Prudence in Hell 010
How Do I Love Thee, Part I: Aposematic Dressing
Prudence in Hell was originally conceived as an advice column, it just addresses very unusual questions I prefer to leave implicit by design. It adds richness to the fabric.
How Do I Love Thee deals expressly with aesthetics, though—my personal ones (which yes, I get asked about, as they’re clearly of surpassing concern, and part of what makes me an interesting respondent.)
So these will be a bit in the style of Leopardi’s Zibaldone, Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and the style guide of a seasoned kitsune, who must pass for human whilst keeping you distracted from my by-now rather showy six-or-seven tailed shadow.
The question of how do I love things comes down to the question of how do I love. Things are stand-ins, affordances, facilitators and intensifiers for love. I am a woman who prizes beautiful things and owning them. I am not austere, nor a minimalist, nor beige.
I am black punctuated with jewel colours, an aposematic dresser who triggers curiosity, attraction and the general impression of being poisonous to most, which is an honest woman’s fair warning.1 I am, after all, on the poison path. And married.
Someone I was meeting for the first time yesterday asked me what I would look like and my answer was: “like an insect” —the emerald-carapace of a well-structured blazer, over a corset that covered only the thorax, under which were ‘secondary wings’ of transparent black fabric, black leather pants, black leather Argentine boots. Some of the items I was wearing, notably the leather, have been with me for about two decades.
Leather is one of my go-tos for several reasons. Even better than linen, which is subject to discolouration, leather models good ageing. It is also unforgiving, which is a beautiful quality in a material you intend to dress in. If you are sexy, it will show it, with no need for accessorising. If you’re not, it will make you look like a clown (another bullfighting trope. This is an honest material).
You can also not fool leather: too many zippers or buttons, the wrong shape of neck, the wrong length of a jacket—all are lethal errors in self-presentation, revealing of vices: too impatient to find the right fit; fashion victim; no eye for detail, or —perhaps the worst of them all— not knowing your body shape, and making it perfectly clear just how.
Leather is draconian; and so it should always be sourced from real animals. (A cow is also a dragon.) Pleather is not leather, and it won’t deceive anyone more than Impossible Meat. Make Meat Possible Again; Probable, Even. Leather is ritual; pleather, ideology.
I have a leather rug which I am currently using as a back throw for the Charlotte Perriand chair I work from (we will talk about my penchant for armless chairs soon enough). It is the skin of a calf that was never born. It was sacrificed with a strategic, simple puncture that the skin retains, as its only mark —a piercing— in exactly the right place. The art is not just in the fetal softness of the leather itself, but in the impeccability of the kill. Take it up with the gauchos, not me. It was a gift and it is cherished as one. It is also the finest, cruelest leather that I own and that is why it doesn’t touch the floor, as a sign of reverence.
The other material I hold in regard above any other is also animal-sourced: silk. Leather and silk are the capstones of my wardrobe, and the entirety of my look is built around them (with strong supporting action from the likes of, say, alpaca). The result is slightly aggressive; materially dominant; balanced on fit and flow, and anchored by interesting jewellery. It is soft to the touch but not to the eye. Like I said, aposematic dressing.
The Bull-Leaping Fresco. 1450. Stucco panel with scene in relief. 78.2 cm × 104.5 cm. Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete.
I distinguish between aposematic and deimatic dressing, on which I promise more soon. One is playing offence and the other defence.