Broken English ‘cool look’ on French clothes

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 33

Broken English ‘cool look’ on French clothes

DOUGLAS HAMILTON

NZPA-Reuter Paris The English language is being murdered in broad daylight on the streets of Paris, but no-one is saying a word. Silent, strangled English adorns the clothes of thousands of modish young French men and women, whose demand for things American and British does not extend to grammar or sense in the slogans and badges they display. “The First Airy Post,” was one youth’s statement, appliqued on his leather jacket in 1950 s American college style under an air-mail plane !ogo. Another back disappearing in the metro crowds boasted: “It’s the best comfortable jacket in winter." “Scuthland” is the theme of lush green sweaters just hitting the market in the trafficclogged Paris rag-trade district, where things are done with tartan that would draw dour looks in the Highlands. A mini-skirt is hemmed with the words, “Hands up.” The French, battleweary in their stniggle to preserve linguistic purity against the steady inroads of “franglais” — the inva-

sion of the French language by English words — can only be expected to shrug at the “World Dance’s Champion" or the enigmatic “Jump Foreign Personnel.” Would the august Academic Francaise step in to save the language if a similar fate would overtake French? “They would probably be happy to see any French at all on foreigners’ clothes,” one British diplomat said. “C’est le Look Cool, c’est tout,” said one puzzled rag-trade merchant who failed to understand why native Englishspeakers might find his wares amusing. Maybe the boy with the big, blue bobsled coat knew what “The Speediest Way On Ice” meant to say. But did the muscled, macho man at the pinball machine really know he was wearing a Women’s Voluntary Service badge? And are there really that many veterans of the Royal Air Force living a blazered life in France? “Haven’t you seen French people strut around wearing awful fake royal crests on their breast pockets?” a Parisbased English teacher recently complained to a London newspaper. But the growing use of

words as half-understood labels can lead to eye-brow-raising misjudgments. Sweater-back inscriptions such as “The Best Performance of Originality” and the “Active Action Assembly” are forgivable stabs in the dark by harried designers in the booming French pop fashion market. But try deciphering “The Society of America iosi Firp Wines Golf Con-

test.” It may have been a sports event sponsored by a Right-wing tyre manufacturer, but it is more likely a random collection of words. Dozens of similar examples can be found in the maze of bulging rag-trade shops, with names like “Amazing Good Goods," where tough-looking North Africans haul racks of freshly-written clothes. Interview attempts are rebuffed bv these tacti-

turn merchants. They sen the stuff, they do not explain it. But the anonymous authors themselves may provide a clue to the origins of their creative endeavours. “What Would We Be Without All Of American Pictures?” asked a fluffy cardigan. And next to it a felt blouson with leather sleeves agreed there was “No Other Fate Like Hollywood Way Of Life.”