Menswear, for the most part, has always seemed a sanctuary of sartorial sensibleness. Then, around five years ago, just as the designer Hedi Slimane was mastering his narrow silhouette for Dior Homme, came the return of the skinny jean. Suddenly, to be fashionable, men could no longer rely on a weathered pair of Levi’s 501s. Or a baseball cap. No, one’s silhouette had to be that of an emaciated house spider.
This season, menswear has been taken to new levels of skinniness. Guys, wince and whimper a painful “hello” to man-leggings, or “meggings.”
On the catwalk, in magazines, on the legs of industry “muses” such as Jethro Cave (son of Nick), meggings are everywhere. So I decided to take a pair for a spin one morning. Yes, I wore them into work. Not being Iggy Pop, Torvil or Dean, before I set out I picked up the phone and called another bandy-legged old pro, Justin Hawkins, the former leotard-clad lead squealer of camp-rockers the Darkness.
“Step and thrust; step and thrust,” came the sage words from Hawkins, who was on his way to Whitstable at the time with his new rock outfit, who are appropriately called Hot Legs. “Suck in your stomach,” he continued. “Go commando if you can brave it and watch out for those cold gusts.”
Strapped up like Rudolf Nureyev (I decided against Hawkins’ undergarment advice), I hobbled to work in a pair of sequined black leggings as conjured up by Belgian designer Martin Margiela. I looked like an evil mermaid and felt as if I was walking with a crotch full of staples.
But the response was fantastic. This must be how an X Factor winner feels the morning after the vote. Pretty girls smiled, tourists stopped me for a shoulder-hugging snap, builders wolf-whistled, colleagues cheered (mostly).
I looked very camp, but my inner fashion soul was thoroughly massaged.
Of course, it couldn’t last. I met my French, impossibly tasteful girlfriend after work for a celebratory drink. Juiced up with sartorial machismo, I approached her at our local bar. Looking up, then down, she covered her face with her pretty hands and pleaded, “Oh God, honey. You’re stinging my eyes.”
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday delivered an address marking the first anniversary of his presidency. In the speech, Lai affirmed Taiwan’s global role in technology, trade and security. He announced economic and national security initiatives, and emphasized democratic values and cross-party cooperation. The following is the full text of his speech: Yesterday, outside of Beida Elementary School in New Taipei City’s Sanxia District (三峽), there was a major traffic accident that, sadly, claimed several lives and resulted in multiple injuries. The Executive Yuan immediately formed a task force, and last night I personally visited the victims in hospital. Central government agencies and the
May 26 to June 1 When the Qing Dynasty first took control over many parts of Taiwan in 1684, it roughly continued the Kingdom of Tungning’s administrative borders (see below), setting up one prefecture and three counties. The actual area of control covered today’s Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The administrative center was in Taiwan Prefecture, in today’s Tainan. But as Han settlement expanded and due to rebellions and other international incidents, the administrative units became more complex. By the time Taiwan became a province of the Qing in 1887, there were three prefectures, eleven counties, three subprefectures and one directly-administered prefecture, with
Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan.
As with most of northern Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) settlements, the village of Arunothai was only given a Thai name once the Thai government began in the 1970s to assert control over the border region and initiate a decades-long process of political integration. The village’s original name, bestowed by its Yunnanese founders when they first settled the valley in the late 1960s, was a Chinese name, Dagudi (大谷地), which literally translates as “a place for threshing rice.” At that time, these village founders did not know how permanent their settlement would be. Most of Arunothai’s first generation were soldiers
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