THE 20 – 20 RULE: THE TRICK TO KNOW WHAT´S NEXT IN FASHION

"The Great Gatsby"fantastic apology of 20's fashion.

I’ve got an epiphany! One epiphany that has made me understand everything in a much simpler, clearer, easier way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m talking about fashion, it’s not like I found the recipe for the world’s peace. But being honest, we, the majority of mortals, feel lost regarding fashion. A lack of self-steam attack hits us whenever we go out. We ask ourselves if we were on the wave. Being in fashion is a constant challenge. It requires a lot attention, time to search and money to buy. Ideally, what makes you a brilliant fashionista, worthy of admiration, is mastering that fragile balance in between being one of the first to wear some trend but never one of the lasts. You need to find the right moment between neither being that clown who wears some weird stuff in first instance, nor being one of those who is up for the mainstream when even your mother is wearing it. It’s not an easy work.

 

Let’s go to the crux of the matter: my epiphany. I call it the twenty minus twenty rule (20 – 20). As you can see it is not a complicated algorithm, (that’s all my maths can give). The concept is the following: everything from 10 years ago is crap but if it’s 20 years ago it’s very cool. So the 20 years back fashion is now mainstream again. But there is a trick here. If now it’s in vogue what was fashion twenty years ago it means that, twenty years back, the trend was the fashion of twenty more years back so – 20 – 20. That is to say, fashion is actually a repetitive recycling of designs. I’ll give you an example: right now, 2016, the fashion is 90’s but also we have some seventies hippy features. However we’ve been living an overwhelming success of the so call vintage fashion, which is basically the 50’s fashion. So again, 20 – 20 – 20.  90’s, 70’s and 50’s. Why is like this? Well, it’s simple: fashion is a huge industry and designers and manufacturers don’t want to take any risk.

By repeating designs and styles that were successful in the past they ensure their profits. This has been like this since the start of the ready-to-wear factories (AKA prêt-à-porter) around 60’s and 70’s. Before that it was all about tailored clothes, more expensive, though, but better quality. Nevertheless, the ready-to-wear industry was a revolution. People could afford to buy new clothes more often. But how to stimulate them to expend more? By creating new trends every season making people feel the need of buying new clothes, not because their old ones are damage, but to be à la mode. This marketing strategy has been so effective that now we have 52 mini seasons!!

"Friends" 1996

Spice Girls 1996

"Romeo + Julieta" 1996

With this rule in mind, now it’s very easy to predict the future trends. Let’s do an experiment. We are in 2016 so twenty years before… What was going on in 1996? Voilà! Spice girls just release her first album “Wannabe”! “Friends” was in its thirds season and the movie of the year was “Romeo + Juliet”! Well, just check out those pictures, they talk by themselves. The fancy coloured hairs and those horrible platform boots, which I used to love when I was teenager, will be back again for sure. Talking about platforms, what period were they a typical feature? Oh, yes, it was 70’s.

                                                                                                                

"Rocky" 1976

 Let’s carry on with the experiment. I subtracted 20 more so I googled 1976 and we found that the Charlie’s angels was aired on TV that year, “Rocky” was on the theatres and Abba got an overwhelming success with ‘Fernando’.

ABBA

"Charlie's Angels"

Going further back I have checked what was on in 1956. That year Elvis Presley impressed the whole world with his performance of “Hound Dog”. It was also the year that James Dean summed up fans with “Giant” and Marilyn Monroe was having the time of her life. I’m just going to say one thing: Look at those shoulder pads that Elvis wears in the picture. What other period do they remind me…?

James Dean in "Giant" 1956

Añadir leyenda

Elvis Presley "Hound Dog" 1956

Mili Vanili

Well, if my rule is 100% right the prospects for this year fashion is a bit scary. Luckily this is not pure science (not even pure maths) and the proof is that some times it appears some anomalies in the fashion world. For instance, that timid but wonderful trend, that has been showing up here and there, inspired by the twenties fashion. It’s not like is fully successful but it’s there. The showbiz soon echoed this fashion, like Baz Luhrman with ‘The Great Gatsby’ movie (2013).  This fact is very encouraging. It means that still there is space for creativity and real originality for the designers.

After my lately discovering I’m thrilled to find out what fashion will bring us. However, I’ll keep applying the 20 – 20 rule to be easily sure I’m not démodé, just in case.

MAN, DON'T LISTEN TO THE MESSAGE

To my dear men friends

I was considering talking about Morning Glory and  how forgotten man’s sexuality is, when I received a whatsapp message from a friend, girl friend, regarding some speech from a professor in Stanford University. He was talking about the relation mind-body and how healthy it can be to have good friendship with friends. Fair enough. It sounds like a very good topic. So the message quotes that professor with these words: ‘One of the best thing that a man can do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas, for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health is to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends’.

‘That’s so unfair!’ I thought. So according to that professor men are fucked up. Their health is compromised only because they born with a penis. They never could feel the healthy pleasure of releasing a lot of serotonin during a nice conversation with a friend. They can just feel something slightly similar chatting with their wives. Is only me or that’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard? At the end of the message they ask you to forward it to all your girl friends to celebrate how nice is to be a girl who has girl friends to have a coffee with and shoot up some serotonin. Yey!

