Listen, I don’t know who “Cyril Style” is either, but he’s a complete cunt. In describing a series of photos by Julia Chesky called “The Original Hipster,” featuring a homeless guy in New York, Cyril notes:
Personally I have always found the homeless to be a great source of inspiration and totally agreed with Julia’s title “The Original Hipster”.
A great source of inspiration?!? Who the fuck does he think he is? Erin Wasson?
Cunt.
***UPDATE: Cyril is a double cunt for modifying his statement with the words “specific details about” after I posted this. I copied and pasted his statement last night. I would never edit a quote just to serve my purposes. Cunt ².
I’d like to second that and share some articles from 2 amazing women that are far more articulate than I on this subject, though I do have a lot to say! Read here: http://iheartthreadbared.wordpress.com/tag/homelessness/
I hope you enjoy that blog SW if you already haven’t seen it. I really enjoy your COTW!
Incredible! I don’t feel inspired I feel tears welling up and concern. I worry how people ended up on the street. I wish I had a magic wand. Some days I harden my heart and pretend I haven’t seen them. The day I am ‘inspired’ by a homeless person I will cunt of the week.
Missed the word ‘be’ that’s how miffed I am!
what’s a homeless style really look like????? Homeless people here in the Philippines has blood coming out from their nose and ears so tell me how’s that for an inspiration?
Erghhh fucking cunt-tard!!
I agree with you SW, there is nothing inspirational in being homeless – however, the correct quote of the French guy is: “Personally I have always found specific details about the homeless to be a great source of inspiration” – you omitted “specific details”. As I understand this, he’s not inspired by the homeless but by some details about them (messy hair, a pile of clothes, dirt, who knows…). I don’t see anything wrong with being inspired by someone’s appearance, homeless or not. And the man in question says he has been homeless by choice (I guess he’s some kind of a freaky-loner type) so I don’t find it insulting for someone to photograph him, he’s not a victim.
Dear Anon – sorry messy hair nor dirt on a homeless person is not inspirational it is messy hair and dirt. Surely it therefore should be inspirational on everyone not specific to being homeless.
Equally how can one state or classify a person as ‘a freaky loner type’ and then say he is not a victim. Humans are social creatures they do no choose to be ‘freaky loner types’. I enjoy solitude but I was raised by humans and am part of the pact. We thrive on love, nurture and companionship.
The specific details about being homeless are not inspirational for art. I suggest you read George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London
I really can’t stand people who claim to draw inspiration from the homeless. Sea posted something similar maybe a year or two back when she posted up photos from Mongolian nomads from “National Geographic” and ranted about their ability to mix patterns. Fucking cultural appropriation and classism.
Dear Make Do – maybe all the homeless people should decide to turn their lives around, go to a shelter, stop drinking, clean themselves, work hard on a lousy job to earn barely enough to have something to eat, find love and companionship, etc. It is hard, but one can do it. Some just won’t. Unlike you, I do not preach other people what to do, read, how to and where to live. for example, there are people eating food from garbage (freeganism) because they do not want to buy food, they are fighting food companies and showing their protest against world hunger. I would never do that, but I understand it. same thing here, the man says he is homeless by choice – I don not know his reasons, I would never be homeless by choice, but I respect his choice. He is not a victim if he prefers to be a loner. I will not preach him and force him to be a loving father and husband to a large family living in suburbia just because you think that would make him happy.
people can be inspired by the things they see around them, even homeless people. it can be tacky and insulting but in this specific case i do not see it.
Dear Anon – I’m not preaching about what a homeless person should do/be etc. I’m stating my objection to people using the word inspiration in context of being being homeless and specifically as you stated messy hair and dirt. If you use specific words and I respond to those specific words please don’t jump to a another level which I haven’t touched upon. Did I mention work? Did I suggest they should ‘turn themselves around’.
I think Miss A sums it up nicely with the word appropriation.
And for the record I spent years preventing my mentally ill sister becoming homeless. She didn’t respond to treatment in the way the authorities would like her to and guess what for bad behaviour you get thrown out of a hospital to teach you a lesson. How inspirational is that.
