The lives that consumer culture cannot reach

I’m a big fan of The Sunday Times, and in particular their Spectrum section (and not just when it features National Cheerleading Champions). In their own words, Spectrum ‘showcases astonishing photographs from the front line of life over 12 awe-inspiring pages’. True enough.

This weekend, sitting on a sun-drenched Clapham Common on a welcome weekend break from the marketing bubble in which I live my week, I found the images particularly worthy of reflection. The cover feature, which always contains a collection of stunning and astute shots illustrating one central theme, this week concerned itself with ‘Bare Necessities: The lives that consumer culture cannot reach.’

In the feature, we were shown a glimpse of a world beyond everything we know. Imagine a place with no iPhones, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Internet, no TV, no shopping (in the Western sense), no advertising (in the mass-consumer sense) and no commercialisation of absolutely anything.

Pretty difficult, huh.

And yet, as the images below will hopefully show, this world does exist – in fact it is very much a part of our own. Albeit a few thousands of miles away in the Greater Caucasus mountain village of Xinaliq (Khinalug) in Azerbaijan.

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I think why they struck me most was because it actually tore a fairly sharp rift through what I do for a living, and therefore a huge part of who I am (well, maybe it shouldn’t be ‘therefore’, but that’s another issue entirely…)

In the marketing world, we live for commercialism. We live and breathe the brands we work so hard to protect, to grow, to promote – and yet, when it really comes down to it, what does it all mean?

In the end though, everything is relative. World economies are built very differently and comparing my yuppie life in South London with mountain-life in the upper mountainous regions of Azerbaijan is perhaps futile and the two are incomparable. But I do feel it is a comparison that we should nevertheless strive to make occasionally, and can learn from, in order to fully appreciate what the priorities in our lives should be.

Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, and in living the life I have I wouldn’t choose to work in any other industry. But it does make you think how different life could be with a markedly different spectrum of experience.

*(Hopefully The Times and talented photographer Rena Effendi will not mind me replicating the images here, but please do check out her whole collection here to see more stunning shots.)

THAT Balmain dress

So sequins and texture are dominating the high street right now. Why? Because they also stole the show at London Fashion Week last month. But there was one key statement piece that every fashion weekly and Hollywood superstar – from the established rock veteran to the teenage ingenue – seem to be adopting as the look of the season.

THAT Balmain dress.

The frightenly low waist-skimming neckline and statement shoulder pads define it from the multitude of sequinned numbers currently pouring forth from fashion houses and retail stores alike.

Where might you have seen it? For starters, the superb giant LFW special issue of my own personal weekly fashion bible – Sunday Times Style magazine – showcased it in all its glory in a runway shot:

© Sunday Times Style

On the same weekend, Sunday Telegraph’s big monthly fashion bible – ST – also flagged the Balmain sequins in a muted colour shoot:

© Sunday Telegraph ST

And then, the following week’s Style magazine (launch issue for their new look) featured a big splash interview with rock chick Courtney Love – and guess what they put her in for one of the looks?

© Sunday Times Style

(Perhaps thankfully discarding the slashed-to-the-waist version for the more modest front cut – both can be viewed in the Automne-Hiver 0910 collection on Balmain.com)

And then, a top starlet and fashion inspiration in my world, Blake Lively, rocked up at an Emmy after party in the very same. She even changed out of her classic red Versace awards gown before the party. A clear stamp of approval if it were still needed.

But sadly, not all of us can fork out the required £6,930 for the real thing. Fear not – Warehouse have a copycat number that is guaranteed to fly off the shelves this season. For a mere £90 as well. The danger is that you are likely to rock up at various Christmas parties this winter and experience the embarrassing she’s-wearing-the-same-dress-as-me horror, but given how widely the Balmain original is being touted around, celebs will probably be experiencing the very same. So you’ll be in good company.

On the search for England’s ‘lost’ Ashes season

Following England’s recent victory at the Oval to reclaim Ashes glory, reflections have been made far and wide on the scale of achievement accomplished.

