Last update - 00:00 02/11/2006
Seize the day
By Amit Shoham
I am about to tell you a story of obsession and perfection. I am about to tell you about a pair of trousers.
Every writer lacks something, with the exception of Musil. Joyce and Kafka, Celine and Mann, Borges and Bellow, Vogel and Shabtai and Yoel Hoffmann - all are terrific friends of mine, each and every one of them, but after having finished reading them, amid the feelings of wonder and the conclusion that one has experienced a luminous verbal exploration, comes the awareness that some element - in the style or in the person, in the soul of the text - a certain essential element has not been realized. This is perfection, but of its type; something is missing, at some point the transcendence dissolves. Unrivaled perfection, all-embracing perfection - ungrateful perfection! - exists only in "The Man Without Qualities." If you think this is an exaggeration, consider Ariel Hirschfeld's reflections on Robert Musil's never-ending novel, as quoted on the back of the book: "A unique treasure which I read at the rate of approximately one sentence per hour and cannot believe what I am seeing: after all, this is a book which will never be written, and here I am, reading it." I have plenty of Joyce and Kafka on my bookshelf, but of Musil there is only one. Carpe diem: after all, these are the trousers that will never be sewn, and here I am, wearing them.
Carpe diem, the epigram of the Roman poet Horatius, which means "seize the day," the very same as Saul Bellow's New York novella, Carpe Diem is the name of an avant-garde fashion house that was established by the young designer Maurizio Altieri in Perugia, Italy, in the middle of the last decade. There isn't much to know about Carpe Diem. That isn't my judgment, it's Altieri's. The man has set himself the goal of distancing himself as far as possible from the fashion world. As part of his opposition to the industry's rules of the game, he doesn't give interviews, doesn't let himself be photographed, doesn't advertise, doesn't have shows, doesn't loan clothes for shoots, doesn't market his wares other than to a handful of stores in the world, and does not allow the clothes to be sold in sales. A stiff-necked type, and apparently also something of a showboat. Why in the world would a clothes designer behave like a radical underground artist? What does commerce have to do with anti-commercialism like this? This is undoubtedly a peculiar approach, whose pretentiousness and braggadocio might be cause for mockery - but then you discover the clothes. Although I have been watching Altieri for some time, it was only at the beginning of the summer that I had the opportunity try on trousers of his, at the secret branch of L'Eclaireur in Paris. It was morning, and the sight that greeted me in the mirror was one I had never before encountered: the sun shone from my bottom. I had never worn such trousers. A person who does not trust his body, and especially not his legs, looks for trousers that will not emphasize his contour lines but, on the contrary, will blur them, rephrase them, and what Carpe Diem's trousers did was far more than suit me, "sit well on me." The bloody trousers liberated me. I felt as though the sticky tape of eight different complexes had been ripped off me in one fell swoop. I felt I was in the opium experiences of the poet Gerard de Nerval, when "intoxication purifies the eyes of the soul" and "the spirit, liberated from the body, cruises happy and free in the expanse of light." The eyes of my soul clouded over again when I realized what the price was, and my spirit, bleak and chained, rushed quickly back into my body when I understood that I would not, in any form, be able to meet it. I decided to forgo buying the trousers. That was a mistake. It was a mistake because it was clear to everyone, and above all to me, that this was a forgoing I would not be able to absorb, which would only lead to a surfeit of desire. Every obsession begins with forgoing. These were my trousers. They were handmade in Italy for me. The affair between us was the most heartrending since Romeo and Juliet. Parting is inevitable. I am not the person who will say no to love. How much time has gone by since then, four months? Today I own two pairs of trousers, a pair of shoes and a shirt from Carpe Diem, and I have not yet said the last word. Funny, that.
So funny, to tell the truth, that I will not be able to go into detail concerning the total expense. I come from old poverty and we have rules about this. I will say only what I tell my daughter: Never mind, Sweetie, we'll eat in December.
Seize the day. The clothes of Carpe Diem are clothes in their pure form, clothes such as one conjures up in the imagination without knowing that they are capable of descending to earth. The far-reaching investment in their production - for the leather goods, Altieri uses skins whose processing involves their lengthy burial in the ground, and in his cotton line one can discern how golden hands went over every detail - does not reflect an empty caprice but an uncompromising means to achieve the goal, to realize a quasi-utopian vision of clothes that are not of a particular place and time, clothes that are a universe of harmonious contradictions - new and faded, progressive and archaic, brilliant and modest, simple and mysterious. "The Man Without Qualities," Musil entitled his book, and thereby proved that there is no such thing as true genius without a sense of humor, simply because the book could not have had a more ironic title, for its protagonist is the exact opposite - a person possessed of an array of qualities, a person who, because he is so complex, so rare and elusive, becomes a whole life not only for his readers but also for his creator. His name is Ulrich and on him are trousers.