The New Gilded Age Indeed!
By I know we are reentering the New Gilded Age, what with the economic inequality and union busting and facial hair. But I’m not sure we need to go this far. I was certainly interested in the old-school high waisted pants Joaquin Phoenix wore in Her, but I didn’t suspect this:
The trousers are inspired by styles from yesteryear, but are intended to portent a futuristic vision of geeky Silicon Valley meets East Village menswear. “The first thing [people] want to know is if all guys are going to be wearing extreme high-waisted pants in the next few years,” said Storm of his involvement with Her.
He added, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter: “It’s one of the last frontiers of men’s fashion to come back. But it does look weird when you first see it.” He admitted Phoenix himself had said: “I don’t get it, but I trust you guys,” when first told his character Theodore Twombly would be wearing the trousers.
“Theodore [is] sort of an average guy, and we wanted his style to reflect somebody that’s comfortable and not uptight, but also a little disassembled and just going through the world,” Storm told the Opening Ceremony blog last month. “I don’t know exactly how we arrived at the high-waisted pants, but I think when Spike wrote the character, he had Theodore Roosevelt in mind. Joaquin’s pants throughout the film also have a really tapered leg, based on late 1800s pants for riding horses. The vintage pants I found [as inspiration] were from a costume house, and when I tried them on Joaquin, it just looked right. It looked interesting and weird, but it felt comfortable and casual and a little sloppy.”
If this catches on, there’s only one step left I guess in our full return to Gilded Age fashion. Ladies, get out your corsets and gigantic hats. Crushing your internal organs and slaughtering songbirds for fashion goes well with adulterated food, desperate poverty, and extreme wealth.
I for one will not be wearing these pants.