Have we been here too long?
For whatever reason, we’re perpetually on guard for the possibility that we’ve “been here too long.” That all of the zany foreign Kiwi-ness might have soaked into our daily lives and become the norm.
For the first year, I was acutely aware that the, er, currents of fashion seem to have blown with a great and confounding vigor through the young ladies of NZed. I’ve even been known to exclaim that young women between, say 14 and 24 shouldn’t be allowed to dress themselves.
As example of this, I would often cite our hapless local newspaper’s weekly food and style section, and the “What They’re Wearing” column. Every week, a local fashion leader, say a boutique owner or a shopgirl, is featured modeling what presumably she feels is her most fabulous outfit; showcasing both her fashion nous and her stores’ best items.
For months, “What They’re Wearing” was reliable, harmless weekly entertainment. A safe opportunity to laugh at the provincial locals and their crazy clothes.
Then, without much fuss, the young ladies started looking an awful lot like the girls at he grocery store, and walking around the universities, and you know, perhaps layering four different too-tight-here-too-loose-there technicolor petticoats really is normal walking-about clothing.
Have we really been here too long?
[apologies for the quality of the scanned newsprint...]
Category: Kiwi Quirks, New Zealand One comment »
June 29th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
dudes, you think this is bad, we were just in Seattle where a bizarro civil-war-reenactor meets just-out-of-bed-bathrobe thing seems to be going on. People stalking the streets in tails and blue jeans with their partner wearing a cowboy hat and a floor-length pink silk duster. I kid you not. Poor-fitting knickers, attempts to look country… i blame it on newgrass or something, but it was. very. funny. since we now live somewhere where people actually work on farms, and play music, and very few of them dress like that.
Thanks for the entertainment. I owe yous some moolah and some maple sugar. Have not forgotten.