Oh and I don’t mean the above in a angry way. I was sighing when I typed. My point about my dear sister is to illustrate she wasn’t a victim either just psychotic and deranged and part of a society that doesn’t really care, because it is so overwhelming.
this is who “Cyril Style” is:
Profile: French Trendsetter, living & working in New York : art direction, trend forecasting, styling, designing is my daily basis. /////// ps: Sorry for my French, I don’t pretend to be a writer and I know that my writing is not the best… Follow us on http://twitter.com/trend_land
Website: http://trendland.net/
I think I will follow his twitter. I need some laughs in my daily grind.
On a more serious note, I pass by several homeless men on a daily basis just 1/2 a block from my apt (also in NYC) that I own along with my husband. This disparity is very unique to New York. There’s the high and low in every neighborhood, sometimes on every block. Just the other day, as I was walking down my block in 100 degree summer heat, there was a homeless man lying in the middle of the sidewalk on his bed of newspapers, trying to get some relief from the heat in the shade of a tree. It is unfortunate that this Cyril character finds inspiration in the plight of someone less fortunate than himself. These dilettantes (such as Cyril and the photographer) that have the luxury of being inspired by and dressing like the homeless make me sick. It’s trivializing a real problem. I hope they paid that guy for the photo shoot. The thing is, if the homeless had a choice, I don’t think that they would be dressing that way, in torn and dirty clothing, wearing their hair that way, or smelling that way. What’s next, deodorant that lets you SMELL like a homeless person?
Oh, and another thing- yes, I understand that the homeless man in the article is homeless by choice, but many times they “choose” being homeless due to mental illness, which is another sad thing about their situation.
Dear Make Do – As I said, I agree with you and SW, taking inspiration from other people’s misfortune is just bad, but I think this is not the case, this specific situation with Chris, Julia and Cyril, that’s all. I am not angry, too, and am sorry for your sister. Now, are we talking that Chris (the homeless model) is also bad because he is homeless by choice and is making out of it an inspiration worthy lifestyle? Is this also cultural appropriation – is he “stealing” homelessness from people who are (rightly) homeless because of life circumstances? to expand on the cultural appropriation topic – for example, a model wearing a Masai cape in a fashion editorial is cultural appropriation, and a Masai person wearing sneakers is just a fact? If nobody is hurt in the process, I think that people just need to live and let others live.
I think that the deodorant – or a “world most expensive perfume” – that will make you smell like a homeless person is, unfortunately, a serious possibility.
Speaking of Erin…. http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/07/rumor_rvca_dropped_erin_wasson.html
Fair and justly appointed Cunt of the Week, I say.
There is fucking nothing ‘inspirational’ about homelessness or poverty. What the fuck is wrong with people?
Anon: Who are you to say whether people are “rightly” homeless? (Seriously?!)
Who the fuck really chooses the despair of poverty and homelessness?
And then who the fuck seriously finds “Derelicte” inspiration for their own wankish, hipster fashion trends from it?
Who said the Maasai and other cultures struggling with post-colonial poverty/displacement/marginalization & impacts of Westernization weren’t hurt in the process that saw them end up in Nikes while their families die from AIDS?
Cultural appropriation trivializes, insults and in some cases violates the customs/beliefs/heritage of the appropriated culture.
But hey. It’s live and let die, right?
See, I can understand having a purely aesthetic appreciation of individual homeless people, or an imagined “homeless people” generalisation. But it’s pretty heinous that people can’t take a moment to realise that some things are more important than that. The problems of people’s real lives trump your right to chat about how neat you think people look! Jackasses!
I hate this. I just do. Plain and simple.
This past weekend the Pitchfork festival was held in my neighborhood in Chicago. While out to dinner we saw a lot of people dressed in what could only be described as Aspirational Homeless Hipster. The thing we have many homeless people in the area. They drink cheap booze and hang out in the alley, generally not bothering anyone. The Aspirational Homeless Hipsters drink cheap booze and generally bother everyone. As if they are counter culture and doing anything progressive.
Outfit details of homeless has always inspired great fashion designers.
Have you also heard about the Chinese homeless Fashion Icon ?
http://trendland.net/2010/03/06/chinese-homeless-fashion-icon-blacklisted-from-balenciaga/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/handsome-chinese-vagrant-draws-fans-of-homeless-chic-1915812.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/handsome-chinese-vagrant-draws-fans-of-homeless-chic-1915812.html
Ok, I think I get it now? It is insulting to have messy hair and piles of messy clothes on if you live in a house and have a job. It is insulting to wear Masai capes if you are a Caucasian living in Boston. It is insulting to wear feathers on your head if you are not a Native American (hello Queen Michelle, how are you?). Etc. Etc. Thank you all for making me a better person!
