Monday, June 28, 2010

Source Material: The Sexy Chaplin

I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.
Charlie Chaplin
What's not to love about Chaplin?   I'm sure he would be honored that millions of twit pics on John Galliano's summer 2011 line featured a Modern Time's take on swimwear.   Sinewy twinks in impractical trunks and pants... Puttin on the ritz.
I preferably think we're regurgitating the tramp for a good reason - it's jazz-age poverty with a delicate undercoating harmless charm, just in time for the recession.    
But lest we forget, Chaplin was a complete stud in that he negotiated his own terms prior to any one else in the film industry, was a pro-immigrant humanist who praised diveresity, had scores of women who maligned him as (heaven forbid) loving oral sex, and was an ardent leftist that got him kicked out of the US.   It's probably a wonder that he's not erased from the US textbooks.