There it was! A palate of purple shower luffa fluff balls at
just $2 each; perfect raw materials for tutu-making. Given the dearth of
alternate tutu choices and my imminent need for a ballerina-themed hen’s night
(bachelorette party) costume luffas would have to do.
There are roughly three cities in the whole country of New
Zealand that feature multiple large shopping stores. Even here at The Warehouse
which is the closest approximation to Wal-Mart or Target within a 6 hour drive,
the cereal doesn’t take up an entire isle. In fact, there are only one or two
brands of cornflakes. Also, it turns out people get by just fine in life without
the option to choose from 7 different brands of white refined sugar. Unfortunately,
at this moment I needed choices and fast. I was to board a flight to Sydney,
Australia the next day and I needed a cheeky ballerina dress!
I went over to The Department Store (creatively named) and
promptly wondered where all the departments were. As far as I could tell, there
was one department which could have been named “The Frumpy Old Lady”. The only
other clothing store in the area may as well have been named “Out Of Your
Budget”, leading me right back to The Warehouse where I clamored into the
dressing room in the farthest corner hoping that the stink from my hiking boots
wouldn’t radiate to innocent nearby shoppers. I awkwardly tried on dresses and
skirts judging their merits based on factors such as their ability to conceal
my growing collection of traveler/tramper/mountain biker cuts and bruises. I
seem to be off to a great start temporarily reentering into “normal” society to
do “normal” things like, you know wearing a lufa tutu, and all. I settled on a skirt "shirt" combo in which the shirt was actually a swimsuit top on sale for $5. Um, do I have a swimsuit theme going on here?
After back-to-back wilderness excursions with cherry
chapstick and a small comb (which I’d cut to save weight) as my only luxury
cosmetic items, I busted out my horrific toenail painting skills where I
succeeded in covering up pretty much my whole toes (not just the toenails, some
of which have blackened). As the paint dried I assembled my tutu, cutting
strands of the lufa and tying them to a ribbon. Then I reconfigured my
carefully arranged pack to accommodate the new outfit. In case you ever need to
know this, tutus smoosh nicely into a stuff sack and a first aid kit is a good
place to store fragile items like hair ribbons as they can be cushioned between
gauze pads and emergency blankets. Needless to say, this was not my usual
packing routine.
Upon boarding the Virgin Australia flight from Queenstown,
New Zealand to Sydney Australia, the differences between the neighboring
nations began to emerge. The Aussie flight attendants’ bright red lipstick and
trendy up-dos were the first hints. To
put New Zealand fashion into context, let me just say that they have 10 sheep
per capita and I easily went two months without seeing a single stoplight. Even
the internet and smartphone usage has limited reach due to large swaths of
coverage holes and very expensive data plans with low data caps (even for home
wifi)…PS, they still rent movies from the DVD store and some under 30’s use a paper
phone book and look up concert times in the local paper (the hard copy one).
Thus, outside influences including fashion are heavily diluted by the time they
reach the land of the Kiwi. (Unless you count homegrown fashions such as gators
worn with shorts…definitely a good look). By comparison, Sydney (though I can’t
speak for the rest of Australia) seems to think it is New York. Most women don’t
leave the house without makeup. They have fantastically bright colored flowy
layered beach styles, inspired by the local climate and animals, terrible but trendy mom jeans and *ack!* high heals! Let’s
just say most Sydney-siders have “a look” of one sort or another.
This is not to say that there aren’t fashionable people anywhere
in New Zealand, and if they are, I imagine they live in the capitol city, Wellington.
But as an aggregate cultural generalization, New Zealand doesn’t not have a Fashion Culture. Whereas in Sydney,
wardrobe choices appear to be influenced by the environment, local and
international media, fashion designers, peers, history, current events and
social niches. Social niches (punk, gothic, preppy, hipster); this is another
Oz-Kiwi difference. Australia has them. Even the junior high and high schoolers
in New Zealand don’t seem to have pronounced social/stylistic niches. On a city
bus in Christchurch (New Zealand’s second largest city), I ended up on the
route where all the school kids got picked up. We must have passed three
different high schools, one university, and two junior highs, both public and
private. I got a good sampling of what urban kiwi teenagers wear. Among all of
them, I found just one head of pink hair and another isolated nose ring incidence.
Otherwise, there was absolutely nothing noticeable, notable, unique, or
non-generic about their clothing and styles.
I’m not necessarily saying that Australians are better
dressed than Kiwis. I’m saying that Sydney-siders get dressed within the
context of many culturally influencing factors. Kiwis simply get dressed. And
there is no web of historical fashion iterations that come into play when they
do. Fashion culture (or lack thereof) doesn’t necessarily mean that the net
result of wardrobe choice is better or worse. For example, San Francisco has a
fashion culture driven in part by 25 year old post-IPO tech geek millionaire Silicon
Valley folk who go to work barefoot and in shorts so ratty they might as well
be wearing assless chaps. The underlying idea behind this wardrobe choice is
that one must not be very competent if he or she has to dress well to garner
respect at work. The work should be so good that one can wear anything and
still be in high demand. This attitude intersects with Wacky San Francisco’s “I
want to be different like everyone else” mindset which is fed by the many
facets of the LGBTQ community combined with migrant international flare and the
occasional high fashionista. The net result is often an unfortunate combination
of passionately ambivalent hipsters wearing glasses frames with no glasses, an apathetically
fervent owl watch (worn ironically, of course, because who uses watches these
days), topped off with a giant bright yellow rotary phone iPhone attachment.
In any case, I’m going to keep rocking my jegging yogapant-skinny jeans. They’re light weight, quick dry, and can be worn as jeans or
as a thermal base layer!
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