i.
My deepest darkest secret is that I’ve been taking notes on archival runway shows and compiling them all into a gigantic spreadsheet (spreadsheets are a great way to merge the Dionysian writhing mass with the Apollonian flash of realisation, sub for more top tips). I would like to start writing about fashion properly but concede that my present-day fashion knowledge is a bit like my film knowledge back when I only knew Sofia Coppola and Darren Aronofsky. I hadn’t started blogging then, which is great for me now because it would have been really embarrassing - I liked imagery and narrative but had nothing to root this enthusiasm in and would have had to resort to poetics. (They would not have been good poetics). I now loathe my first proper film review (it was on Jacques Demy, LOL). I could not write well. However, I felt able to do a review (an essential step to being able to write) because I had context. By then I had seen more stuff. I remember going on JSTOR* for expert takes and also comparing shots to vaguely remembered Sofia Coppola films. If you are a noticer and can isolate and connect at least two things then you have an essay. The rest of it (Dorothy Parker talia fatur) is calisthenics with words. You can learn to do the calisthenics part to a believable extent by translating a bit of Cicero on the side.
ii.
Being published is cool because:
You get to share your work with those around you on the understanding that they should take it seriously - feel understood + have them eventually appreciate what you’re actually working on when you disappear to meet a deadline, etc. (Sometimes this backfires. My mum said that my Spectator piece from yesterday made it seem like I was ‘heading for Pseuds Corner’.)
You get to meet new people in the publishing process - I love having the chance to work with an editor regularly, and count pitches/hand-ins as nice human bits of my day. This is especially lovely as a full-time student - I don’t plan to continue in academia past my undergrad, partially because I am a people person and hate the system of working and being assessed as a sole actor! Totally draining and not how human societies are supposed to work.
You get compensated for your weird bits of knowledge - hopefully financially, also in CV value. Any interest can become ‘demonstrable’ if you publish something on it. (The most important thing is that you learn to take yourself seriously)
But I no longer get very much out of seeing my work go up. I felt a huge rush the first three times and it’s now almost gone. The best bit by far about the ‘after’ is forwarding my work to friends and family and having it spark a conversation. Maybe there will be other small milestones that excite me, like working in new formats (would like to do book reviews) and with new people (would like to collaborate with more experienced writers on long, complex things). But those rushes will fade as well. I am completely aware and comfortable that 90% of the joy I feel is in the ‘before’. I take far more from the cycle of reading, pitching, acceptance/rejection, research, and writing (!) than I do from the final result. This is because the first five things imply process and potential, and the last is static. When a piece is out, it becomes a dead end.
I think this is a sign that professional writing is the right choice for me, that I’m here for honourable reasons, and that I should keep doing it. I am very lucky to have learned this lesson while still doing my degree. Ironically, I would never have come to these conclusions had I not been published, and I would never have been published had I not been obsessed with whoring out my portfolio for fame and cash. Everyone needs their 15 minutes!
I’m currently plotting my second novel and will put feelers out to see if anyone wants to agent after I have a full draft. (The first one was in verse, and a highly valuable exercise but also not very good apart from the last quarter of it, hence no agent). And there are a million non-fiction books I would like to write. I think my freelancing is probably a huge leg-up to other markers of literary prestige. If you show someone a list of bylines they will conclude that you are probably not terrible to work with, can meet deadlines, can execute edits without sustaining major ego injury, etc. Thus it was all basically a great decision, and may have opened doors to other monklike experiences where the ‘process’ bit is YEARS long! Strangely I am rejoicing about the YEARS! bit.
Also: I am much bolder than I used to be at chasing up pitches, edits, updates, etc, because I have learnt to detach my professional life from my personal understanding of my work. This is freeing. I actually call myself ‘a writer’ now in real life, which is the most fun thing ever (I used to say ‘I’m trying to be a writer’, which evokes lots of sympathy. I prefer the alternative). I can send a pitch and barely even think about it - I used to have to sit around ritualistically listening to Brave New Girl by Britney Spears before I’d plucked up the courage to hit send. This new sense of value is how I’m going to sidestep a graduate crisis. There’ll be no Mrs Robinson where I’m concerned.
iii
My theory is that I have a jumping-off point for writing about high fashion because I know about 20th-century cinema. And (this is the thing nobody tells you) 20th-century cinema is the best primer for any writing on anything visual!! Even if it isn’t film!!
Cinema is an overlapping art. If you watch loads of films you should get to grips with the converging axes of all the other art forms. Eg. the Stones go with Nicholas Roeg’s mad editing style and both of those things go with the exotic storm wizard part of 1960s psych fashion. (This is what I get from barely remembering the film Performance). When you understand pairing you also understand subversion. Thus you understand the canon.
The fashion writing and film writing spheres should logically overlap - I think cultural critics should be generalists. This is a guiding factor in my decision to branch out and learn more about things that aren’t films. In the real world the two spheres are disparate. Lots of writers do ‘fashion in film’ - the clothes are right in front of you. Few do ‘film in fashion’ - the references are usually cloaked, and most fashion writers have better things to do than to catch a representative sample of films from 1956.
PS. good news, all is converging. So far in my ‘East Asian Studies’ dissertation I have managed to implicate Curtiz, Lubitsch, Busby Berkeley, Jerry Lewis, John Ford, Jacques Tati, Jean Negulesco, and Douglas Sirk. In the acknowledgements bit I’m going to thank Pythagoras for making me a double 9.
P.P.S It feels soooo glamorous to be disillusioned about literary success…. Just like Joan Didion!!!!
*I love using university resources to do things that are purely for personal gain. I have been poring over a library copy of Bordwell et al’s incredible Classical Hollywood Cinema, ostensibly for my dissertation but actually for the development of my novelistic imagination. I will convert my tuition fees into their equal enlightenment value if it kills me!