Comments on: Urban Fashion Pt. 2: Stiff Upper Lip

By: dblock

dblock — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:01:47 +0000

game has an ill rhyme about rappers obsession with white tees vs. cotton picking in the not so distant past. just sayin’

By: Zoe B

Zoe B — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:12:59 +0000

Women of other eras often preferred facial hair. My family once knew a woman from Leeds (Yorkshire, England) who was born about 1870. For health reasons she had to avoid salt, a situation she found grievous. She used to say: “An egg without salt is like a kiss without a moustache.”

By: Kwende Kefentse

Kwende Kefentse — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:12:00 +0000

Thanks for the comment/compliment David. I come from the goatee era for the most part, though the thin-tight-lipped Caribbean moustache that my pops rocked through my youth (and currently from time-to-time) seems to have never really gone out of style amongst Caribbean people.

I think that one thing that’s so striking about the North American re-emergence has to do with how virulently moustaches were rejected in that late 80’s era. I’m now wondering if it had anything to to with the presiding anti-urban sentiment of the day: to plug it into Richard’s gay-index framework, many gays rocked that ’stache well past when it was advisable in the non-gay public domain. Gay and moustache had a semiotic sympathy for quite some time actually.

One way to look at it is that as North America settled into the ‘burbs it seems like they kinda left the ’stache in the city and hoped never to see it again on their faces or in the media. Now their kids are playing doctor frankenstein and because of the truncated feedback loop between the media and the streets, hollywood is following suit.

Or they may just legitimately look bad. Who am I to judge though?

And yeah, T-shirts will be big! Maybe the only thing bigger is shoes, and that’s a real maybe. I’ll get up with you David!

By: David J. Miller

David J. Miller — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:15:48 +0000

Great post. Great series… btw, I think there has been a big mustache movement in Australia for a number of years…. There might be an annual charity drive each year related to men’s health (prostate cancer)… I think it is in November (which they called Movember – is in Mo(ustache).. Again, fun series… lets talk before you do T-Shirts! that is a big one!