A Fashionable Engine

So admist the haze of boxes and moving tape, I plopped down Saturday night to watch an old SNL, before falling asleep curled around an pair of scissors and a tube of super glue. Unfortunately, the potential for weekend ER drama went unrealized. But I did, in my stupor, absorb Mariah Carey singing her last single with T-Pain guesting. (My fiance is amazed that T-Pain has apparently built an entire, well-paying career from guesting on other musician's cd's. )Anyhow, T-Pain came out in a top hat with a feather and psudeo suit. Had I not been in a muscle relaxant stupor at this point, surely I would have sat straight up and blooped back to see it again. (This small detail surely saved my life). Was steampunk infiltrating rap?

Rap has had a pivotal role in fashion since the 80's. when it broke onto the scene with bright tracksuits, heavy gold jewelry, and the occasional jeri curl. From Nelly promoting trainers to Kanye West modeling at the Lanvin Spring 2008/2009 Paris fashion shows, rap and hip hop artists continue to exert their influence in the fashion industry. (Personally, I have an unmatched adoration for the aesthetic espoused by MIA and lil Kim). Rap and hip hop artists, perhaps emboldened by the number of barriers they have to break on a daily basis, often are far more fearless in their style exploits, and generate trends far ahead of the euro-fashion waves lapping at our shores.

So, is steampunk next? I am just going to borrow directly from Wikipedia in case you have no idea what I am talking about.

Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date.

And it looks like this.

So you remember those old 60's movies where they shoot some scenes in the future, and everyone is wearing spandex? And when you flip through magazines from the same time and wonder how they wore that then, and what will we wear in the future? I mean, is there something novel out there, new, ground breaking, completing different from anything we have previously ever considered donning? When I see steam punk anything, I think- this, this is it. This is the fashion of The Future.

I love the look of it. I am a sucker for vintage furniture but adore gadgets and hifi anything (placing me squarely in more than one Stuff White People Like categories). Before I knew the name of it, I was intrigued by the ads for Wild Wild West. But not enough to get over the bad reviews and view the whole thing. Then, years later, my fiance's quirky best friend started gushing about steampunk, so much so that we bought him his own set of goggles for hits 30th birthday present. It seemed that the the underground steampunk community was thriving quietly on its own.

Then, the NYT covered steampunk this spring, but still, still I did not think it would catch on. But now, T-Pain was on my screen with his 19th century suit. If rap and hip hop artists bring it in through music, those very artists who could create a craze like the jeri curl, then steampunk will be here to stay. I said, Woo Hoo.