Frankly … social
One last time

This is the last column in this series by Maximilian Buddenbohm. For the very last time he observes – very aptly – social occurrences in everyday life.

This is the last column in this series, which is supposed to be about society, about being together. About how this interaction is changing, the way it’s influenced by time, events and trends. Big themes that are effectively captured as little snapshots, that was my idea – just by looking through the window, doing the day-to-day shopping, having a coffee, or going to the library, into the city, to a market. Doing normal things and being aware of what’s happening and writing it down. Incidentally, just as an aside, an astonishing number of people find it somewhat unsettling when someone starts taking notes next to them – in fact, and this is easily observed, the more formally I’m dressed, the more this happens. Maybe I look like you might picture someone from the law enforcement office, maybe I’m in the wrong job. Never mind, it’s too late for me to reconsider.

Anyway, world history is reflected retrospectively in the major events, you can look it up in schoolbooks, while cultural history is reflected in what we’ve been doing the whole time, you can look that up in novels, diaries and certain magazine columns.

Diaries

When I was at university many years ago, one of our projects involved diaries, keyword indexing their contents for archive purposes. I studied library science, so that stands to reason. In a seminar on the subject we read old diaries and worked on them, they were handwritten diaries by people who weren’t famous, who didn’t have any special status. They simply had the quirky habit of recording their day-to-day life in writing. I remember how enlightening we found that. A woman, a random woman, made coffee for herself and her husband in 1920, and simply the way she made it – she could have told us even more details, we found it all exciting and informative and we felt we were learning something from it too.

But while you’re experiencing it, all you’re actually doing is making coffee. You do it every day, again and again, it’s somewhat boring, and a remarkable compulsion would be required to note down what you’re doing. Things like this are often set down in blogs. You can also read blogs if you want to stay informed about society on a level that goes deeper than the headlines. I wouldn’t like to finish this series without such a recommendation.

I head into the city on a Saturday again for this column. Admittedly that’s not a great idea, I quickly realise, because everyone’s doing it, the place is packed. It’s even more packed than usual, I’m amazed. It seems as though the entire population of Hamburg is out and about today, all in the city centre at the same time. There isn’t a special event in the city, just that the weather’s nice and autumn is around the corner, so people have come out shopping – and how!

Shopping

The autumn collections haven’t been available for long, but many of the people who flock towards me in their thousands are already wearing conspicuously new things, having ordered them somewhere already, or maybe they already went to the shops last week and are on their second outing. Although this charade repeats itself every time the season changes, as long as the shops aren’t shut because of a pandemic, it does seem to me that the fashion change has turned out more extreme this time. All of a sudden so many people are wearing exactly what’s hanging next to them in the window displays… I’m not sure whether I’ve ever before noticed with such blatant obviousness and almost satirical intensification how unanimously we all change our clothes at the same time, as if by collective command. Perhaps I’m seeing a late consequence of the covid years or an act of defiance against inflation and the prices, I don’t know.

Indeed so many people are wearing obviously new clothes nowadays that you might make an assumption which does spring to mind, although it probably wouldn’t withstand closer scrutiny – we can’t be that badly off. Look at all the stuff they’re buying! All the stuff they’re carting off! That can’t be for real! Down all the high streets it looks as if society today is spending lots of money on a completely new wardrobe, it’s a shopping flashmob.

Now of course comes the obligatory warning that this scene says nothing or very little about wealth in society. It’s just one city, on one day, at one hour. All this clothing is possibly cheaper than I first supposed, and many of the people might not have bought any clothes for a long time, my first impression could be wrong. That’s not to say it might not also be right, it’s just that I don’t know exactly. I could go home and think to myself: “Well, the economic crisis can’t be that bad after all.” I could also go home and think: “Gosh, that was odd.” And that would be the better option.

Leather

But there is something I’d like to take away from this city visit that’s generally applicable, and it’s relevant to the other crises we’ve been living through in recent years.

Twelve, maybe fourteen young women are coming towards me there. The group’s in high spirits, you can immediately hear that. Laughing loudly, messing about a bit, swinging carrier bags and jostling each other good-humouredly, drinking coffee from cardboard cups, two of them singing along to a tune on their phone, shrieking and giggling all the time. They’re loud, cheerful, obviously in really good moods. And they are all wearing black leather.

It's not as if their entire outfits are leather, but it is a lot. Skirts, trousers, jackets, coats, tops, all variants of leather outerwear can be seen at a glance as they pass by, an abundant selection. So it’s clear that this gang has already shopped successfully before this visit to the city. And it’s also clear that leather is in, especially black leather. In case anyone was hitherto unaware, they definitely know now, once they’ve seen this gang of young women. They look as though they just stepped out of the fashion pages of a magazine, freshly styled but without a team of photographers chasing behind. Other women in the city are wearing leather, I see then, lots of them. But it’s only this group of young women that look so cumulatively conspicuous, as if it’s a sort of newly acquired team strip.

The transition from fashion to fashion is sometimes gradual, sometimes a little more abrupt, this one here is sudden. It’s only a few weeks ago, four perhaps, that the sight of this group would have still been somewhat grotesque, it would have triggered completely different associations and everyone would have noticed the women dressed like this, like a troupe of actresses in eccentric costumes. Today nobody bats an eyelid, probably only a few people are aware of them. They’re simply wearing the new fashion, so what. It happens that fast, I think, that’s how fast the trends and our perception change, and that’s how fast a new normal becomes established, is what it boils down to.

Adapting

The facts become even more remarkable if you can narrow down the timeframe precisely. So we only need a few weeks to process a noticeable change. If you’re not following me, I’d suggest imagining that you’d encountered fourteen leather-clad young women two months ago, then you’ll probably understand what I mean.

This, looking at the bigger picture, is the recipe for humanity’s success – if you even want to view our history as a success. How unbelievably fast we are able to adapt and change at any time, how fast we are able to shift our agreed normality and realign. We can do so on a large or small scale, from fashion to politics and world history.

And I’ll finish with the caveat that although we can adapt incredibly fast, it isn’t always in the right way, as I’ve just been able to illustrate with the example of this stroll through the city. The thing is, although everyone has quickly reoriented to a new fashion, the autumn fashion of the year – it isn’t actually autumn. It’s 25 degrees on this late September day, shortly after the hottest summer in history, and the people in their new gear, including the horde of young women in black leather, are sweating like crazy – because the new collection is far too warm for this weather.

Maybe we aren’t fast enough for all these radical changes at the moment. We’ll just have to keep on observing.