From the many wonders of Naples, both C. and me enjoyed greatly the local women and their clothes. I have lived in The Netherlands now for some twenty plus years, and C. her whole life, so we are accostumed at the easiness with which dutch people carry their clothing. Mind me, this is not a compliment. My hypothesis is that the dutch are a fundamentally pragmatic people, so all of them wear pragmatically, and don’t care that much as how they actually look. You can recognize a dutch in another country by three things. He or she is likely to be taller than the rest, the clothings used are frequently softly colored, very boring and very practical, and there is nothing like a elegant step, a musical sway of hips, or a straight back, or a proud head. All these things you will see in peoples that are busy with how do they look to each other. The dutch I have grown accustomed to don’t care. They are confortable with themselves and accordingly they walk gangly, and they dress boringly. Why would they do otherwise?
Well, we should ask Neapolitans.
At first sight, what striked us was the lack of anything that could be described as a cannon. In my normal life, I can see the fashions colonize the clothing of our friends, so I know what we will be seeing next time we go out, for at least the next couple of years. They might be starting to dwindle, but the percentages of dutch ladies with leather boots, floral printed skirts and a leather (or jean) jacket in a friday night downtown could easily reach the eighties or the nineties. Or the middle age entrepreneurs and their badly cut blazers with pink shirts under. It goes on, of course. One could use the dress of an individual to easily classify him or her in one of the few categories of people available around here.
But nothing like that would be even possible in the Neapolitan night.
We have all heard that fashion is an expression of the self. But I have always doubt it, given the pervasive existence of modes, of social pressures dictating what is hip to dress, what belongs to the social group that you belong to. The most that you can express, seems to me, is your aspiration of belonging to a group by following it’s dress code. That I believe, until I started paying attention to the girls in the night of Naples. Skirts? sure. Pants? why not? pants with flares, or skinny? both, of course. Tops in lycra, and in cotton, shirt like, or leotard like. Some in silk too. With one shoulder, or with none. With an open cleavage, with a circular hole between the breasts, with an oval opening between the breasts, with a closed neck. With an open back. Or not. I think you get the idea.
And mind me again, this is neither a compliment.
Diversity does not yield an estethical advantage in itself. There is plenty of people out there that has not yet figured out what actually fits them, their moods, their body type and their skin, the shape of their faces and who knows what else. And then they go out, in the night of Naples, and most of them make terrible mistakes. Like all those suggestive pieces of missing fabric… displaced from where they should be, or skinny pants in strong legs, or whatever you can imagine. If you can think about it, chances are that we saw it in Naples. And chances are, indeed, that very few of them were actually beautiful.
And it doesn’t matter at all.
In the same way that it is very difficult to be repelled by a boringly dress, but happy with himself gangly dutch, it was impossible not to be charmed by the creativity and the diversity of the Neapolitanian night. Charmed by the many failings as much as by the successes. Charmed by the pleasure of people playing with their clothes, and figuring out what they actually like, and going out with the experiment, and having a great time.
Forget the mode indeed.