Amidst all the celebratory guff, Martin Johnson’s salient points in the Sunday Times last weekend rang particularly true to me.

His piece mainly focused on the commendable decision not to repeat 2005’s ‘bacchanalian bender’ (to use his glorious phrase) in light of the relative triumph this time around. In Johnno’s words, it must be remembered that we are celebrating within the context of one average team beating another average team, and not the toppling of a cricketing giant, ending nearly two decades of humiliation.

© The News of the World

But his reasoned argument touched on the subject of a fairly lively debate I found myself in during a car journey back from the Cotswolds the previous weekend. Why exactly is it that England cricket fans – the media and civilians alike – seem so ready to forget the 2006-7 debacle that was in fact the previous Ashes series?

Said car-debate was triggered by some frustration with Sky Sports who, throughout this latest series, chose to dominate their match-break inserts with highlights from 2005. Sky, seeming to choose patriotic victory over recency, barely acknowledged what little encouragement might have been drawn from the albeit few inspiring individual performances in the previous series. Instead preferring to instill – or rather reiterate – the blind English belief of, ‘well, we did it four years ago so we can do it again.’

I found myself arguing that this was a symptom of our English optimism preferring to gain strength from previous victories, in order to support our current campaign, rather than dwelling on lessons learnt from past failures. The counter was that while ‘optimism’ might be admirable and reflections on previous success understandable, this should not be at the cost of total denial that an intermittent (disastrous) series ever even happened.

As Johnno himself slipped in one point:

‘…many half expected England to win and retaining the Ashes did not come as a total surprise’.

And what’s wrong with that?

Err, hang on a second - England were never in a position to ‘retain’ the Ashes this summer… seeing as we lost them two and a half years ago. Remember that?

Johnno did at least acknowledge this oversight in the same breath; his point being made that the England cricket fan-base has become so accustomed to blanking that mortifying season from our collective psyche that we barely notice we’re doing it.

He went on to offer a brief account of 2006-7 and the errors inherent therein – so astutely that I felt it worth repeating here. I’m not saying this should excuse our national denial of that series’ existence or that it explains Sky’s seemingly delusional exclusion of those highlights from this summer’s coverage – nor does it solely account for our truly shocking performance that winter. But it does touch upon some key lessons that (please God) the ECB will learn from before packing the boys off for the 2010-11 tour – when we really will be aiming to retain that little urn.

‘…but 2006-7 doesn’t count in that the boys went to Australia on holiday rather than to play cricket.

‘‘They didn’t actually start by sitting around the airport departure lounge wearing shell suits, drinking larger at 9am and checking in at the EasyJet counter, though everything thereafter reminded you of a package holiday booked online at lastminute.com.

‘‘There has never been any adequate explanation for a touring party expanding to 95 people for the flight from Syndey to Perth, a population explosion unmatched outside any colony of rabbits, and there were so many pushchairs in the hold it’s a miracle the plane managed to get off the ground.

‘So…it is also incumbent on the powers-that-be to make sure that this time England’s defence of the urn is treated more like a serious sporting mission than a family outing to Mablethorpe.’

Australia 2006/7 - that's not actually an England player. I don't think.

But to end on a positive note - one final counter to all those antipodeans’ protestations that Oz were the better team on paper and thus were the real victors:

‘Let’s hear no more about who, statistically, were the better team. When you’ve got 35 balls to dismiss Monty, and can’t do it, you don’t deserve to win.’

The death of Big Brother: a welcome assisted suicide

During my break in Spain last week (somewhat explaining my lack of posting of late), the biggest news headlines did still manage to reach my permanent relocation to the beach.

