Happy New Year to the readers of V&R
Thanks to all who stopped by the site this year. I hope you enjoyed the moral reflections on the business and meaning of fashion. Plenty more to come in 2019! My best wishes to all for a charming 2019, Graham
Camp Catholicism. Part 2
The mystery of the liturgy coincides totally with the mystery of operativity ~~~ Giorgio Agamben In my opinion, Giorgio Agamben is the most important contemporary European theorist. Political theology in the anarchist tradition, to which Agamben subscribes, has for its goal the exorcism of theology from political economy. Though Agamben is a…
Dress and mimickry in Tolkien
Suspicious of Beren, Luthien hides from him. In a “silver-pearly dress” she ducks “down among white hemlocks and hid herself beneath a very tall flower with many spreading leaves; and here she looked in her white raiment like a spatter of moonlight shimmering through the leaves upon the floor” (Beren and Luthien, p. 42). Roger…
Happy Christmas to V&R readers!
Trust all have a wonderful Christmas. Thanks for reading the book and blog. Cheers, Graham
Yuletide books and scotch
Holiday Reading Picks
Dolce & Gabbana need to take advice from Lord Kames
Two weeks ago D&G famously imploded in China (http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/42334/1/dolce-gabbana-dg-china-cancelled-shanghai-show-model-experience). To launch a fresh push into the Chinese market, the brand rolled out an ad in which a young Chinese woman tries to eat a slice of pizza with chop sticks. The woman’s struggle with the pizza and giant cannoli was, I suppose, an…
Camp Catholicism. Part 1
In light of the Met’s 2019 fashion retrospective focusing on the role of camp in fashion, it’s time for V&R to start considering the theme. This post is the first in a series. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the classic noir novel, The Big Sleep, private detective Philip Marlow stumbles across a dead man murdered with…
French Eyes on HBO’s Succession
My use of Lacan and de Tocqueville to explore a bit the moral dynamics of HBO’s stylish family drama Succession: French Eyes on HBO’s Succession
A case of camp? Jay Leno’s 1958 Saab 93:
Following the tremendously popular Met exhibition, Heavenly Bodies, will be a new show on camp and its place in fashion. Perhaps a cunning commentary on the camp nature of fashion influenced by Catholicism? The show takes its bearings from Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay on the aesthetics of camp: https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html. I am not sure she…
Arsene Wegner and Max Scheler: sacrifice at the heart of the beautiful game
For those interested in football, Arsene Wenger needs no introduction. A Frenchman who revolutionized the way football is played in Britain, Wenger is very Gallic. For one thing, he looks great in clothes, but as the link to this video amply shows, he is quite the intellectual (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPQREjBg9SM). Especially interesting is his emphasis on…