You never really think about all the work and preparation that goes into a fashion shoot when flipping through a magazine the morning after your last final. Instead, fashion magazines lull you into a passive receptiveness by presenting a complete scene, a slice of life that happens to include size zero pants and $1,000 belts. I know that the scenes are fake and the models are paid to act like soulmates after having been introduced for the first time some five minutes earlier. I know that the clothes are probably tailored to fit just right and the photographers have to wait and wait for the perfect shot.
But I still get lured in every once in a while… especially when my brain is post-exam mush. Much like a car commercial that refuses to admit the existence of rush hour traffic, fashion spreads transport readers to another world where an elbowless peasant top with more ruffles than any shirt should have seems like a must-buy. This is how I felt when I found myself sleepily thumbing through Glamour’s “Field of Dreams” February spread and realized that I was actually being lured into the dream.
Shot in a honey-colored, Midwestern-feeling prairie, page after page of the spread in question captured doe-eyed lovers presumably doing what Midwestern doe-eyed lovers do all day—absolutely nothing.
The guy (let’s call him Dusty) is wearing slightly different versions of the willowy rancher meets rugged mountain man outfit: a traditional wife-beater and stripped oxford (open, of course—wouldn’t want Dusty to overheat in the prairie sun), macho-man Texas-sized belt buckle and jeans. His seemingly unwashed, stringy, chin-length, dirty brown hair is either tucked innocently behind one ear or wisping across his rugged, bearded chin. Dusty is sensitive. He probably plays the banjo and knows how to speak Cherokee. He’s the kind of wilderness man who will throw an old quilt his grandmother stuffed with genuine animal hair in the back of his vintage Ford pick-up (stick shift, ladies, not automatic) and drive you to a remote hilltop were you’ll feast on wild berries and jicama.
And Jane. Dear, sweet Jane. She’s a tawny, high cheek-boned, all-American kind of girl. She’s got chocolate brown eyes and windblown, I-combed-this-with-my-fingers and washed-with-tree-bark-herbs hair that really looks good wrapped in a simple leather string. Her assorted Laura Ashley-esque flower print dresses and full petticoat skirts are unadorned, yet ethereal. Jane bakes bread. She knows how to make those Little House on the Prairie daisy chains and how to tell if it’s going to rain in a fortnight by smelling the tree moss. Jane thought of leaving it all and getting a job in town but realized that she would only be happy standin’ by her man on the ranch/farm… After all, who else would feed the little butter-colored chicks every morning?
Dusty and Jane are more than just lovers, they are a family. One page of the spread shows them embarking on a clandestine, early morning walk, the sun streaming through their obviously new (but with a vintage feel kind of new) outfits. Another has them adoring their newborn child in a field of calf-high wild grass. Dusty probably helped Jane through the very natural delivery of their child in the bathing pond just 12 paces behind their home. Swaddled in a hand-knit, teeny-tiny sweater thing, wilderness baby—they’ll probably name him Leaf—will play with deer and know how far to go downstream to catch the best trout.
It doesn’t really matter if you’ve seen this fashion spread or not because it’s the fantasy of the thing that bugs me…and keeps me coming back for more. Dusty and Jane are as appealing as the barely clothed girl in the liquor ads who makes you think for half of a half-second that you’ll score a babe like her with a bottle of Skyy Vodka. Or the supermodel whose whole job consists of working at looking really, really good, who then tries to make you believe that the only thing keeping you from such flawless beauty is a $9 tube of mascara.
As I flipped through the fashion spread, I could see myself—a person who prefers solids to floral prints and comfy pants to full ankle-length skirts—running through the fields with Dusty, our love child hanging in a hemp sling across my chest. After seven pages of Hollywood style, this-could-be-your-life type insanity, I wanted my rocky mountain high! Yes, Dusty, this land is your land, this land is my land too….this land was made for you and me (and little Leaf). Somewhere in the same part of my brain that enjoys watching Snow White sing “Someday My Prince Will Come,” there was a fleeting desire to romp through calf-high wild grass and drink stream water, dressed, of course, in the trendiest, worn brown leather boots and soft pastel peasant top.
But I am perfectly aware that if Prince Charming really did show up, atop his white horse with a plastic toothy grin, I’d tell him that he’s a day late and a dollar short and that the role of significant other is being happily, tangibly and realistically filled at the moment. And I hate pastels.
To Glamour’s credit, the publication is tempering the fantasy with a bit of real-worldliness. One of the new additions to the mag is a fashion trial run by some of Glamour’s own. Just as expected, the full-length prairie skirt proved “bulky” and “flouncy” for day-to-day wear. It—like so much that is presented in the world of fashion make-believe—is probably better left to the Janes whose morning walks are unencumbered enough and whose waists are tiny enough to make the silly thing actually look appealing.
Antoinette C. Nwandu ’02 is an English concentrator in Cabot House. Her column appears regularly.