Big Brother 8's hopefuls © Channel 4 / Endemol / Guardian.co.uk

One of the best bits was the news of Big Brother’s long overdue demise, and my undisclosed glee seemed to be shared by a nation. I mean, seriously – the flogging of dead horses barely begins to cover it. Notwithstanding the fact I was addicted to season 2 when the novelty was still more or less intact, I feel that it might have been time to call it a day somewhere between a transexual’s gender-political victory and the Jade/Shilpa ‘racism’ row. There seemed no depth to which the producers would not stoop.

Having drafted a few words on the subject in celebration, I was pipped to the post by the Sunday Times’ Rod Liddle, whose own version of the news delivered such barbed wit and wry accuracy that I couldn’t possibly compete. I loved it – so here it is, in its entirety:

‘So, farewell Big Brother. Channel 4 has decided we have seen enough exhibitionist chavs with the collective IQs of a packet of Monster Munch in this particular setting. It will be approaching the production company Endemol, one assumes, to see what alternatives might be dreamt up. The creative director – an oxymoron if ever there was one – of Endemol is Peter Bazalgette, who also devised the reality show The Farm, during which pouting nonentity Rebecca Loos gave manual relief to a pig.

‘Sir Joseph Bazalgette won the gratitude and affection of all Londoners for devising a sewerage system that piped excrement away from every home in the capital. His great-great-grandson Peter has made a lot of money by sort of reversing this process, on a national scale.’

Marina Hyde’s piece in The Guardian was in much the same vein, and began with an equally pithy comment:

‘The demise of Big Brother resembled the funeral of a much-loathed relative, at which no one really knows what to say. At weddings, there’s always “you must be very proud”, but when you simply can’t trust yourself to deliver “he’ll be sorely missed” convincingly, the risk of blunder looms large. And so it was with Channel 4′s rich-but-racist uncle of a show, where the uncertain tribute that occurred with most embarrassing frequency in the obituaries was: “Is this the beginning of the end for reality TV?”‘

While I agree wholeheartedly with her sentiment, I think we have a way to go yet before we see a termination of reality TV as a whole genre. Sadly, not before time.

We heart Taylor Momsen!

So who saw the UK’s GG last week? God bless my Sky+ for catching it when I sacrificed GG night for more sociable activities, with which I have only just caught up. Well. OMFG.

That hair, that dress and – of course – that kiss. Little J all grown up – who saw any of that coming?

Well actually, I did – but only by a day. During my gloriously perfect Sunday afternoon of proper coffee, cricket and burrowing under a plethora of weekend papers down in Surrey, I was indulging in the usual jewel in the crown of my Sunday paper intake (the Sunday Times’ Style magazine) when the subject of young Taylor was raised by that enviable barometer of all things hip and cool, Jessica Brinton.

She was of course referring to the latest ‘do’ to be demanded by young fashionistas in salons across NYC – ‘the Jenny’ – as sported by Momsen in the latest episode to air in the UK. Bashful, down-trodden courtier of Queen B Waldorf has emerged from her cocoon into a fully fledged glam rock chic butterfly, charming the pants of Nate Archibald as she flies.

What is most astonishing is that Taylor is merely 15 years of age. With her doll-like  features and painfully thin frame providing her with limitless model potential, her producers, publicists, stylists et al (including Fred Vanderbunt, creator of aforementioned crop) have developed the artsy rockstar’s-daughter-edge just enough to put her on the glam side of grunge.

Judging by her ever-growing portfolio of endorsements crammed around GG filming schedules, my bet is, she may go on to have the biggest – or at least most diverse – career of all the GG starlet darlings. Signed by IMG Models at 14, couture modelling for Page Six, nike sportswear campaigns… Hell, she even has a record coming out since The Reckless (the band she fronts) were signed by Interscope Records earlier this year.

And while we’re on the GG train (because Lord knows I don’t blog about it enough), everyone go out and buy Rolling Stone this month. Why? Just check this out and then stop yourself from racing to the newsagents tomorrow. H-O-T.

Photograph by Terry Richardson © Rolling Stone 2009

Oh, and there’s a video too.

XOXO