Why do posh people wear sailor clothes in the summer?
BarcelonaAll those people—especially those with deep pockets—who spend the year trapped in drab clothing, discover during the holidays the pleasure of playing at being locals. In any small town on the Mediterranean coast, it's not unusual to see them dressed in captain's caps, t-shirts with nautical knots or compass roses, and keychains with rudders, in an attempt to resemble the locals by emulating nautical motifs. An aesthetic that also extends to the decoration: while Nordic design dominates their house in Putxet, their second coastal residence features amphorae (still with crustacean remains), stair railings made of mooring lines, fishing net curtains, sails as awnings, and fishing handles converted into allah. It's a fleeting stylistic passion that barely lasts a month, during which posh people They allow themselves local licenses and play at going down to the village, ideally reinterpreting a lifestyle that has little to do with the reality of the coast or the hardship of fishing work.
The marinière or Breton was born in 1858 as part of the official uniform of the French navy, which would later also be adopted by the Russian navy, with a boat collar (which allowed putting on and taking off without buttons) and three-quarter length, wide sleeves (designed to prevent them from sticking to nets or equipment on board). blue interspersed with twenty-one white ones, the latter twice as wide, to reduce the use of Indian dye and reduce costs. In addition to the practical criterion, the pattern was symbolically associated with national pride: functional: the visual contrast made it easier to locate a sailor if he fell into the water. When did it begin to be used outside of this scope?
In 1913 Coco Chanel opened her first couture house in Deauville and included the marinière in her first collection. Inspired by men's workwear, this garment symbolized a new aesthetic ideal: comfortable, functional, and tailored to a woman who demanded the same rights and freedoms as men. During the 1960s, marinière It was adopted by countercultural movements as an anti-system weapon, by decontextualizing a proletarian piece and unstylish. Its evocation of nomadic freedom captivated the Beat Generation –Kerouac and Ginsberg– and artists such as Picasso and Cocteau, who turned it into a symbol of bohemianism. Prominent French actresses such as Jean Seberg in About souffle (1960), Jeanne Moreau or Brigitte Bardot, and international figures such as Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood, Edie Sedgwick, Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, joined this declaration of emancipation, modernity and gender ambiguity, and expanded the struggle that had begun.
The marinière It has also been a clear symbol of masculinity, linked to physical activity and the warlike side of the sailor. From John Wayne, who in Adventure's end (1937) used the stripes of the shirt to construct a classic stereotype of alpha male, even Lee Marvin, Marlon Brando's partner in The wild one (1953), a key film in the construction of the toxic stereotype of bad boyThis virile component led the gay community in the 1980s to assert a masculinity far removed from the effeminacy with which they were often associated, and to resort to the sailor stereotype. In this context, the film Complaint (1982) by Fassbinder – an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Jean Genet – became a fundamental reference for figures such as Jean Paul Gaultier or the photographers Pierre et Gilles who used the image of the sailor – and the striped shirt – as a key to offer a broader, more complex and fluid vision of the masculine.
