In the Money

I don't know where I'm coming from or where I'm going right here. But I saw this teenager I'd never heard of on a best-dressed list (things I should never read) today. Her name is Jane Aldridge. She lives in Dallas, and she has a blog.

I don't know who Jane's parents are, but (though she talks up sales and ebay) I know they are very generous. It's overwhelming. I think she looks great, but what comes of always having been a sophisticate? I mean, I always fancied myself one, thought like one, but sartorially, I was absolutely a high school student and then absolutely a college student (and I'm still recovering). In school, I did not look like everyone else, but I definitely looked my age. I wore a mix of thrift/vintage, mall clothes, and treats, special (cherished) gifts from my forebears, both masculine-feminine 70s hand-me-downs and designer wish list wishes sweetly granted. I, like most, am an odd mixture of appreciative and creative and jealous and down-trodden. Mine is some variation on the commonest American experience--aspirational and still hungry.

And my point-of-view is pliable. The years at St. Mary's and P.A. brought out bits of sport and prep, the habit of my surroundings. The transfer to a big Memphis City School my junior year drew out the video-girl in me. On my first day, I wore vintage Levi's, a cable knit sweater, and no make-up; on my second, skin-tight stretch denim, door-knockers, and plenty of lip gloss. Brandeis (oy) led me to Juicy sweats and pink pink pink, some J.A.P. sensibilities (that weren't too divergent from my recent public school education). And my NY drop-out days made me tougher and 80s-er. These were accents beside/over the big constant: my stylish ma and pa, who laid an urbane, politically engaged foundation, via garments and films and music and housewares and paintings--ART (a definite generosity). Babble...I think I'm trying to say that I still tread with uncertainty. I still fuck up. I lead, and then follow. I have yet to look my best.

The "Fay-shun World" seems to think a strong, unrelenting, unassailable p.o.v., a perch in the clouds is ultimately stylish. It is the way the editorial community has reacted to this girl, as a "mature dresser," "fearless and self-knowing, distinctive, never wrong." I think that's dull and inappropriate for The Youth. Goths, punks, metalheads, d-boys--these high school uniform-wearers are not so smug, not necessarily "self-knowing." I mean, I LOVE A UNIFORM. But a balance of rule-boundness and flexibility (and humanity) is best, I think. And lots of people do this in their own way. And, honestly, Jane Aldridge does this. She's not one for high-low, but she does old-new and tough-pretty, Texas-Japan. I suppose what makes me uncomfortable is not some unvaried-ness of ideas/structures, but the 'separate peace' of so much cash and luxury, the unvaried-ness of cost and quality. This child breaths thinner air than we do. Her brand of stylishness is necessarily rare. It is a mechanism (whether intentional or no) for distancing, for drawing lines of demarcation. This is normal, natural. it happens in all strata. The jock wears a suit to school on Fridays, a letter jacket off-campus to assert his social status. But that is bound to high school. Only other teens feel the effects. Jane Aldridge, on the other hand, is a fashion-plate of old and big class difficulties, ones that affect us all, those twice and thrice her age. There is just always an implied inaccessibility in high fay-shun things and people. And she is being lauded PROFESSIONALLY, as an (oooooof) icon. A few fancy things in the mix (I can't knock that)...only ever fancy things (it gives one the willies).

I could be wrong. I'm running on empty. Like I said, I'm jealous. She looks older than me. I'm mad (in the positive sense) about luxury and fineness and flash (saw one of those this morning and OH MY). But I'm madder about democracy. Jane's way of dressing is a bit too...Aristo--unsettlingly unAmerican and unfriendly. You know? I'm conflicted and foggy. There is an insider-outsider note that I'm not hitting. I might just find her ease with and "carrying off" of grown-up wares scary. Teens have such ease when they're stylish, the ease of freshness and confidence in freshness, but what happens when that teen is dressed as her mother rather than her friends? And I strongly dislike shoe fetishing. What do y'all think?

Addendum: Pillow and I talked about this last night...she had been knowing about it for a few months and reminded me of the elephant I forgot to mention: BEBES ON THE INTERNET. duh.