Here’s an idea. How about instead of folks expressing their inspiration by emulating homeless people’s “fashion,” people express their inspiration by volunteering at a homeless shelter and donating time, money or services to get people who are not “homeless by choice” off the streets and learning a trade, learning life skills, getting help for their addictions/mental illnesses?
Let me guess – these same people are inspired by a battered woman’s clever and crafty makeup application, too.
@anon – You just keep missing the point. And get over yourself; this is not about you. We’re not attacking YOU.
@brother Tiger – And you think this is cool? It’s pathetic. This kind of disgusting hipster “inspiration” was mocked in “Zoolander”. Only those that are bored with their privileged lives would be inspired by homelessness. Disgusting.
Stop discriminating homeless people. Stop saying they are all mentally ill victims. Are being neat and smelling good really SO important things? THAT is ethnocentric and classist. Some homeless people create very strong bounds of solidarity and friendship between them, they are not “loners”. And if some of they are, that is not per se a sign of mental illness. It´s true that some people suffer from a loneliness they haven´t chosen, but I think that others may freely choose to isolate themselves from this crazy society of competition and consumism, and I think we should respect that as the free choice of an adult.
Of course that many times homelessness is not a choice. That is because we live in an unfair and criminal system called capitalism. I think that is the real issue.
@brother Tiger – actually, the homeless man you’re referring to is mentally ill. Here’s an updated photo of him…http://goodnews.ws/2010/03/09/homeless-chinese-man-becomes-%E2%80%98derelicte%E2%80%99-fashion-icon/. I’m not saying you can’t take inspiration from whatever source you choose, but I think you have to draw a line when it comes to blatant exploitation.
Sis, you know how to start my Friday off right. LOL!
Call me nuts, but I get anon’s point as it pertains to Chris…homelessness isn’t always a choice, but some do choose it (and I am not referring to the mentally ill when I say this) and shouldn’t be called victims because it was their choice.
All that other stuff you guys are talking about, I won’t touch with a 10ft pole. Some people’s inspiration sources are definitely worth a hefty dose of side-eye and a COTW award…kinda like how Seth Aaron’s final Project Runway collection was inspired by German military uniforms of the 40’s…oh, those fashionable Nazis!
*fist pump* @Cecilia
I agree with Anon and Cecilia here. Why are we so condescending to groups who choose to live differently, such as those who choose homelessness, by pitying them, instead of respecting them for their choices? Are we so caught up in ourselves that we cannot accept that others may have completely different views and personal philosophy about living in the streets? Yes, for all their messy hair, their tattered clothes, I do admire them for choosing to get off the rat race and drop out from a consumption-driven-debt-accumulation society. They wear their homelessness like a badge of honor.
Sure, there are many who are forced to become homeless and are desperate to get back to their previous lives – they are the ones we should reach out to. However, those who decide to abandon a society composed of judgmental people like us, more power to them!
And come on, we have always been inspired in our fashion by those who seem to live in a different, more idyllic (we assume) incivism, eg. the Romas, the Bohemians, pirates, etc. Are the homeless not the modern equivalent in our cities of these nomadic, roaming communities?
Cecilia – don’t you think you are over reacting. Not everyone is saying ..blah.
The only person who mention messy hair, dirt and loner was Anon. No one specified anything. Most of us are spiting teeth over the use of the word inspirational. The contextual use of the word in association with homelessness and whatever else is deemed non mainstream. I have no idea if the person choose to be homeless. I am not judging him but I am amused by self satisfactory indulgent referencing by a third party. The post isn’t a discussion on homelessness it is on the person who uses such ridiculous terms. ditto AnonToo
What is with this anon stuff is it meant to be inspirational.
Dear Sister Wolf I really should finish the dinner and not drink wine and come back and read comments!!
anon- I omitted nothing! Cyril wised up after I posted this (and after I left him a comment on his post) and modified his statement to sound less idiotic.
anon and anon too – I understand why you are romanticizing homeless people. But unless you have spent time with them or worked with them, you are in no position to endorse their situation or lifestyle.
OF course, the homeless population is not one Entity. It consists of different groups who got to that point for different reasons. Here in California, they are mostly the mentally ill, war veterans, and the ‘newly homeless’ i.e. families who have been out of work and lost their apartments/houses.
