The "Gothic Aristocracy" Look

Zooming around the street fashion blog world for wannabe-time agents I found a nice post on La Carmina, delivering this two pics of "goth aristocracy" and a blurb about this style:

"The male counterpart to Gothic Lolita fashion goes by many names: dandy, boystyle, ouji, elegant gothic aristocrat..."

However all the images are of girls (maybe?).
Its a very androgynous look, however, and boys I'm sure look great in this stuff...

Here we have a dashing young dandy, with a top notch Zero-Era jacket and leggings,
but the stripes and the sneaks should be avoided!
Fake riding boots would have been a better choice.
And while the puffy shirt is fine, the new-romantic Klaus Nomi cut is a bit extreme,
it wouldn't quite fit in at a party in 1630's Vienna, now would it?
I like the necklace, but perchance it hangs too low?



Yaargh! This is an amazing overcoat! It could work as a pirate, a longshoreman,
a poor merchant, a soldier... The lettering would have to go, of course...
Hmm, the satchel seems to fit in, minus logo. I will have to research
seamen's personal attaches throughout the ages now...
back to the costume history books at the library!
Oh, and BTW - the pressed oxford and hip ska tie give the game away completely!
Better options are an undershirt with a waistcoat and ascot or handkerchief.

Mmm gothy! I think next post will be about Zero-Era boots for men and women!

Steampunk is not Zero-Era

It has been a while since I've posted... I apologize for this, although I doubt anyone cares since no one ever reads this blog. Anyway, here is some newly minted rants spoken into the great abyss where all solitary cyber-voices go when no audience exists to reify the content.

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I am not writing this to piss of the steampunkers... Look, I'll be the first to admit that a lot of the fashions and babbage-age hacks are really cool looking. However, I have to define Zero-Era beyond mere aesthetics -- to the theoretical underpinnings behind the aesthetic. And this is where the two "movements" (for lack of a better word) separate. Whilst Zero-Era is an attack on the contemporary, it is not merely fetishization of the past. In fact, authentic period-piece clothing is the anti-thesis of Zero-Era. Not to do Steampunk a disservice, it is not mere sophistry of Victorian-age worship, it is quite the opposite.

In fact, Steampunk is born out of a trans-dimensional construct first introduced in literature. It presupposes advanced technological progress during the gilded age - thus demolishing the historical timeline of known reality. It runs as a parallel reality to our own.

For instance - in the film Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane is not a lowly schoolteacher caught up in ghoulish plot, he is a constable with fantastical gadgetry -- CSI meets 18th century New England.

Yet it is obvious we are dealing with an alternative universe. The townspeople do not gasp with horror at such diabolical wizardry. They simply deride him for being so reliant on technology (a prescient issue, no doubt).

And while this Ichabod may be the Cadfael of his day, his rational and scientific mind is not depicted in the film as far ahead of the times, but perhaps just on the cutting edge.

This is the heart of Steampunk - a past where technological wonders are part of the time and place, not fearsome constructs of some future world.

Zero-Era is unconcerned with technology, only fashion and aesthetic. Steampunk glorifies accessories and unique, stand-out things, while Zero-Era shuns them. This is for a very good reason. For the theoretical underpinnings of Zero-Era are not based on the existence of an alternative reality, but our very own reality and shared history. It comes from the basic concept of "how would one blend-in in any time period without having to change one's wardrobe?" While Steampunk looks to accentuate and extrematize

Both concepts are based upon Science-Fiction speculation, Steampunk's being the existence of alternative realities, and Zero-Era being that of the existance of time travel. But while Steampunk is wholly anachronistic and already well defined (to some degree), one could think of Zero-Era as having something of an unobtainable, ephemeral quality.

A fashion for all ages escapes the imagination, for as we are caught in linear time the best we could hope for are approximations of such a fashion. It may even be an impossibility. Yet, unlike Steampunk, it is not based solely in the past, for Zero-Era must consider also the hypothetical fashions of future times. Thus, unlike Steampunk, I feel it has actual relevance to the dialectic of aesthetics going on at present. While some might, understandably, feel the premise for such excercises into the deconstruction of fashion silly -- there is no time travel and there most likely won't be for any imaginable time in the future, with hindsight -- was the underpinnings of Futurism or Surrealism any less silly?

Surely, their ideals were just as unobtainable as that of Zero-Era, but are they given more credence because they embarked on ridiculousness with stony faces and post-modern philosophy to back them up?

Neither Zero-Ero nor Steampunk claim any such heady idealism to our respective aesthetics - but are we not living in a world when the lines between high and low art are muddled and mixed? Can not solid and toothful critiques of modern fashion come from genre fiction as easily as from philosophical diatribes?

But I digress!!! I am starting to bore even myself. Zero-Era is not Steampunk, and thus I will sum up the differences with a few bulleted points.


STEAMPUNK:

• Anachronistic
  
• Techno-centric
• Concerned with Authenticity
• Derived from a Parallel Universe

ZERO-ERA:

• Wholistic in time-frame
• Unconcerned with technology
• Concerned with Utilitarian and Multi-Purpose clothes
• Derived from Time Travel

Ok, peace out! If anyone ever lets me know they read this thing - that would be pretty nice! *wink wink*

It has been a while!

But what does time mean, anyway? We're time travelers, silly!!!

I found a great site, http://www.kittyhats.co.uk/
They sell authentic replica period hats:


Well, the period costuming is a little silly and not zero-era, but the Tricone hat has never officially gone out of style, and it looks fantastic! Grey, brown, dark brown, navy, and black - the three-cornered hat is versatile (and usually reversible!).

