harem-pff

My sister, Megan, recently showed me a photo of harem pants in an Anthropologie catalog and joked about their comeback over the last couple years. Back in the day, when she and I were a little fashion mad and frustrated with the conservative clothes available in Winston-Salem, we decided that we would sew our own harem pants. I think we might have been the only two people in town who wore them, unless there were some MC Hammer wannabes around. But we didn’t meet them. I don’t remember (or have blocked the memory of) any weird looks when I wore them volunteering at the contemporary art museum in town, but my sister said her fellow classmates at Wiley Middle School didn’t really get it. Good for her for trying, though! 13 year olds are tough critics, as I learned a few years earlier when I tried to wear what I saw in Seventeen and heard was cool in New York: jumpsuits, purple Gloria Vanderbilt corduroys, and knickers (in case you’re English, I don’t mean underpants, though of course I wore them, but not as outer-wear. I think you all call them knickerbockers..?)

Anyhow, she and I had this great idea that we’d make our own fashion label. Our range was pretty small, consisting of the above-mentioned harem pants and a couple graphic tee shirts which we painstakingly painted by hand (over several days!) We wore them too, also to limited success. Needless to say, no one was clamoring for our look, so we dropped it, went to college and studied practical things like Art History (me) and American Studies (Megan).

Winston-Salem has changed, and now there’s shopping on-line, so girls in North Carolina no longer have to sew their own harem pants, but can buy them at Anthropologie. I wouldn’t recommend it, though. The ones I saw looked like what a rice farmer in India might wear. I mean, maybe they’re comfortable in hot weather, but if I’m going to dress like I’m in a harem, I wouldn’t want to look like I’m in a rice farmer’s harem!

I want the full 9 yards (and I do think that’s about how much fabric they require). I’d want to look like Barbara Carrera in Never Say Never Again, the unsanctioned James Bond movie (though it did have Sean Connery and very good villians and Bond girls – Carrera, plus Klaus Maria Brandauer and Kim Basinger, so nothing to sneeze at!). She was totally over the top glamorous and evil. So great. (I couldn't find a better photo, but trust me, those pants are harem.) I still love her clothes in that movie. Actually, I think she had some pretty sharp shoulders, too… They were all over the spring shows. I wonder if Riccardo Tisci and Marc Jacobs have been watching it, too? Those shoulders were pretty visible at Givenchy and Louis Vuitton. What other fashion might be salvageable from Never Say Never? American Apparel is already all over the ‘80s aerobics leotard fashion, are we going to see bad toupees, too?



I'd consider joining Phi's harem...



















want to touch this? (not the pattern we used, by the way...