When we speak of The Homeless in aggregate, we are not speaking of poetic vagabonds who have willingly given up everything to live on the street. Don’t be silly. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a thrift shop when a homeless man or woman comes in to beg for a pair of pants or a blanket, and the smell of feces drives everyone away. It is tragic, not at all inspiring.
I once saw a homeless woman being raped by two homeless men, in a parking lot. I called the police but I couldn’t shake the horror of this scene.
And no, the homeless are not gypsies or pirates. What are you, 6 years old???
Make Do- Have more wine and maybe you can stop caring about pompous ignorance. Maybe.
Christine – “Aspirational Homeless Hipster” is brilliant. I need to start using this, but you get all credit! Check this out, too.
Hate these stupid people, they should live in the street for a while to undertand how hard is life and problably then they would stop saying being homeless is inspirational and cool…I heard a couple of times in fashion boogs and fashion mags the words “heroin chic”, fucking idiots, they have no idea what a heroin addict is, there is nothing chic in this; this kind of dumb people drive me mad, seriously.
Sister Wolf, we all have varied experiences with the homeless, and the incident of rape doesn’t indicate anything, except that the homeless are as capable of crimes, like drunken fratboys, like corrupt cops, like the rest of us.
I used to live in a poorer part of a college town which has a sizable community of the homeless who chose that life. There is nothing to wax lyrical or poetic or romantic about them, they are just people who hang out at places around the city leading their vagrant lives, occasionally chatting with us, bumping a cigarette or more off us. Some of them cared about their appearance. One of them was an outstanding dandy and was rightly proud of his unusual fashion choices. Kudos to them for not choosing to saddle themselves with debt to buy or rent a home they cannot afford. For having the courage to live a life different from the rest of us. That to *some* of us can be inspirational.
And there is nothing wrong in finding beauty in unexpected places and peoples that do not conform to what we consider attractive. What is wrong with admiring the results of the appearance of someone who simply puts together whatever he can find with or without conscious desire or direction for the clothing items? Is it not possible to discern an aesthetic among some of them in their assembly of found objects, to see a personal statement, a different type of dignity?
I remember you wrote about “outsider art” or “art brut” (eg. the artist Adolf Wolfli, an asylum inmate). If the insane are capable of artistic expression, isn’t it possible for some of the insane and homeless to express a particular artistry and effect in their appearance from the clothing objects they scavenged, different from ours?
This isn’t “romanticizing” the insane or the homeless, it is to acknowledge that many of them have their own culture, community and way of living, and some of them do it with style and zero $.
Ok, I’m out of here as work beckons. Fire at will.
@anontoo – “If the insane are capable of artistic expression, isn’t it possible for some of the insane and homeless to express a particular artistry and effect in their appearance from the clothing objects they scavenged, different from ours?”
I’m just…
You know, I’m not going to say anything because that statement of yours is just… *shakes head in disbelief*
AnonToo – Let us not confuse outsider art with homelessness. That is another topic and one which I have strong feelings about. Let’s discuss that another time!
You are indeed romanticizing the homeless and also the “insane.” Here is a pertinent quote:
When folks romanticize poverty and primitivism, and portray the poor as “noble savages” living a simple life in harmony with nature, they are being remarkably paternalistic. The lifestyle of poverty is not to be fostered.
Here is another one, about hipsters on food stamps, but it addresses the concept of ‘vagrant chic’:
This curious phenomenon—paradoxical though it may seem—is thoroughly unsurprising and immediately familiar to anyone who has monitored the long hipster narrative of fascination with urban struggle and the fetishizing of working class subsistence. Always on the lookout for new ways to coopt the tropes of the proletariat—whether it be in dress (vagrant chic), residence (gentrification), or behavior (riding buses)—hipsters are now gladly jumping into a another everyday activity that has long been the terrain (and still is) of the working poor, the elderly and single parents on welfare: Food stamps.
All who maintain a fantasy about the noble homeless need to stop being so patronizing and consider how bourgeois their thinking is.
Julia Chesky is a COTW too! She’s an idiot as well: when describing her “model” – “on most days he doesn’t even look like he’s truly homeless”. WTF does that mean?? Does that lessen the awfulness of being homeless when they don’t look like they are??!! I can’t believe she “styled” her model with jewelry and bags from expensive boutiques!!! What a f*cking c*nt!!!
