KAROLINA WISNIEWSKI
<Editor-in-Chief >
Though I profess no expertise in the realm of fashion (I instead defer to our resident fashionista, Angie Sheep), and though I prefer to reserve all extraneous and non-law-related thinking for the things that really matter (how will Mary cope with Matthew’s death in the upcoming season of Downton Abbey?), my interest was sparked by an article I recently read on the Toronto Standard entitled, “Why Montreal Style is Just Plain Sexier than Toronto Style.”
The provocative title drew me in and the colourful language made for an interesting read, but I was left feeling skeptical regarding the conclusion of the article and vaguely disconcerted about its implications.
The author unequivocally typified Toronto as the less edgy, less interesting and less adventurous city in terms of its denizens’ fashion choices: “Toronto definitely doesn’t have Montreal’s balls when it comes to putting yourself out there and risking public ridicule for the sake of fashion.” The author went on to conjecture that: “If a guy wearing a top hat, a metallic gold crop top, jean cut-offs and faux fur platforms strolled down Blvd. St-Laurent and asked a group of locals for directions, they’d simply direct him where he wanted to go without blinking an eye. In Toronto, I’d half expect people to clutch their Louis Vuitton bags in horror as they dialled CAMH to report an escaped patient.” As a native Torontonian, I resent the implication that we are inherently puritanical and cripplingly conservative – the Canadian equivalent of an uptight, my-ancestors-came-over-on-the-Mayflower New Englander, donning a pearl necklace and toting around designer handbags.
Perhaps Montreal style is “sexier” than Toronto style, although I question the automatic association of “sexier” with “better”. Surely, there are a multiplicity of qualities that comprise good or superior fashion sense, sexiness being only one of them. Regardless, what is more troubling, as I see it, is the author’s reasoning as to why Toronto suffers from substandard style: “Most Montrealers believe we’re from the greatest city in North America… the city’s belief in its own greatness and international importance has never dissipated, and that’s what makes it so sexy.” Turning to her aesthetically impoverished fellow Canadians, the author reassures us: “When Toronto finally gets that it’s hot, perhaps Torontonians will start oozing the same sense of sexiness and fearlessness that Montrealers have in surplus.”
These seem like curious assertions for the author to make. For one thing, they seem to invert the commonly (and not always unreasonably) held assumption that Torontonians are arrogant and convinced of the superiority of their hometown (and apologetic treatment of Torontonians is not something of which I would have suspected this author). For another, this kind of an argument attributes qualities of the collective (“when Toronto gets that its hot”) to individuals (“Torontonians will start oozing that same sense of sexiness”), without accounting for how the connection between the two functions. And certainly, this kind of a tenuous leap of logic should at least be justified: can’t someone be proud of where they live without spontaneously morphing into a Pussycat Doll? I’m sure there are Mormons who really, really love Salt Lake City! The flimsy and unconvincing connection the author attempted to draw between local pride and impeccable fashion sense made me think that there was something else at play here, and the more I considered what it might be, the more interesting the issue seemed to me.
As previously alluded to, the article carries through it the unmistakable equation of good or superior aesthetic sense (exhibited via fashion choices) with subversion and counter-culture sensibility. The author even spent an uncomfortable portion of the article pondering whether Montreal was sexier because it wasn’t “a money city like Toronto”. In a similarly distasteful vein, the difficulty of playing the “Hipster or Homeless” game in Montreal was cited as evidence for the city’s style sensibility. In contrast, a round of said game in Toronto would be thwarted, said the author, by “Urban Outfitters tops, Opening Ceremony pieces, and expensive vintage garments.” It became clear, the more I read, that just as sexiness was equated with style superiority, that superiority was equated with genuine appropriation of alternative culture. In other words, the yardstick for measuring fashion sense is one’s ability, put simply, to dress like a hipster.
Of course, the glorification of counter-culture as visionary and otherwise aesthetically/socially/intellectually/metaphysically superior to the rest of us drudges meekly serving The Man and unquestioningly embracing the hallmarks of the status quo without so much as a passing thought to the fact that we’re all being 1984-ed is nothing new. It’s also none too persuasive. The rhetoric employed by espousers of this view is about as convincing as any of Mitt Romney’s campaign speeches. But precisely because it is nothing new, and precisely because every generation has embraced counter-culture in its own way, it is likewise pervasive and a tendency that is apparently not going anywhere.
Our collective obsession with all things “alt” is also, I think, closely related to our glorification of European culture as the more open-minded, liberal and unprejudiced alternative to stuffy North America. Though this was not explicitly discussed, the author obliquely alluded to it when she mentioned “European liberalism” as one of the things that makes Montreal such a great city. It would be easy enough to substitute “Montreal” for “Europe” and “Toronto” for “North America” in the title, leave the rest of the article unchanged, and draw the same conclusions on an international scale.
And suddenly it all made sense. The article, if a little misguided, perfectly articulated our collective North American cultural envy of Europe. Characterizing this envy purely as an issue of fashion simply misplaced the emphasis; substandard Toronto style is not the problem, but merely a symptom of it. Whether it’s fashion, music, film, art, food or wine – whichever pseudo-liberal lens you use to measure the cultural sophistication, and consequently (at least the argument goes, in the article), the ability to embrace the essence of life, Europeans seem to come out on top time and again. This sentiment is so widespread it was featured front and center in the somewhat recent Eat, Pray, Love (although, to be fair, Italians weren’t the only victims of Julia Roberts’ shameless cultural fetishization in the film).
How sad, then, that we seem to all have implicitly accepted such a lot. And how sad that at least some people feel that a North American tendency to torpedo through life without stopping to smell the flowers seems to sentence each one of us to life as a sad, poorly-dressed, overweight corporate drone with no sense of aesthetic discernment. I may be speaking hyperbolically to drive my point home, but there is some kernel of truth to this, and I’m curious about just how deep it runs. Is it simply a case of “the grass is greener on the other side”? And what about the deeply unsettling suggestion in the article that ability to “enjoy life” is somehow inversely proportional to economic well-being? Is this all just another rebel sell, the endorsement of some purer, more organic lifestyle that we should all pursue? And is it really antithetical to our “North American way of life”, whatever that means?
As a first step to sorting through some of these questions, I propose that we all start wearing top hats, metallic gold crop tops, jean cut-offs and faux fur platforms to class. Who’s in?