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. With In The New York Times Magazine: Kazuo Kawasaki 704s
POLITICAL SPECTACLES
How Sarah Palin’s glasses fit into electoral aesthetics
Speaking of politics, Consumed this week — in anticipation of the vice presidential debate — is about Sara Palin’s specs: In addition to pondering what it is that’s made people buy Kazuo Kawasaki 704 frames just like the candidate’s, the column puts her apparent style-setting in the context of electoral aesthetics, past and present. Also: Kawasaki’s U.S. distributor suggests a more fashion-forward alternative for Joe Biden.
Read it in the September 28, 2008 issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.
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Reader Comments
It’s curious — though maybe not, given the upcoming VP debate — that on the day this Consumed runs, WaPo fashion writer Robin Givhan devotes an article to Palin’s style and what it says: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/26/AR2008092600859.html. Equally curious is that she declares Palin’s glasses “as banal as modern spectacles come. The entire goal of their design is to have them go unnoticed.” Banal? Perhaps. (De gustibus …) But as for going unnoticed, well, whether or not they were designed to be overlooked, clearly people have been paying attention. And as fashion is almost always about buzz of one sort or another, Givhan’s failure to note this is, to me, odd. Even I knew the glasses were generating heat, and I don’t cover fashion.
Oh, and it’s not until comment #46 to the article that somebody references the specs.
Call me obtuse, but I don’t see the mystery here. The sudden buzz over Sara Palin’s glasses appears to be, to use a cliché, a perfect storm of a great design appearing in the right place at the right time. Regardless of what one thinks of Palin politically, when she was first unveiled by McCain she was a bomb dropped on the Obama campaign, the press and the public, all of which it had its radar pointed in completely wrong directions. Palin appeared before 37 million people as a fresh, unexpected and attractive face and on that face were these fabulous glasses that seem to frame that face perfectly. So you’ve got instant celebrity and status combined with glasses of really exquisite form and function that make her even more appealing physically, and waa-laa – they’re a hit. Not so shocking to me.
And who, exactly, said it was “shocking”?
I think it would be hysterical if Biden showed up at the debate tomorrow night wearing Kawasaki glasses. It would show a sense of wry humor during these very dismal times, and it might put a very positive spin on his presentation. MIGHT.
Yes, you’re right, Rob. “Shocking ” was the wrong word. You did not use it. I guess I was thinking about other people I’ve heard wonder aloud about the Palin glasses phenomenon. Some folks I know have seemed shocked that anyone would want to wear the glasses Plain wears, mainly because they don’t like her politics.