The New York Times
December 28, 2004 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Fashion Page; FASHION: CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 1220 words

HEADLINE: The Next Wave of Style Begins at Home

BYLINE: By CATHY HORYN

BODY:


Before you get any funny ideas, let me just say this is a story about youth. Youth is funny, and I don't mean that in the old J. D. Salinger sense of everything being one big joke or lie, especially one's parents. Salinger's characters were preoccupied with growing up, and 16 seemed to last forever then. Now 16 is largely an acquisitional phase: the moment when you trade up from Miu Miu to Prada.

''Mom?''

''Yes.''

My son, Jacob, and I were in the kitchen, a dog or two skipping at our feet. It was late, almost midnight, and outside the world was cold and pitch dark. Home for Christmas, Jacob, who is 19, had entered that semihibernal state familiar to all returning college students. He loaded up on another bowl of Reese's Puffs.

''Mom, I've run out of yarn to finish your hat.''

Since autumn 2003, when he was a senior at a boarding school in Maine, Jacob has been crocheting hats. I saw this as no occasion to sigh with pride or expect a house call from Carson Kressley. That summer Jacob was in Oregon, working as a digger for one of the snowboard camps on Mount Hood, and I knew that crocheting was integral to snowboard life. A lot of guys and girls had a crochet hook in their backpacks.

At school in fall 2003, Jacob devoted himself to his crocheting. I felt certain there were great works of literature that were going unread. But as I knew, his powers of concentration were not limited, merely directed to whatever window appeared open and most interesting and urgent. And in Maine he was surrounded by people who not only understood this view but also participated in it. I believe his dorm mother and the mother of his best friend, Brendan, provided him with the hook.

Last December, with college visits still ahead of us, we arranged to meet in Boston, Jacob traveling by bus from Maine. Over the Piscataquis River, down into the gray mill towns of Lawrence and Lowell, Mass., he crocheted.

''Did you get any weird looks?'' I asked when we met at South Station.

''Yeah, some.''

Now it was another December, and Jacob was going to make a hat for me for Christmas. We paid a visit to our local knitting shop, Jacob wearing one of his hats, a hot-pink number, low over his brow. A couple of women were seated around a table, clicking off stitches. I soon found the yarn I wanted: a nubby brown wool, subtle, with just a hint of heather. ''This is better,'' Jacob said, handing me a smooth skein of chocolate brown. He wanted to make a hat for himself as well, but looked intimately stricken as he held up a ball of mohair. ''Twenty dollars!'' he said. I examined the label: ''Made in Italy.'' Well, no wonder, I thought.

But I did wonder. Was this scene in the knitting shop a tremor, the first sign of a repudiation by one generation of another generation's firm belief that all young people will eventually slough off their joke T-shirts for cashmere V-necks? I know in Italy they would argue that this was an isolated case. But what if they are wrong? And more to the point, what if the next wave were to contain the words ''Made in China''?

At the counter the shop's owner recognized Jacob. Shortly after returning from Mount Hood, he had asked her to knit two hats for him, one in hot pink, the other in white, and both with resplendently long braids. That was the other piece of information I acquired from the diggers: ''Pink is the new punk.''

''So you found someone to crochet your hat,'' she said cheerily.

There followed a long silence. Finally, my son said, ''No, I did it myself.''

Crochet is going to be big this spring. But of course I already knew that. Or I should have known that last September when I dropped in to see Miuccia Prada before her spring show. We spent an edifying hour discussing whether it was better ethically to use machine-made crochet or stick with the handmade stuff and give work to Italy's dwindling ranks of crocheters. At the moment the fashion world is waging a number of conflicts, mostly with itself, between technology and handcraft, between global brands and antiglobalization. But while I've been guilty of spraying around these terms myself, I've begun to mistrust them. Frankly, they are starting to sound fake.

Throughout the natural world the great movements almost always have their start in an insignificant event, with a drop of water. Aldo Leopold, at the opening of ''A Sand County Almanac,'' his collection of essays, defined January thaw as the moment when the hibernating skunk emerges from his den and drags his belly across the snow: ''His track marks one of the earliest datable events in that cycle of beginnings and ceasings which we call a year.''

Youth performs the same miracle for fashion. It emerges from its den (usually, the television room) and lays down its track. The test is whether we can believe what we see or have to wait for confirmation from the designer or the pundit or the celebrity as she drags her beltline up the red carpet.

''Jacob?''

''Yes.''

We were in the kitchen. ''Do you know who Miuccia Prada is?''

''No.''

''But you've heard of Prada, right?''

''Oh, sure. They make jokes about Prada bags on 'Family Guy.' ''

Since James Wolcott, the Vanity Fair columnist, recently referred to himself as ''a TV slut,'' I feel less ashamed calling my son one. Jacob watches everything. But as I've come to realize and even appreciate, his viewing is highly selective. Among his top picks are ''The Daily Show,'' ''Family Guy'' and ''That 70's Show,'' all poking fun at anything serious. Which means everything that adults consider serious.

Anyway, I don't worry that my son is wasting his time. Nor, as it happens, does Coca-Cola. Last summer Coke had a series of ads showing a group of Phoenix teenagers, all skateboarders, hanging out with their friends, doing stupid things and generally avoiding adult responsibility. Sounds real to me.


''One of the things we learned is that this generation can sniff out anything that doesn't feel authentic,'' said Steve McCall, the Coke account manager at Berlin Cameron, which created the ads and will show a new series in January, featuring a girl band from Ithaca, N.Y. He added, ''These kids have a D.I.Y., make-it-up attitude toward life, and a lot of that freedom and openness comes from technology.''

I know what he means. One afternoon last summer, Jacob, returning from a snack run to Taco Bell with his friend Graham, announced that he had bought a pair of aviator sunglasses on eBay. ''They cost a dollar,'' he said. ''Plus $5 for shipping.'' This sounded dubious, but I refrained from comment. Jacob buys almost everything he owns on eBay, and according to eBay, so do a lot of people his age. It should give conventional retailers pause.

When the glasses arrived, they felt impressively weighty. I ran to the bathroom to try them on.

''I'm taking these to the Paris couture,'' I said to Jacob.

''You're not taking them to Paris.'' You would have thought I had said the Fishkill Wal-Mart. ''You can get your own pair on eBay.''

I waited 20 minutes and then ran downstairs.

''So did you find me a pair?'' I said.

''Mom, I don't want you to get them.''

''But we're not going to wear them at the same time.''

Jacob shook his head. ''It's just the idea that you would have the same thing.''

I had been put in my place and -- how can I say it? -- made a believer all at once.



URL: http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: Photos (Illustration by Christopher Sleboda
Firstview [runway photographs]
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times [hats]
Berlin Cameron Red Cell [television commercial still])

LOAD-DATE: December 28, 2004