Maison Martin Margiela A/W 2009/10

Colors, patterns, seemingly randomly donned: is this the 'Regular Guy' look from his film 'Easy Money', with Joe Pesci? Yep, I blame Rodney Dangerfield, a.k.a. Al Chervik. Since 1980, Peter Guber's cult film, 'Caddyshack', has become the template for culture clash. The rest you know: this film is probably quoted and otherwise a point of reference in daily life more than any film I can recall from that period. Let's face it, Rodney was the original nerd, signature all-purpose red tie a symbol of his rage at the 'system' in all its forms -- wives, marriage, kids, respect. The credo for accepted culture's clashers: 'We don't need no stinkin fashion badges.'

This form of making one's own rules in the face of any aspect of the status quo is more than ever about life in the new world of cyberspace as the new paradigm with its own quo, where status ain't so much about what you're wearing in the pedestrian physical single 'w' world as who's wearing your newest smartphone.

And, speaking of nerds, this is their ultimate revenge. Cyberspace is full of praise for the fundamental post-modern proposition that 'nerds rule'. The recent film 'Social Network' is only the latest of a long line of underdog intellectual triumph sagas, even if it's over other nerds. What other realm of intelligentsia has so revolutionized the whole question of being dressed at all, much less properly so? The advertisers' pitch that you may do almost anything electronically while still in your undergarments or pajamas has sealed the deal -- clash is simply evidence of intellectual primacy, fashion being what the geek says it is via his/her special brand of insouciance, that latter term their only bow to French fashion... and, as superior linguistic facility, at that.

Didn't Yves St. Laurent tip us off with his timeless ob

'Fashions fade, style is eternal.' Yves St. Laurent

servation: "Fashions fade, style is eternal."

And for these new paradigmatic designers and fashioners, style is all about who you are, being that, and not who/what others (fashion designers) think you want to be.

Yves, again: "Isn't elegance forgetting what one is wearing?" Vive la difference.

So, to conclude, logic tells us that those who design and fashion a world where we spend more and more time have the prerogative to dictate its mores. This pattern has been with us for some time in that single 'w' world we call real: most of these fashion collection designers show up at their catwalk exhibitions in jeans and a black tee shirt; while this isn't necessarily a clash offensive to his/her followers' eyes, it certainly clashes with their public notions about the clothes making the person.

Notwithstanding Guy de Maupassant's clever story, outside of uniforms of authority the person makes the clothes.

Ask Steve Jobs, any 'loud-looking' winning golfer or Will Ferrell wearing his Speedo to that business meeting he's running swimmingly (sorry).

Repeat after me: online is the new line, so let your avatars do the fashion thing while you're busy creating new clothing apps for that smartphone, THE only mandatory accessory.

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