On Black

This has been my wardrobe for say ten years: black shirts, black jeans, black dresses, black trousers, black jewellery, black coat, black shoes, grey gloves. (I don’t know why the grey gloves). Now the honeymoon is over.

Contrary to popular opinion, clothes are not for warmth, not for modesty. If we didn’t have clothes we’d have to wear signboards saying, say, "Hello, I’m a radical lesbian mother with a Stalinist streak", or "Hello, I prefer you to think that I’m athletic". But clothes take care of this. Each item screams to the world our innermost dreams and fears. Thus when we notice a girl with a Peter Pan collar on the bus, we can sadly shake our heads at the thought of father fixations.

Wearing constant black used to mean: "I never tell you to ‘have a nice day’. I was a dweeb in high school. I write, or maybe paint. I have criminally low self-esteem, body flaws I think hideous, and never go to bed til dawn. Leave me alone".

Black is cynicism, and beyond. Black is for people who inanely believe there’s a counterculture. Black loves beauty, and truth, but hates the American way.

Used to be if you went to a party wearing all black, and saw somebody else, a total stranger, wearing all black, you could go up to them and say, "Lets get outta here".

Now the riffraff are wearing it.

A friend was complaining the other day about people black-wearers in Texas. "They go to nightclubs wearing black, but it’s the wrong black, its like black Laura Ashley or something. It looks really stupid". I went to a Christmas party where every single person, no exceptions, was in solid black. Except the hostess - she was in a dreamy pale green Angel Estrada.

Lawyers now wear black. Wall streeters wear black. People who think "To hell with the dolphins. I have to worry about my accessories" wear black. People who send their children to prep school wear black. People who liked Cats wear black.

Wearing black has lost its intrinsic meaning.

The obvious, most practical remedy would be to establish an agency, a board of directors who would issue permits. We’d all have to bring in portfolios, manuscripts, or tapes to establish artistic credentials, letters from our shrinks to prove we are utterly bonkers, punch in some time clock at four AM to prove we’re still awake. We would have to fail tests in money management.

Then if an interloper were caught by the Fashion Police wearing black without a permit, they would be fined one black article of clothing for the first offence, and the entire wardrobe would be seized for the second offence.

Elitish? I don’t think so. More like truth in advertising. But we can’t expect our government to take the enlightened view. We will have to form our own vigilante groups and prowl the streets. The minute we find a perpetrator wearing black without the proper, and correct attitude we must surround him, and point and laugh. This will work. But even more important, we ourselves must stop wearing black. I do not have to tell you the obvious substitute colours - You already know. Soon people will start to copy us, they will stop wearing black.

Then we start again... Ilya Tarasov