The picture of the older gentleman, sitting alone, enjoying his cappuccino. All dressed up, showing the world that he doesn’t care or ask for our approval. Overdressed? I don’t think there is such a thing. One can never be overdressed if you have the confidence to be comfortable -no matter what you wear.
“Isn’t elegance forgetting what one is wearing?” Yves Saint Laurent defined elegance in the form of a question and not a claim. That too is not without irony. A master of fashion sends customers away. The elegance is there where the clothes are not or no longer. Sure, that can be interpreted as snobbery. After all, who can ultimately afford this ignorance of their own clothes? But to think that the paradox of elegance is over? That would probably be too convenient after all.
Choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch expressed a similar thought as Saint Laurent, when she remarked that she is not interested in how people move, but in what moves them. This also hits the heart of elegance, which beats for a disproportion to the mirror image.
Our society has rules. The gentleman wears pants, the lady a lot of tulles. Social fate obliges women to be unambiguous. She is the beautiful, the fully equipped possession. The arm-candy, the trophy wife?
I myself had an elegant dress years ago. It transformed me into something I didn’t know I had in me. It was my superhero cape. I felt invincible and for a short time almost immortal. Nothing could happen to me in that dress. I saw people looking at me. It was made for me to wear it with confidence and pride. I had felt it the moment I had tried it on. I had to have it, I had to buy it, even if it meant to sacrifice other things. No other peace of clothing ever gave me the same feeling.
Now I know it wasn’t elegance then, and sadly there is still no elegance in me now. I thought elegance was something we show, but in reality, it’s the opposite. Elegance is simplicity.
This simplicity is now a privilege of men well into the 20th century and one of the extravagant women. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, for example, were elegant because everything about their flawless presentation looked completely unmotivated. No society, no father, no mother seemed to have ever told them how to dress, and even in the fanciest tails and evening gown, no one seemed willing to approve.
One could accuse these heirs of the dandy’s knowledge of domination, similar to Yves Saint Laurent’s forgetting.
You are never elegant when you should. Never on command and not in front of the mirror of fashion, which can only help you anyway if you don’t confuse anything, nothing that you see in it, with elegance itself. A trend, a so-called must-have, cannot be elegant at all. Just as disinterest and contempt can not be, or simply any kind of self-righteousness. Courage and generosity, on the other hand, are extremely elegant. These gaps of nonchalance. They are probably the most elegant of all.
For me, elegance has always been Audrey Hepburn. Big brown eyes, narrow waist, cropped trousers and ballerinas. Audrey with a cigarette holder and thick pearls, mischievous and yet aloof. How often have I watched “A Heart and a Crown?” I watched her in a circle skirt and with a silk scarf around her narrow neck, wrap her arms tightly around Gregory Peck in order to discover Rome with a Vespa.
But her example was difficult to transfer. Pearl earrings made me look old, and the updo worked alone in front of the mirror during the week at night, but never when I wanted to leave the house on Saturday evening as a lady. There was too much nostalgia, too little presence in this idea of elegance. It had no connection to the world I lived in.
“Elegance is refusal,” said Coco Chanel. But what do you refuse? Maybe an attitude, maybe also innovations. Because elegance is more than the way you combine clothes, it is also the way you fill the clothes with life. The message of elegant women seems in most cases to be reliability, a certain degree of control, predictability that always had a bit of a clean slate. What is underneath? Who knows. Simple but beautiful and above all, the elegant appearance should be seamless. Just no excess. But what does this Hepburnian elegance have to do with the present?
Little with my life. After all, in the end, you always run after an idea of perfection that is so stylized, innocent, so non-vulgar that it is hardly possible to recognize it. No guidance. No inspiration. A dead end. But what is the alternative?
Elegance probably no longer exists in this form today. I couldn’t come up with anybody who I would call elegant today.
Perhaps our world has changed. The world we live in today is dominated by practical aspects. So how is elegance still expressed today?
We are used to living a practical life. In the 50s, clothes were tight and stiff, which would no longer be conceivable today. Armani changed it in the eighties. His suits were gorgeously elegant but still casual. And thanks to stretch components, even tight things can now be comfortable.
I think elegance is something you are born with. You can’t buy it, if it’s in you, sooner or later it will come out. I truly believe you have to be self-confident to be elegant. It’s the inner poise and serenity shining through. It’s the courage to be casual, or modern when you feel like it. Telling the world that you live today, in the here and now and you don’t have to please everyone.
I think many of us could be elegant, but instead, we try so hard to fit in. The older gentleman in the picture, however, I don’t think he even tries to fit in and why should he? He is confident, telling the world:
I looked up the definition of “elegance” and most of what I saw really pointed to the term being applied to someone by someone else. You, my darling Bridget, seem to have equated it with self-confidence. This whole post provides examples of the former though I think in real life many of these celebrities lacked self-confidence. I would certainly say that each had his/her own style. For ourselves, then, let’s just say it’s our intention or possibly our hope that our style reflects our self-confidence or self-image and in the best cases of the nth degree of self-confidence we could describe our individual style as elegant.
I think elegance has nothing to do with clothes we wear, but with the way we wear them. I am Klutz. I can be confident when I am all “pretzeled up,” but I will never be elegant.
My posture, my demeanor doesn’t allow it. 🙂
Maybe let’s just agree to disagree? To me elegance comes from the outside in and maybe to you elegance comes from the inside out?
What a fascinating topic, Bridget. I so rarely see anyone dressed in what I could identify as elegant. In fact, here in Southern California, “I don’t care uber-casual” seems to prevail. I recall as a child when I was well-dressed even to go into nice shopping districts with my mother. Those days seem like a relic from an ancient era! I love the photo of the gentleman sitting alone in his finery. He appears serene and calm and at home with himself, and what I would think if I walked by was that he took care of himself, and cared about the message he conveyed, but not in a self-conscious manner. I could never carry off the elegance of someone like Audrey Hepburn, but I sure did admire her, and probably had a little envy! 🙂
So true. I think we were more elegant in the past. Now we all are practical and casual as often as possible.
If find the subject very interesting -as you could tell. 🙂
I see that gentleman as on his way to the dance studio. He will spend all afternoon dancing with each lady in turn, making each one feel as elegant as he feels, regardless of their build, or their attire!
Peter, I love that. The old gentleman on his way to the dance studio. Brilliant! I always make up stories in my head when I see interesting pictures of people. We should make this a Writing Challenge. “Here is the picture, tell me the story behind it.” People only! Old Master pieces, Photography. Oh, we would be good at it. Now my imagination is running wild. A seed has been dropped -not planted yet.
That’s what education is all about – planting seeds!
Nicely argued
Thank you, Derrick