I wondered how a person as educated as that professor head of psychiatry of Stanford University could say something like that. In order to write this post I tried to track down the source of that message and surprise, surprise. I couldn’t. I could find only some blogs where they mention the same message but they don’t know the source either. The only origin seems to be the same message in some Facebook page. So, as I was guessing, this story seems fake. The message never said the name of the professor, or when or where exactly this happened. This is because the professor was Dr David Siegel* and what he said it was a joke! 
Thus the message itself it was nothing more than people pretending to be cool and feminist.  Well, my friends, this is what I call fake feminism. It’s that kind of things that pretend to revere women but using the same topical sexist concepts. ‘Women are more sensitive than men’. Namely, when we consider something is feminist because it says rubbish about men. That message is not horrible only because it says that men aren’t sensitive, it is horrible because it insists in the idea that men and women are different. Not only physically, they are mentally different, they feel different, they behave different. Then after reading the message and feeling tempted to forward the message to all my friends, I stopped myself because I realized that a lot of my friends are men. I had many good and profound conversations with my male friends. Of course! Therefore, sending a message like this to them would be very offensive. Although I’m sure a lot of people think that men really behave differently. Men have this way to be that they don’t like to talk about they business, especially with other men. Is it because they really don’t like to talk? No, it’s not. Of course, they love to talk about everything. The problem is often they feel they’re going to be judged and mocked if they talk about some sensitive topic with their fellows. But that’s not written on their DNA. That’s the way men are educated. They must be strong and don’t show their feelings because this means showing weakness.

And what was that thing about the Morning Glory? Well, it seems something completely disconnected with the topic but it’s not. I tried to find out why this phenomenon happens. It seems to be some kind of maintenance works of the body, but it’s nothing for sure. Surprisingly there is not a lot of information about it. Basically, there are not many studies about men‘s sexuality. It seems that everybody think that men’s sexuality is simple and obvious, nothing worth to be studied. Men just want sex in any which way and as much as possible. Because they have no feelings, no emotions. Even all their erogenous zones are condensed in one only area: the penis. That’s very unfair and very demanding as well. How many time men don’t feel too much pressure about sex in general, not only when they are in the bed, even when they are just walking by the street or watching TV. Their feelings, the same with women, interfere in the way they live sex. In the same way that in the last decades, thanks to the women liberation we know a lot more about women sexuality, regarding men it seems that they are far from this liberation and feel the sex as natural as it is. With no judgments or prejudices. Proof of that is that men don’t seem very open to sex toys. That’s because men have many many issues in their mind about how things must be. But again, it is very difficult for men talk about how they experience sex if people keep saying men are not sensitive, men are not good talking, etc.

If we want a better world for women it must be a better world also for men, because we are in the same ship here. Going further, encouraging men to think about their feelings and their sexuality, to open their hearts about anything that worries them is the most feminist or equialgender thing we can do.

After all that I can just say: Let’s have coffee with all our friends, whether they are men or women. We have a lot to learn from each other and yes, it's very healthy.

That's the message: In an evening class at Stanford, the last lecture was on the mind-body connection – the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman, whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends. At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences.Physically, this quality “girlfriend time” helps us to create more serotonin – a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings, whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings? Rarely.Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.There’s a tendency to think that when we are “exercising,” we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged—not true.In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking!So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky.Let’s toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it’s very good for our health!

*Finally I discovered that the lecture was true and the information points Dr. David Spiegel, who talking about how social isolation deduces lifetime, makes a joke about one old study which points that married man and singles women live longer. Audience laughed in that moment. It is was a joke! You can see it in this video, minute 1:39.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlFaIxTv1_w&noredirect=1

RUNNING WITH SQUIRRELS

Today in the morning, showing some spectacular willpower, I joined the hordes of runners. Everyday, at lunch time, you can see people running for their lives. It’s as if lions were chasing them. They use the lunch break for running instead of eating something and taking a break. They run for that life style which will save them from a lot of diseases. But honestly, that thing of going to run it’s really tough. It demands a huge physical effort and willpower. Probably that’s why after a while (hardly 5 minutes running) a squirrel crossed in front of me and that was a good excuse to stop and chase it. Squirrels are so cute! I just wanted to caress it and snuggle it. Why didn’t it realize that I didn’t mean to harm it? As the squirrel knows I’m a ferocious predator. If I managed to catch it, it would be very likely that I would tear it apart in seconds and eat it. How many times could this have happened to a squirrel in the history? So the squirrel climbed up a tree and then it stood up to me: tense claws and legs, arched body, stiff tail over its head jerking it sharply. That’s something very funny they do. So cute! Although its intention was to scare me pretending a ferocious look. Surely its respiration and heart rate were accelerated. That’s exactly stress. Then I realised I was stressing and terrifying the poor squirrel. I left it alone.