Check out this badass and his hot wife:
she loved the tricone!

Around, Then Under

The proper way to wear a scarf of course! Scarves are great for men and women, and this scarf is exceptionally nice:



Not quite Tom Baker length, but it would suit very nicely in any zero-era wardrobe. Perhaps it could be a bit less colorful, but the scarf itself is classic. Timeless... innocent, yet wild full of a male potency with a dash of a certain naiveté... Ok, so I don't quite have a handle on describing accessories, but trust me on this one. Imagine it in dark brown! Oh wait, miracles upon wonders, the magic of photo editing can make your imagination unnecessary! (You'll still have to imagine away the Wilson's leather jacket and grey hoodie...)



Wow! What a scarf!!! Of course, the poor bastard should have worn a bomber jacket, cheap leather and a sweatshirt don't really quite make such a scarf worth wearing, eh? But then again, he wouldn't look as much like Beck, whom I understand many ladies find very handsome and attractive (Even though he's a crazy Scientologist who hasn't put out a good album in over 10 years).

But I suppose if we really want to find out what to wear in order to complement a fantastic scarf we must go to the lord of time himself, "the doctor" I believe he's called:



Best wishes to you too, oh mighty bescarfled one!

Some (Over)coats

Remember, the term "coat," while now in modern parlance a real word, is actually a shortened form of the word "overcoat." This is very much different from the "waistcoat," which in these days pretty much just means a button-up shirt.

Anyway, here's some really good Zero-era overcoats:



Not quite sure what the fellow is up to with his groin region, perhaps he is trying to hide a massive scrotal hernia. The coat is magnificent, and his whole outfit is grade A zero-era style.



This is an excellent period-less coat this lovely woman is wearing. I like the cut and especially the big sleeves. Those boots are not very zero-era, however. Personally, I have a deep hatred of that style of boot. They'd be great if they were flat, but that stupid pointy heel is like a spike driven deep into my soul.

Where's This Sailor Going?

And where's he from??



This dignified old seaman gives away the gig with his brand new sneaks, but otherwise illustrates an almost perfect example of zero-era fashion. The Krueger-sweater and long tipped pipe are definite pluses.

The Concept of Time-Travel and Dress

One of the main inspirations - or rather, the main inspiration, for the concept of zero-era clothing is the idea of what to wear in the event of traveling through time.

Mainly, time-travelers depicted in fiction are from the distant future, and give little care to their appearance, dressing in "futuristic" garb that is supposedly what people wear in 3207 or whatever.

"We've come to warn you about filthy perverts...
uh, and nuclear war!"

Time-travelers in the "present" sometimes have a technology that automatically changes their clothes with time they are visiting, but more often they have to dress up before they go.

This presents us with a difficult dichotomy. When visiting the past, should we pay no heed to the dress of the time, and arrive glaringly obvious as visitors from either the distant future or some advanced planet, or should we stock up on a warehouse of costumes in order to fit in perfectly with the era we plan to go to?

"Yo, meez and my mate just stepped off tha, ya know,
tempral booth or whatever and I bumped me noggin',
can you up-and-down me with that beepin' healin' deal?"

While the silver v-cut jumpsuit might work in, say, the 1950's when Western culture suspected this might be what people wear when they come from the future to warn the present of future dangers and such, such garb would quite possibly get you burned at the stake in the 1200's.

Similarly, when visiting the future, should we wear the clothing of our time, guarantying instant recognition as "pasties," or try and guess what people of the future would wear?

Considering these quandaries led me to the concept of Zero-Era Fashion; ie. "Clothing out of time." A very difficult proposition, indeed, but probably the only real solution for time-traveling garb.

Zero-era clothing can be obtained through ignoring popular fashion trends and looking at relative constants in dress throughout history. I will delve deeper into what this are over the course of this blog, but suffice it to say that such constants exist and can be exploited and built upon.

While as a time-traveler it is inherent that you will "stick out" to some degree. This can be used as a benefit when dressing. Instead of dressing to the nines of what the era dictated as high fashion, wearing what the commoners wore (which changes little throughout most of Western history) with a little added flair and style will garner you little notice and if it does, you will most likely be seen as someone of modest wealth who is not keen on dressing up.

I would like to add, as well, as the idea of zero-era fashion is not just a fictional concept for answering the question of "what to wear" when time-traveling; no, it is also a statement against the constant and unrelenting commercialization and fetishizing of clothing. Whereas fashion trends used to last 5, 10, even 50-100 years, we now see a complete upheaval of trends every single year, or even every season.

Zero-era clothing can be seen as a constant in the face of a changing (but not evolving) fashion world. It is a statement against fashion as a commodity and as something predetermined by some invisible hand (the "scenes" of New York, Paris and London).

This doesn't mean, however, that it abandons fashion or style or design. Indeed, aesthetic appeal is crucial and aside from protection and warmth, is the only reason humans wear clothes. Clothing is woven deeply into every culture, and carries cultural constructs and ideologies with it. This is not an attempt to straight-jacket fashion, merely protest against it and its combination of stagnation, built-in obsolesence and ridiculous dictates. Zero-Era clothing should look good -- damn good! It accomplishes this by tying the past, present and future together into a coherent and subtle style.

I will attempt to further define these ideas later, but for now I just wanted to make a post about how the idea of zero-era came about: time travel. And seriously, who wouldn't want to dress like a time traveler?