Ralph Lauren and Alex Burgess

Many things in this mad world puzzle me.  Why do Dallas drivers drive with all the fury of competitors on the Indy 500 coupled with the lack of caution seen in bumper car drivers, yet these same linger at traffic lights well after they turn green as though they want to make sure no one else would like to go first?  Why do Clevelanders up-sell every last attribute of their Great Lakes mini-metropolis (of which there are many) at the slightest encouragement as though they were paid travel agents, and at what age does this upselling start?  Why does the city of Detroit, even in her murkiest twilight years, happen to produce such a high number of noteworthy musicians?  Why do Austrian women speak in a lilting accent, but Austrian men don't especially?  All these are intriguing questions.  The greatest puzzlement I experienced in the last month struck while I was looking through Ralph Lauren's Collection.  Remember when I wrote that I loved lit-inspired design?  Allow me to be specific here: I do not love design based on Alex and his Droogs from A Clockwork Orange.  

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There are people (many found on DeviantArt) who do indeed enjoy this type of dress-up, which fact I became acutely aware of at a midnight screening of A Clockwork Orange.  This pertrubed me perhaps more than was reasonable, mainly because a large, rowdy mob of people who gleefully dress-up as a psychopathic, sadistic killer and torturer of women makes me a bit vexatious as my assumption is they either idolize said character - in which case, run for the nearest fire exit - or, they have grossly misinterpreted the theme which makes me want to talk to them about subversive tactics of modern authors such as Burgess to present a morally traditional theme (namely, not only ought you avoid torturing and killing people, you should also avoid trying to surgically remove free will), which speech in given situation might make a perfectly normal person want to torture me.  Oh, the crazy weekend adventures of literature majors who-pay-more-attention-to-the-actual-book's-plot-than-the-subsequent-cult-following-of-the-film-based-on-the-American-edition-with-the-final-chapter-edited-out venturing into society.

Anyway, getting back to the point: I get an underground sub-culture playing Droog dress up, but why you, Ralph, why you?  An all white men's clothes ensemble plus white suspender plus a black bowler hat?  Is it just that Ralph thought that was a neat look, completely independent of the cult icon?  Are my eyes deceiving me due to my culture-clash flashback?  Despite this Droog drama going on in my head and the fact that there are several varitions of this theme in the collection, there were at least a couple of pieces I really like.  

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Plus the models did not look like last week's lab cadavers warmed over which was nice.
 

P.S. Whilst browsing through Google images to research my Clockwork Orange conspiracy theory, I found this piece which I thought was kind of awesome:


[Editor's Note - In the interest of full disclosure, I must reveal that upon further meditation prodded on by the readers interesting comments, I have found that the costume lover in me  has won out: I actually can dig Clockwork Orange inspired costumery as illustrated by Kristy Elena, author of the very entertaining blog Vogue Gone Rogue.


P.S.  I also feel the need to clarify that I am not recommending A Clockwork Orange.  Though elegantly made, it's a rough movie and most people would probably just be nauseated by it.  I am enamored with Kubrick's design and execution -- if you want to discuss the film, you should just contact me.  Yeah.