Jack Knox settles in for Oscars fashion frenzy

SLIGHTLY SKEWED (COLUMN) — The Armchair Mayor News is pleased to welcome homegrown columnist Jack Knox to our pages. Jack, who was born in Kamloops and worked for several years at The Kamloops Daily News, describes himself as an “award-losing columnist.” He now writes for the Victoria Times Colonist./

The Oscars are on tonight and I am all aflutter because, as you might have guessed, fashion is my life.

I used to think the Academy Awards were about movies, but as years of People magazine, TMZ and Entertainment Tonight have taught us, that’s just the veneer. The real point is to parade women like livestock at the Saanich Fair and rate what they’re wearing.

Someone with a microphone is always waiting to ambush the nominees as they arrive on the red carpet: “Is that Versace?”

Just once you would like one of the women to reply: “Thanks, I thought it was the best performance of my life.” But no, no, they merely squirm nervously because they know this is like high school and one misstep could get them banished to the cafeteria’s social-outcast zone with Mel Gibson and the glue-eaters.

Sometimes you get the impression that the dress judging has less to do with the gowns than Hollywood’s pecking order. Meryl Streep or Judi Dench or Helen Mirren could show up in a SpongeBob onesie and be gushed over as the epitome of elegance, but should a less-formidable actress do so the result is a Walking Dead feeding frenzy. Sometimes the Hollywood jury is split: Angelina Jolie sticks her leg out and you get the fiercest debate since the Scopes Monkey Trial. It’s like watching Mean Girls.

Before I was a fashion expert, this would confuse me, and I would stay silent. I thought the fact that I haven’t chosen my own apparel since the Mulroney era disqualified me from the conversation. (Question: “You’re not wearing that to work, are you?” Proper response: “Of course not. These are my car-warming clothes. Remind me again of what it was that I wanted to wear.”)

It wasn’t just Oscar dresses that befuddled me. Haute couture in general left me baffled. When photos from Paris Fashion Week emerged Tuesday, I was left looking like a dog with his head cocked sideways.

One Paris picture was of a runway model wearing a dress with a giant key in the back, like you would see on a child’s wind-up toy or one of Stephen Harper’s cabinet ministers. Another woman modelled a see-through top described as being part of the designer’s ready-to-wear collection. “Ready to wear where?” I thought. “The Red Lion?”

I kept these thoughts to myself, though, as I learned long ago that ridiculing things I don’t understand usually just leaves me looking ridiculous.

But then, on Friday, I stumbled across something called Normcore.

Normcore, as described by New York magazine, is a cutting-edge fashion trend that, from behind, makes Soho art kids indistinguishable from middle-aged tourists: comfy running shoes, fleece vests, dad-brand pants.

Young New York artists are “embracing sameness deliberately as a new way of being cool, rather than striving for ‘difference’ or ‘authenticity,’ ” the magazine piece said.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper also wrote about Normcore this week: “Blending in is the new standing out. … Clothes that were once dismissed as everyday or unremarkable have been touched by fashion’s stardust.”

On Thursday, the GQ Eye style blog listed 10 Normcore Essentials Every Man Should Have. It included roomy stonewashed jeans, Kirkland brand crew-neck T-shirts from Costco, tube socks, Teva sandals…

That’s me, I exclaimed. All my life I thought I was the antithesis of cool, but it turns out I was so far fashion-forward that I was just waiting for the trend-setters to come full circle and crash into me from behind. Those artsy New York bohemian kids would go weak in their Dockers if they looked in my closet.

I turned to my wife: “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”

“Not going to be a problem,” she replied.

Can’t wait for the Academy Awards to come on tonight, check out what the stars of 12 Years a Slave to Fashion are wearing. Want to see what DeCaprio and McConaughey have on, too. Maybe some nice sensible khakis …

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