If one combines the attendance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and that at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, over one million people attended the exhibition on Alexander McQueen’s life and works, entitled “Savage Beauty”. It was a stirring showpiece of creativity that lives on past his untimely death. Lately, Creative Director Sarah Burton of McQueen presented a new collection and described her vision as “Almost sleepwalking, in a state where reality and dreams become blurred.” Her dreamy lingerie-inspired creations ranged from gowns to floaty layered dresses, sheer tulle skirts to romantic bustier tops and whimsically oversized satin bed jackets.
The Google trend report for spring 2015 showed a large increase in interest in tulle dresses and demonstrates quantifiably that fanciful femininity has not been lambasted by a rise in designer sweatpants. It seems unlikely that one million visitors would queue for hours to visit an exhibition on, say, sweatpants.
Didn’t Karl Lagerfeld once say that “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.”? And Marie Kondo wrote in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing “If sweatpants are your everyday attire, you’ll end up looking like you belong in them, which is not very attractive. What you wear in the house does impact your self-image.”
Layered, gossamer styles that dance in the boudoir still have a role in a woman’s collection and may dampen the rise of the sweatpants, best suited for wearing in the garage when changing a McPherson strut.
If you picture yourself as someone who doesn’t care about appearances, ever, then that surely drives your behavior.
There is a wonderful acting exercise in drama schools that consists of walking or performing any action with a particular adverb in mind. For example “walk tidily”, “skip fastidiously” or “run gloomily”. The students spend time enacting that motion and emotion. The outcome is as predictable as it is disheartening. You need only behave in a particular way to reinforce the personality embodied in that action.
It is not a stretch to claim that if you wear something “thoughtlessly”, your very being will be of a person who has indeed dismissed a mindful approach to their attire. If you don’t care what you look like, it is likely that your partner or spouse will notice, and not in a good way.
If your idea of bedroom attire is indifferent, then we have nothing to discuss. If you want a dreamy, sensual feeling to permeate the room, your emotions and your being, then we may have the perfect accompaniment.