I just finished reading War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull. It's an urban fantasy written in 1987. I picked it up after I read Cassandra Claire's post on Top Ten Fictional Relationships (Yes, we likes the books with the girl cooties, we does). I agreed with most of her selections, except that I'm just not as into the Fitzwilliam Darcy and Lizzie Bennett thing that most people are, I like Sense and Sensibility better. I figured I'd check out those of her choices with which I was not familiar. Hence, War for the Oaks.
Anyway, urban fantasy. Standard stuff (I should know). What ended up making the biggest impression on me, even more than the love triangle, was the fashion show. When the author describes in great detail what the characters are wearing just about every time they change clothes, that's what I call the fashion show. The characters in this book are mostly in a rock band and very hip. So their clothes, also hip. Hip for 1987. Pleated pants which taper to cuffs! Pink and gray! Men in teal! Waistlines that hit at the waist!
(Today people make snide remarks about "mom jeans" with the high waistbands, and that's eighties jeans they're talking about. But, let me just say, back in the eighties? The only people rocking the plumber's crack were actual plumbers.)
I spent the eighties in high school and college, so I was very aware of the clothes at the time, despite parental prohibitions against wasting money on anything trendy. All through this book, I was drawing the pictures in my mind and, hey, everyone looked really cool.
This brings up an interesting point for the writer who likes to write fashion show. I guess I do a little of that myself. But hip characters dressed in the latest, coolest thing at the time the book is written are going to come off as kind of dippy twenty years down the line. If your book is still in print. Then again, staying in print twenty years indicates a certain measure of success, dorky clothes or not.
354 words | January 23, 2006 10:44 PM | Writer's block