November | 2016 | The Design of Things

Month: November, 2016

For at least three seasons, maybe as many as five, I haven’t been able to find a tall boot that would work in a professional situation. At first, I thought it was me. I wasn’t really looking, or I was too picky, or the fashions just weren’t right for me. If it was the latter – well, that always changes after a season or two.

But recently I’ve realized that the current offerings are relatively permanent, and that it’s a problem noticed by other women I know. It’s an abrupt reversal of fashion and design trends that grew over decades as women entered, stayed in – and sent female children off to – the work force.

This isn’t about a boot shortage. These days, there seems to be a surplus. Online retailers like Zappo’s and Asos list pages and pages of tall boots (not to mention the equally ubiquitous “booty”). Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, Nordstrom, Nordstrom Rack, Marshall’s, T.J.Maxx, Nine West, Garnet Hill, J.Crew, Land’s End and others all list them on their websites or stock rows and rows of them in their stores. Everywhere, there are boots.

But there are none for women who want to wear them to work, looking smart and professional all day while being able to hurry down the halls of Congress or run up the stairs of the lab building or chase down an interview at the end of a court proceeding and then get back to the newsroom. For when we would want to wear trousers, dresses, or skirts.

The tall boots offered now are one of two styles: “riding” or over the knee (or riding boots with an over the knee flap, giving them a vaguely jackbootish air.) Some of the riding boots are faintly or overtly western, other Ralph Lauren-ish stiff, others elfin slouchy, still others all three in a mashup of design elements. Most of the over-the-knee boots remind one only of one profession – which might bring you to Washington or to courtrooms but not for the right reasons.

None but the highly expensive dress the ankle. None distinguish themselves through the shape of the toe bed. Almost all in the “riding” style have the profile of a rain boot: Wide in the ankle, gaping in the calf, neither square nor narrow. Some of the over-the-knee boots are fun, and some beautiful, but not really for everyday. For everyday, it seems, we have shapeless.

Did this trend emerge from girls wearing Uggs or Hunter rain boots (depending on whether they wanted to be slouchy or prim in their privilege) to college classes ten years ago? Is it a resistance to being professional? Are the stiletto over-the-knee boots being sold at department stores an outcome of internet porn?

Maybe it’s all of this and maybe it’s something more reflective of the state of our economy and of our aspirations. There is little cost to making the same boot year after year, and making it in China out of manmade materials. There is no cost to making a boot that will “fit” anyone – and there may be a profit in putting actual design up on the “luxury” shelf, so those with any style at all now cost between $300 – $800. And when we see boots that can only be worn with skinny jeans and leggings by day, or a minidress to a club at night — does it limit our imagination for putting on clothes that will take us far out into the world?

It’s a reshuffling toward the proletariat and the oligarchs – not toward a place where women are independent, buying their own clothes with their own money, succeeding and leading in the workplace and beyond.

This…

boots from asos.com

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November 20, 2016

Time for a cleanup

dotbostonfromplane It’s a beautiful thing to fly into Logan International Airport in Boston. No matter which direction you come from, the plane will eventually angle over the water of Boston Harbor, ceding views of the islands, the city, and the neighborhoods nestled into the low hills near the sea.

dotwweggs

Something else you might see are these curious eggs, arranged in what looks like a semi-industrial sculpture on an island just beyond the runway. They are the result of an environmental and economic success story – one in which an environmental disgrace actually figured into a presidential election.

The Sunday after this year’s election, we were invited by friends to see their beach house in Winthrop, a modest coastal town just beyond Logan. It is one of the last Massachusetts working class towns on the beach, with cottages crowded cheek by jowl on tiny lots festooned with funky buoy art, lobster traps, and painted Adirondack chairs. As we strolled the sand, beachcombing for shells and picking up bits of stray garbage, planes flew in low overhead for landing.

At the end of the beach, we walked onto an island that rose up with views of the Boston skyline on one side and the open ocean on the other. It was landscaped at the bottom with pretty parks with benches and trees and in the middle a berm rose up with native grasses like those that populate the marshes along Boston’s North Shore.

The berm concealed the island’s true purpose as the site of the wastewater treatment plant that was constructed to clean up Boston Harbor. And those are the eggs, which are digesters of eastern Massachusetts raw sewage that used to be dumped straight into the water.

The eggs are an engineering feat and the result of eventual political and judiciary displays of will, but they came about after centuries of avoiding the obvious. The problem of dumping raw sewage into a relatively closed harbor was first recognized in 1634 yet somehow ignored for centuries, until its solution was driven only by court order. By then, it had become Boston’s embarrassment, used by Republican presidential nominee George H. W. Bush against his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, in the 1988 campaign.

The eggs have cleaned up the harbor, and island is the pride of the beach neighborhood residents, who can walk the 2.5 mile circumference trail on a beautiful day. My neighbors, who voted for the current President-elect, loved to show it off and to tell me the biological details of how the digesters work.

During this year’s presidential campaign, both candidates promised significant investment in infrastructure, but neither mentioned any projects that might begin to tackle the enormous environmental hard stops we are coming up against. This country has a lot of resources, know-how, and creativity in engineering, finance, technology, and good old-fashioned labor. I’d love to see every city identify and apply for funds or raise bonds to tackle the latest obvious problem, engaging their eggheads, their wonks, their working class to get it done – just as Boston eventually did, albeit under duress.

Everybody knows what they are. The trashy, stinking river. The wetlands to be restored that would filter drinking water or hold a storm surge. The plastics pouring out of our landfills and into the ocean. The mountains of electronic trash. Or even, as the storied track coach would say, just start by getting the lead out.