MC - Habermas

I'm extremely happy that Habermas mentioned the recurring trends of fashion in his essay, the only thing in both readings I felt like I could latch on to and proudly proclaim, "Oh, I get fashion. Watching several hours worth of The Runway episodes practically qualifies me for my own fall line."

In Gap's latest advertising campaign for their 1960's inspired super skinny pants, a clip from Audrey Hepburn's "Funny Face" is dubbed with an Angus Young ditty. Strangely enough, the scene is one in which Hepburn's character immerses herself in the avant garde and the ad creates such a perfect piece for discussion, I don't know where to begin. Using fashion as an example, it's easy to see that we're constantly dipping into the past for inspiration time and time again. We pull out an old, tired trend and embrace it after we've given it a good facelift. We use words like 'vintage' and 'retro' that strangely, imply a newness or innovation in how we dress ourselves. Look, we're being cool, new and different wearing vintage shirts (or, how about overly expensive shirts that are made to look vintage). In the case of the Gap ad, I can see how Habermas might see that "the relation between 'modern' and 'classical' has definitely lost a fixed historical reference". We easily mistake old for new and vice versa (especially since we're the "cult of the new").

I got a real kick of out Habermas referring to his own explanations of the typology of neoconservatives as a simplification. Really, I'd hate to read the hard version.