“Pattern Recognition” or “Don’t call me K.C., and there is NO sunshine band.”

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from taking a previous course with Professor Boon is that you have to be open minded when it comes to some of the texts. Sometimes that can be very hard and it depends on what kind of fiction fanboy or fangirl you are. The great thing about Boon-ified courses is that you’ll most likely than not find a book that will be an instant *insert your name here* Classic. There’s something about Pattern Recognition that I simply adore. Maybe it’s the fact that is sooooo contemporary that the word “google” is used as a verb, or maybe it’s just the fact the content is something that us educated folk constantly wrestle with. That is, what will it mean if I buy product X?

Some of us don’t have a problem with being clothe horses or walking billboards. Those people are the ones that bang loudly atop their soap boxes, Fashion is what’s in, who cares if you’re paying for a name. Me, I’m the opposite. I’ll wear it if it feels nice. Notice I didn’t say, “I’ll wear it if it makes me feel nice”. That statement is a completely different bowl of psychological porridge. But that doesn’t make me anti-conformist. I’m not sure if there is such a thing as being anti-conformist without also being a hypocrite. It’s sort of saying, “I’m an Atheist because I don’t believe in anything.” By believing in not believing anything is still a form of believing. I feel myself coiling myself for a leap into a gigantic tangent, so let me abruptly turn my attention to Cayce Pollard.

Cayce (I’m saying it Case) is a fascinating character. She’s a walking, yet purposeful, contradiction. She’s allergic to brands, but yet her biscuits are buttered by the very industry that pushes brands. I suppose that makes part of her job, the cool hunting part, a little easier in that she has a specifically honed system that’ll filter out the pre-packaged goodness of branded clothing. Cayce is sort of the emblematic non-conformist, complete with all the flaws of what non-conformism embody. Why non-conformists are usually outcasts, or place themselves into that role, and “bag” on those that “conform” and “sellout”, non-conformist actually really only end up conforming to another mould. Cayce plays this game too. While fashion is mainly, in my opinion, about trumping another person by having better “gear”, the game that Cayce plays is in a way a ultra-anti-fashion stance. On page 11, “The Rickson’s is a fanatical museum-grade replica of a U.S. MA-1 flying jacket, as purely functional and iconic a garment as the previous century produced. Dorotea’s slow burn is being accelerated, Cayce suspects, by her perception that Cayce’s MA-1 trumps any attempt at minimalism, the Rickson’s having been created by Japanese obsessives driven by passions having nothing at all to do with anything remotely like fashion.” Leaving alone the intrinsically racist closing lines of that paragraph [the insinuation that the Japanese are driven by their uncontrollable “passion” for replicating (Yea, I did catch that Gibson. Jerk.)] and dealing with the whole “Dorotea thinks Cayce’s Rickson is the shizzle, and hates her for it” is indicative and demonstrative of the fact that fashion, even in the non-conformist zone, has a them-versus-they edge. That’s the only thing I detest about Cayce, that she actually plays this game. But then again, she isn’t so much as play, as she is doing it out of necessity of her allergy to brands. Hmmm… that kind of rectifies my one problem with Cayce. I guess I love her unequivocally now.

I guess my problem with fashion, as I can say soundly is linked to Cayce’s allergic/phobic reaction to branding, can be summed up in what Cayce has to say about fashion: “A glance to the right and the avalanche lets go. A mountainside of Tommy coming down in her head. My God, don’t they know? This stuff is simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row, flavouring their ready-to-wear with liberal lashing of polo kit and regimental stripes.” Brilliant observation.

Note: All fashion is derivative, buy clothes at Bargain Harold’s. It’s all the same junk anyway.

That covers why I’m fascinated by Cayce, but what draws me in to Pattern Recognition is Gibson’s way of being unbiased. He has a way of showing you both sides. “Musicians, today, if they’re clever, put new compositions out on the web, like pies set to cool on a window ledge, and wait for other people to anonymously rework them. Ten will be all wrong, but the eleventh may be genius. And free. It’s as though the creative process is no longer contained within an individual skull, if indeed it ever was. Everything, today, is to some extent the reflection of something else.” But taking this exposition on Music and applying it to fashion, we get a reasonable explanation for the “simulacra of simulacra”, the reincarnation of past fashion labels in today’s fashion. In other words, what we’re seeing in fashion with the ubiquitousness of the Ralph Laurens, the Tommy Hilfigers, the Sean Johns, the Baby Phats and so on is that they’re part of the ten reincarnations. We’re still waiting for the eleventh, the thing that really moves, the Jesus of fashion, the trend that kicks off a new era in clothing.