I haven’t had time to read the comments or do much of anything lately; however, I have a romanticized vision of being homeless; however, not in the context of being forced into that situation. I’m tired of the rat race, the stress from working and not having enough to pay my bills, the demands of my time, feeling sick and tried and having insomnia yet trudging in to work to make enough money for the landlord who lives in Beverly Hills and gets about 75% of my paycheck. I want off the grid!!! However, the notion of being homeless in this society is very scary. Being being part of the working poor is very scary too. I have dreams of wondering the landscape, living off the land, and being healthy enough to do so, and not working for some fucking corrupt corporation or bureaucracy full of menial tasks and menial people for menial pay. (Sorry if I don’t prattling on it was another night of insomnia and just when I fell asleep the clock went off). I dream about owning my own time!
I know this girl who has more money than I could ever wrap my mind around!! She chooses to spend large amounts of it on “pre-torn” clothing, products that make her hair look dirty, garage rock records of bands she never heard of, & destroyed antique furniture to fill her 3 story beach house. I believe its the fascination of a life she will never have. Is it silly??? YES! Does it piss me off??? YES! Can we blame her??? Well, not really…
Sister Wolf – your remarks are timely. It prevents me stating the same, but badly. I have drunk even more wine but I’m celebrating making the cut and the fact I don’t dip in to the bourgeois tilt of ‘admiring’ others. You have summarised paternalistic culture succinctly. It is a fetishism to ‘admire’ poverty in its many manifestations and I agree being an outsider is very different to being in poverty whether with a roof over ones head or not.
I’m still trying to recover from the idea that I might have idealistic views of past nomadic people. You know what we still have gypsies in Europe and a few more nomadic tribes too and none of them are homeless.
Not to mention the term.. “Starving Artist”
Make Do: with more time I read all comments again and understood your point. While I still think everything I said before, I agree with you and Sister in that there is something wrong with taking homelessness as a purely aesthetical “inspiration”, I´m not sure if that would be true in general, but I think it is in the case of this Cyril , who really seems to be a shallow person.
I work near methadone clinics and homeless shelters and every day I see people who are living on the streets. It isn’t stylish to be poor or drug addicted and without a home. A lot of people are suffering and it is not romantic. I am glad you brought this up. It is rightly cunty and anyone who would be so patronising is deserving of the title.
I wholeheartedly agree with anon on “If nobody is hurt in the process, I think that people just need to live and let others live”, but no there is nothing romantic about poverty and homelessness. Girls like the one described by Summer Adeline, and hipsters in general, remind me of a bunch of well-off people I’ve met in Switzerland in the seventies; bored out of their skulls by the order, cleanliness, well-being and lack of real problems, they became Maoists and held weekend meetings in their clean and organized homes, getting all excited over their little red books and planning a trip to the communist China, going back to their well-paid jobs next day.
BTW, I don’t understand the whole cultural appropriation business. Is Picasso being influenced by African art cultural appropriation, or Michelangelo designing Swiss guards uniforms based (apparently) on Polish folk costumes? Using Uzbekistan suzani as a bedspread, etc? IMO, world art is largely one big cultural appropriation; if I’m wrong, can someone explain what it’s all about?
@Cricket9 – you’re in luck. This is a huge topic right now. Two of my friends did co-posts on the subject:
http://bonne-vie.net/index.php/2010/in-fashion-cultural-appropriation-vs-inspiration/
and
http://www.wicked-whimsy.com/index.php/2010/02/03/cultural-appropriation-vs-inspiration/
There are a ton more, but these are the two in my recent memory. HTH.
Thanks, Alicia! Interesting discussion – but the lines between inspiration and appropriation are quite blurred…
@Cricket9, for a current example of cultural appropriation: here in Australia at the moment there is massive controversy over the appropriation of an Indigenous people’s sacred Wandjina symbol by a bunch of non-Indigenous cunts:
http://treatyrepublic.net/content/kimberley-sacred-wandjina-symbol-misused-warning-blatantly-ignored
@ no-one in particular: Interesting that typecasting people as victims of their circumstances is being repeatedly slammed, as is stereotyping any group of people…The notion of the undifferentiated ‘other’ is a myth, I think everyone here knows that. So no, of course no-one will argue that all homeless people are/aren’t victims, chose/didn’t choose their circumstances etc etc. However, the notion of poverty/homelessness as inspirational for fashion based purposes and intents is just fucking ludicrous. I don’t see how it can be otherwise.
Rosa – AMEN.