That's the squirrel in question

Again a couple of runners pass me by, running of course. But what are they escaping from? Are they stressed? At least their heartbeat and breathing are accelerated and their muscles on tension. The same as the squirrel threatened by a giant predator, namely myself. That running thing is difficult. It requires a big effort, even for our own organism which needs a great display of resources and many natural rhythm changes. Whoever has tried to run regularly has unlikely succeeded, for sure. How do regular runners do it? I’ve been observing them. I don’t envy them. There is an explanation for their superhuman willpower. They are stressed. They really run for their lives although there is no predator threatening them. Luckily we have climbed to the top of the food chain. We live in completely safe places and away from any natural threats –leaving out the danger that people themselves can be to us-. However that survival mechanism, stress, is still there. It’s animal instinct.

In his book ‘Why zebras don’t get ulcers’ Robert Sapolsky talks at length about stress. About how stress represents a great blot in our current society. As it is related to cardiovascular diseases, digestive problems, diabetes, infertility, growth problems, it’s almost an endless list. Also anxiety, insomnia, depression, etc, of course. Well, Sapolsky explains that it is has produced a little technical error. Stress works, proof of that is our success as a species. It happens that stress has only an On and an OFF mode. Nothing else. Danger! Stress ON. No danger… stress OFF. The only thing our brain does is put stress on whenever it feels any danger. Any means. It can be a lion or simply the gas bill, but your body reacts in the same way. Therefore the only way to control that is not perceiving like a danger something which is not. It is not a danger because you’re not going to lose your life because of it. That’s very easy to say but very difficult to achieve. It’s all because of the powerful human imagination. Squirrels or zebras don’t have such an imagination. We can imagine the lion and get afraid. If they don’t see it they’re not afraid.

The predator in question

There the runners are, running for their life because they must have so many ‘predators’ behind them, such their bosses, the mortgage, the trade market, their children’s marks, college fees, a job interview, those extra pounds that make her looks less attractive, the girlfriend who could be cheating on him, and so on. Nothing of that represents a real risk for our lives. However, our heart accelerates and our muscles get tense anyway. If it’s like this, at least let’s give to our bodies what they are ready for: run! Running when they should be resting. How bad must their work be that running represents a rest for them. Something that makes it more bearable.

But what does the squirrel think when it sees somebody running? Well, it thinks that some predator is coming, so better to climb up a tree just in case. But don’t believe that what happens to the squirrel is the same as what happens to the runners. Squirrel has neither insomnia, nor panic attacks, nor depression, nor ulcers, nor cardiac problems. It is very good because its stress is unusual and healthy. The fright that the squirrel has some times makes it get fit, because as soon as the danger is gone the squirrel relaxes and carries on with its life as usual. So we needn’t be afraid of stress, it’s not as evil as it looks. If one day you have to run because you’re losing your flight that’s an unusual and good stress. Practice a sport is an unusual stress already. As we don’t have to run because a lion is chasing us, we can get stressed for those uncommon things which make our heart and organism get fit. Like a kind of maintenance which is definitely not harmful to us. Why? Because it’s a one-time event. Problem –stress –problem ends –relax. It should be always like this because there is nothing in our current life that can kill us. Only when the stress becomes chronic and the relax period never comes is when we are f***** up.

WATER ON EARTH

The other day, we were talking about water. I don’t remember very well how our conversation began, but it was because somebody said water is infinite. I replied ‘No, it’s not’. It’s one of this things I remember from the school, because my memory is strange and some things, which they taught me in school, I’ve retained in my mind -although I remember much more from TV, film and books-. I remembered a curious detail: that water may be vast but it is finite. That is, the same amount of water exists in the planet since Earth, at the moment of its formation, cooled down and steam became water. That’s why water follows its cycle, from the ocean to the clouds, rain, land, rivers and again to the ocean, but always the same water eternally recycled. The thing is that water must be a lot to seem endless. But if it is indeed finite, then there has to be a figure, so promptly we googled it and there it was. So easy, so quick.

Who was the first one to ask how much water was on Earth? After that one many more, but no one could google it before. How lucky we are! We can know anything in an instant. This is something truly revolutionary. We are not conscious but we are living a revolution, something which changes everything. Why do we want to go school in order to accumulate the maximum information possible which we might need one day? -it’s something quite random-. It’s not needed because the moment we need it, in case we need it, we’ll get it instantly, because there is the internet and smart phones. I know there are people to whom this idea feels horrible. We’re wasting time in schools!! Especially in a moment like now when free school and its value are questionable. But this value is old and obsolete. Public, free and compulsory education had value when the information was a scarce good which only few people retained and could communicate. But nowadays information is everywhere and belongs to all of us –by the way, nothing more social or socialist-. Actually, today anyone can learn what he or she wants if they invest enough time. Time is the only valuable good now. Then, going back to school, I imagine what great pianist I could be if, instead of studying maths or economy -the subjects I used to hate the most-, I would have spent all that time studying music and playing piano. Basically I would have invested all my time in something I was really interested in, instead of feeling frustrated trying to learn what all of us had to learn in the same way and the same level –marks- even though I would never need that information in my adult life. I ask the question here. Do we need schools? Colleges? Titles? I think it’s a great debate. Yes, I think we do, but they should be presented in a very different way.

By the way, there are more than 326 millions of trillions of gallons of water on Earth. One gallon is 3.785 litres. Can you do the calculation?