Malcolm X Plaza: Nighttime Musings

Her presence speaks LOUDLY.
When she walks into the building everyone gazes.
When I stand out in the hallway waiting for 'Intro to Archaeology' to start, I try not to stare but my brief glances soak up her visual archaeology.

Meet Agni: She's quite the spectacle on campus.
Like her counterparts at SF State she's here to pursue a bachelors degree. Dissimilar to 99.8% of the campus community, she's an Indian-American woman who unapologectically sports LOLITA.

(Lolita, according to Wikepedia, is a fashion subculture originating in Japan that is based on Victorian clothing as well as costume from the Rococo period.)

Via cultural appropriation, Agni's material adornments are especially louder than most. She stirs the visual senses in audacious ways. And from my perspective, Agni, like you and I, sports her own human costume. A type of human costume she chooses freely.

A blurry night shot of Agni, age 18

She tells me something along these lines:

"When I wake up sad, I put on something bright and colorful. Different sorts of clothes can change my mood. Some of her inspirations come from Lolita Fashion (Cosplay, Sweet), Kids Shoes, and all things child-like. She says she wears what she wears for emotional reasons.... before she was afraid, a bit self-conscious to wear bold outfits, but now her mantra is:

Wear what makes you Happy :)

pedestrianism 101: Introduction to the Evolution of Material Culture

After reading the little book “Cut My Cote” by Dorothy K. Burnham (of the Textile Department in the Royal Ontario Museum) one word comes to mind:

Provenance.

In particular, the provenance of our woven cloth.

On "Cut My Cloth's" cover you see a simple illustration: one large white coat embroidered with black vegetation patterns. The patterns look likes leaves. They also remind me of the awesome designs I've seen inside of Muslim mosques around the world. (Well, technically what I've seen through pictures of mosques around the world. hahaha)

Today, in Sacramento, California---- we see these same shapes printed onto long flowy summer dresses at Buffalo Exchange, on tote bags carried by women and men who work at Multi-Cultural Centers, on shirts worn by homeless humans sitting on concrete benches outside local libraries.

Ancient patterns are invoked on the modern material objects we use throughout our day-to-day existences.

Is this material symbolism a reversion back to nature? A reversion back to our origins? the soil----the land-----the flowers-----the nostalgic trees of our childhood?

Do beginnings have no end and ends have no beginnings?

Yet there is another, more far-reaching meaning. The simple traditional garments of many cultures, changing infinitely slowly over long periods of time, have both consistency and incredible variety. What are the influences that govern their shapes and forms? …the material from which a garment is made is the factor that has most influence on the particular shaping of it…

------a passage from pg 2 of "Cut My Cloth"

WOODSY COURTYARD + outside Burk Hall: The Age of Casual Comfort

...Sitting outside of Burk Hall waiting for my Black Psychology class to start and beside me sat a woman. Her hair was long. A different shade of blonde. I'm not sure if she was smoking. Her tennis shoes looked worn and blemished as if she walked everywhere in them. And I can't remember but I think she was smoking a cig.

Her name was Dawn. We spoke for nearly an hour. And as time took its course I started to enjoy hearing her worldviews, her transformative experiences, she even told me this story about how she brought her Himalayan cat to school and how when the cat heard the chanting sound of nearby Monks, the cat followed the sound.

Overall, this was one my favorite interviews so far. It was a haphazard, unplanned meeting whereI began to ...understand how people wear themselves and less of a focus on the material.... Do you know what I mean?

How do you wear yourself? I like saying this out loud.

Dawn, 61

I'm not so sure fashion is humane. If I'm really being humane I
wouldn't wear things like leather. (Stylewise) I go through stages. I have tons of jewelry on walls, it's like another part of me. Right now my life is about Introspection, going Inside. There are other things on my mind---- clothes don't really matter now.

Visual Forms of Pedestrian Poetry. For this writer, that is what the fabric you, I, me, she, he, it, they, us, we, wear and envelope ourselves in Everyday.

You are a walking form of poetry.
A free verse, a haiku, pantoum.

You are a walking form of poetry not to be over-analyzed, but to be illuminated for the sheer source of something perfectly imperfect. This blog, Pedestrianism, was intended to document San Francisco street style but my intention is slowly moving in directions I unconsciously un-inteded: to understand peoples from different backyards of social thought (and if I'm lucky, maybe even to befriend a few along the way).
Material culture is a human form of subsistence. And street fashion has leaped beyond its general denotations and has formed this wonderful kind of art realm, intertwining with Everyday wardrobe.



Through my journeys I would like to get a sense (not an answer but a sense. . . . . . .a sensitivity) of differing perspectives towards the many questions floating through my mind's eye.

I want to see how people are, how they wear theirselves, how we wear ourselves.

Where did this adornment originate? Where was its provenance?

How did our wardrobes evolve over our time. From birth? From primordial births that kept rebirthing these beautiful lineages of biodiversity?

Who are you?
Why do you wear what you wear?
Why do you even bother to answer my questions.

Does clothing, does material culture, do adornments matter?

Like a psychoanalyst I ask: How does it effect your lifestyle?

And if we aren't really affected and if there is no meaning:

Then why aren't we comfortable with our nakedness? When did nudity become taboo?

How we dress says many things. "Even when we say nothing, our clothes are talking endlessly and noisily to everyone who sees us," says writer Allison Laurie in The Language of Clothes. "Unless we are naked and bald it is impossible to be silent."

Hi my name is Megan. Some know me by my middle name, Jessica. My younger kin call me Meggo. If you want, you can call me by my pen-name: The Awkward Pedestrian.

VvvVelcome to Pedestrianism.

Pedestrianism is a blog about ALL OF US. I'm less interested in what the capitalist-consumerist fashion industry has to say about clothing and more intrigued in exploring our streets of lived human existence.

What is our relationship to our surroundings?

How do we wear ourselves?

What earthly elements BIND US TOGETHER?

For me, one significant response to these questions is fabric. The fabric we wear speaks soOoO LOUDLY. Fabric is a physical, psychological and spiritual part of our everyday identity. It is the tangible link between "ourselves, our souls, and the outside world". I, you, me, she, he, it, they, we... all of us are bound together

How we wear ourselves might be less about vanity and more about personal or political philosophy.

Through street-style interviews, personal collage art and photos, and philosophical articles---- I aim to seek diverse interpretations of the language of clothing.

The responses below are from the first street-style interviews from San Francisco State University. Two responses include: 1) Vivienne, a 30-year-old woman who I met through the Community Involvement Center. (See Spectacle A, B, & C) 2) Kyle, a 21-year-old man who was standing outside of the science building. (See Spectacle D & E)

Spectacle A

Spectacle B

Spectecal C,,,,,, Spectacle D

Spectacle E