Here at OC, we are struck by how often we end up in everyday conundrums. The ones that land you in the thick of semi (or full-blown) awkwardness, or maybe, the doghouse.
So, we turned to Simon Collins, the dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons. Collins recently penned a TOME that explores how and why people get to be so dang successful. To glean a bit of that for ourselves, we've launched Simon Says, in which Collins lends tongue-in-cheek, Brit-bloke advice to our pain-point questions and social entanglements.
So, we turned to Simon Collins, the dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons. Collins recently penned a TOME that explores how and why people get to be so dang successful. To glean a bit of that for ourselves, we've launched Simon Says, in which Collins lends tongue-in-cheek, Brit-bloke advice to our pain-point questions and social entanglements.
Q: Let's say you're trying to explain the meaning of "good taste" to an alien. It has no cultural reference point, so you can't use touchstones like Calvin Klein or fresh mozzarella. What would you say?
Some would have it that good taste is in the eye of the beholder. That's nonsense. For example, it is a fact that voting Republican shows extremely poor taste (whereas, supporting Germany against those awful Argies showed particularly good taste).
To give more context to this visiting alien chappie, and assuming you have access to a phone, I would suggest showing pictures of James Bond (Connery or Craig), Bertie Wooster, and Paul Weller as examples of good taste. And then perhaps showing anything at all from Fox News as a prime example of revoltingly bad taste. Or ,you could show Donald Trump’s ridiculous wig as an example of alien taste; indeed, its other-worldy presence is perhaps something the alien can explain to us.
Q: Tough love—for it or against it?
There are times when tough love is the only answer. Take, for example, the case of people who think they should have access to a gun. Tough love would be to gather every single one of them, along with every single gun that they want to have, and put them all in the same contained space—Texas, for instance. Then, they can play with their guns to their hearts’ content. Once they’re finished, if any of them are left, they can come out and leave their guns in there.
You can apply the same tough love to the silly people who persist in going on television and making up nonsense, for example. I’m all for letting them tell fibs, but tough love suggests they should be in a closed environment when they do—on an island, perhaps. Then we wouldn’t have to endure them, or the idiots who believe them. Not my opinion, just the facts. You decide.
But no, you can take tough love too far. This is, after all, the land of the free.
Simon Collins