping down. Tops were softer and looser than they have been and the hard lines where the waist of pants and skirts and necklines meet soft flesh were hidden. You could see the third year girls with their quadruple-pushup bras sticking out of their low-scoop tops looking at the first year girls with their soft, romantic looks and suddenly feeling cheap and past it by comparison.

But there is also the second of the contradictory types of feelings. At the same time that they wish to avoid the sexual excesses, the chocolate cheesecake aspect, of the generation they follow, the coming generation will also want to push them offstage sexually. They will want to underline that they are the ones that everyone wants now (and they are and should be). So they will push their youth and sexuality.

I don't know any better than anyone else which exact aspects of their sexuality they will push but my guess is that they'll push the softness simply because the women of 2000-2010 were sooo hard. I'm guess their younger rivals will choose fabrics that drape over bodies that are soft in a youthful way—if you'll pardon the contradiction, they'll push bodies that are soft in a firm way. You can see it already in the hair but soon we'll see fabrics and cuts that fall across thighs and over breasts in just the right way too. And those breasts will be held in bras made of thinner, softer and more elastic fabrics that allow them to take something closer to their natural shape (and size).

I, for one, am looking forward to it. I always have and always will love each new generation.