Friday, September 25, 2009

Bring Back the Dickey!

When it comes to fashion, it is hard to be a Hoosier.  Here it is, a fortnight after the trend-setting Fashion Week in New York City, and we have barely noticed. Heck, we can’t even get our multiplex cinemas to carry the latest movie about Coco Chanel, or the new documentary about the fashion industry, called The September Issue.  In that film, an industry insider says with uber-profundity: “September is the January of Fashion.” Yupright now is the New Year’s Day for clothing resolutions. So, what’s new?

Well, even the newest fashion contains seeds of the old, and so in that spirit I am arguing today for bringing back an unfairly maligned fashion item from the past:  The dickey.  Alright, stop snickering at the name and grow up.  You heard me right: I think men and women alike might do well to re-embrace dickeys, those reviled fashion articles from the 1970s that consist of collared flaps of fabric that work like a false shirt front, adding a layer of modesty and comfort to one’s neckline without bulk and weight.

Now – in the spirit of full disclosureit is possible that my recent dickey fixation might have something to do with having a houseful of teenagers these days who display swaths of flesh that are turning liberal me into a scolding church lady. There’s frontal cleavage, backal cleavage – just a whole lot of body hangin’ out around here.  But I swear I’m not promoting the dickey as a backlash “return to modesty,” a la conservative cultural critic Wendy Shalit. Instead, I’m interested in the way retro fashion can help us channel the political attitude of the moment.  Via the dickey, we might be able to channel the passion for communitarian equality movements that characterized the early 70s.  Think Earth Day, Title IX, Civil Rights legislation, “Free to Be, You and Me.” People fought for those ideals wearing comfortable clothes, remember? Let’s take note!

Lest you think I’m out on a wardrobe limb, the Fashion Week Fashionistas are promoting new/ old hits like the stretchy jersey wrap dress, which Diane VonFurstenberg introduced in ‘72. And I’m noticing more 1970s dickey-themed correctives to the revealing fashions of the recent years, such as the so-called “Winky T,” a contraption that looks like a g-string for the chest, attaching to one’s brassiere and offering a small bib of fabric to fill in a revealing neckline. There are even such things as “wrist dickeys” being marketed to add layers underneath sleeves.  Men – especially young men – could benefit from equivalent treatment, so that we could wave goodbye to the sagging, revealing pants that reduce men’s strides to a shuffle that must surely preoccupy the wearer all day long.  I’d argue this renewed interest in covering up might free us from worrying about tugging clothes into place or risk flashing our flesh, and instead let us focus our energies outwardly, on the comfort and well-being of others.

In arguing for a return to the layered comfort of 70’s fashion, I may be swimming against the cultural current in this moment in which everyone I know is obsessed with the television series Mad Men.  I can’t help but wonder at the significance of our adoration for Mad Men’s early 60s aesthetics – all those oppressed women displayed in tight dresses made possible with agonizing long-line bras and cinching girdles; all those chain-smoking men in their narrow suits and ties, all that elegance, barely masking so much unhappiness.  Why, now, does this show speak to so many viewers?  Why are we fascinated with this time before liberation movements broke open the truth about American inequalities?  Why has there been an eruption of Mad Men costume parties, in which the series’ fans dress like underpaid sex goddesses or repressed business men, and everyone drinks the sweetly numbing bourbon cocktails of that unhappy age?  What’s going on?

Nope – I say: Bring on the dickeys and cozy layers of the 70s, that we might channel a political moment more hopeful about equality, and more focused on the health of the body politic than on the display of our own bodies.  The story I’m floating to the next generation at our house is that nothing says “up yours” to the self-absorbed status quo like pulling on another layer of clothing, getting comfortable, and agitating, together for equity. Sing it, sisters and brothers!

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on September 25, 2009 • WVPE's Audio Archive
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