My friend Kate provided this explanation for the ugly
clothes phenomenon I described in my
April 22 entry:
Want to know the history behind the weird clothes colors?
It's a form of enforced spring cleaning of our clothes
closets by the massed produced section of the clothing
industry. About 25-30 years ago someone did a study about
colors. They found, not surprisingly, that people like,
particular color groupings. Especially, people are divided,
the inclusion or exclusion of yellow. So there are primary
people who like red, blue, green. And there are other people
who like chartreuse, fuchsia, aqua, etc..
Now, here's the tricky part, you remove all complimentary
groupings and have only bizarre mixes of both yellow
inclusions and non-yellow exclusions. The people are in a
quandary, there is nothing they really like; but then again,
there is nothing they really dislike so intensely that they
will go naked. So, the people eventually run out of clothes
and have to buy something and end up buying the bizarre
mixes. In the stores they are happy, because these clothes
do contain the favorite yellow preference. Then, after they
get home, they tend not to like what they bought as it
contains the less favored yellow preference. These mixed
clothes get thrown out fairly quickly.
The ideal result for the clothing industry, is that we
end up clearing our closets about every 5 years and starting
over.
This is also the logic behind the long skirt vs. short
skirt/pants debacle. Most ordinary women, from behind, by
Barbie standards, in short skirts and pants, look
questionable. Except short women who, by Barbie standards,
look questionable in general. So the short/skirt pants
periods are clean the wardrobe times of our lives.
You may ask how do I know this? Well in these times of
mass production the most important people in the clothing
industry is currently the mechanical engineer who designs
the clothes that can most easily be mass produced and the
machines which do the mass production.
I forget the names, but the inventor of the mini-skirt
(Bill Blass???) and the most famous of the 1950's super full
skirt designers ( ala Lucille Ball and Mamie Eisenhower),
were both Mechanical Engineers.
[my response] May I quote your treatise on why the
clothes colors are so ugly in my journal?
yes you may quote my treatise. it may not be totally
accurate, but it is what they taught us.
Did I include the bit about standardized hangers? The
reason we need shoulder pads it that the std hanger width is
2" wider than a women's size 8. Therefore, in order to put
size 8 women's clothes on hangers as well as on women, we
need shoulder pads to make the women look acceptable in
clothes which are 2 big. (get it? 2=too, it's a joke).
I don't know if you remember,because you worked in a
child's store, but there used to be hangers for men and
hangers for women. [Me: I don't remember that - at the
kiddie clothes store most of the stuff was not on hangers to
begin with. I remember putting together layettes for boys
and for girls though - different colors.]
