Evil Genius: We seem to be struggling with the appropriate way to react to the death of the murdering legendary record producer.

 

Music producer Phil Spector, the man behind decades of pop hits and a convicted murderer, has died at age 81.Spector leaves a legacy of violence and abuse in addition to his work with pop artists.

Spector died Saturday at a hospital of natural causes, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. His official cause of death will be determined by a medical examiner, but according to the LA Times, he was hospitalized after contracting COVID-19.

He helped curate the mainstream playlist for decades, with more than 20 tracks that charted on the Billboard Top 40 between 1961 and 1966 — many using his signature "Wall of Sound." He worked with the Beatles, Tina Turner, Leonard Cohen, girl groups like the Ronettes and the Crystals, and others.

He effectively retired after putting out his last full record with the Ramones in 1979. In 2003 he killed actor and model Lana Clarkson, who was found dead at his mansion outside Los Angeles after he shot her in the mouth. In 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison for second-degree murder.

Spector maintained his innocence, saying Clarkson killed herself. He was quoted in Esquire as saying, “I didn’t do anything wrong. … She kissed the gun.”

The first time he went to court, in 2007, it was declared a mistrial. He frequently wore wigs to court. Evidence came forward that Spector had a pattern of pointing guns at women since the ’70s.

He was tried again in 2008. In 2009, six years after the killing, he was found guilty and spent his final years in a Stockton, California, prison.

In a statement on Sunday, Clarkson's mother Donna Clarkson remembered her daughter.

"Lana Clarkson was a warm, compassionate, kind, loving woman who would be 58 years old now," she said. "Her energy, brightness and love of life have sustained her family since her murder 18 years ago in 2003.”

In 2014, Spector's lawyer told the Daily Mirror that he was in poor health and had lost the ability to speak. He would have been up for parole in 2024.

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You are what you wear: How fashion impacts our mental well-being

 Getting dressed in the morning: it's a task we do daily, some more consciously than others. We get dressed for work in the morning, choose casual clothes for lunch with a friend or maybe dress up for dinner in the evening. And with each outfit we — intentionally or unintentionally — communicate non-verbally to the outside world.

It's no question that what we wear is who we are because fashion is a way for us to express ourselves, our identity and even how we feel. The clothes we wear daily reflect the way we want others to perceive us and how we see ourselves. Clothes even influence our cognitive abilities.

In 2012, researchers from Northwestern University in the US found that wearing specific articles of clothing had an effect on the wearer's psychology and performance. The researchers concluded that clothes have a symbolic meaning. When we wear an article of clothing with a specific meaning, these clothes can influence our psychological state. It's called "enclothed cognition."

For example, a lab coat is associated with intelligence and scientific thinking. When a person wears a lab coat, these characteristics symbolized by the coat seem to have positive effects on their performance of specific tasks, according to the researchers. The study results show that what we wear, and the symbolic meaning we associate with specific fashion items, has measurable effects on our mental state. 

"This experiment really shows how clothes can affect our attention, how we feel about ourselves and our competencies," says Camay Abraham, who has a Master degree in Applied Psychology in Fashion from the London College of Fashion.

These effects can be positive, but also negative. "It could mean a negative state of being if the item in question is known to be associated with a negative construct," says Abraham. So "enclothed cognition" is a two-way street, just like our daily clothing choice can make us feel good or bad.

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Happy Dressing: Does What We Wear Really Have the Power to Change Our Mood?

 When it comes to dressing and our mood, does what we wear really have the power to boost confidence? Increase wellbeing? Positively impact our mental health? 

According to experts, the answer is a resounding yes. Prof. Carolyn Mair PhD, a behavioural psychologist and author of The Psychology of Fashion explains:

“When we feel good in what we are wearing, we tend to be more confident,” says Mair.

“When we are confident, we are able to exert influence through our confidence alone. When we feel good, we are likely to be perceived as looking good too, as our posture, voice and other nonverbal aspects will be more positive.”

Mair should know - through her consultancy business, psychology.fashion, she has advised numerous businesses on how to maximise their potential.

According to Mair, our clothes are our second skin, and it’s not purely how we feel when we’re wearing them that makes a difference.

“What we wear is how we show ourselves to those we interact with - we are influenced by their reaction to it. If we are well received, it boosts our confidence and can ultimately affect our wellbeing.” 

Sarah, 27, an advertising exec from Newcastle agrees. ‘My favourite dress is one I recently bought from Tu clothing,” she says. 

“Their stuff feels really inclusive in terms of shape and sizing options, and every time I’ve worn it, I’ve had compliments - I feel more confident the minute I put it on’

Shakaila Forbes-Bell, fashion psychologist and founder of Fashion is Psychology goes a little deeper into what’s happening there.

“People experience changes in their emotional state with a change in their style of dress,’ she explains.

“When you wear clothes that make you feel confident, happy and empowered, they can act as armour, shielding you from negative feelings and experiences.”

“Some studies have even found that clothes carry a tension release dimension, providing wearers with a dose of escapism that positively impacts their mental wellbeing during particularly trying times.”

So our clothes can ease anxiety, too, which is why the term ‘dopamine dressing’ is making its way into the style lexicon.

“The power of clothing to boost your mood lies in the associations you have with your clothes,” says Forbes-Bell,

“Try to wear your favourite items as much as possible - these pieces are often associated with good times which can trigger nostalgia.”

Mair agrees. “If we have a garment that we wore when we completed a successful negotiation, or wore to an interview and then got the job, we can create a symbolic meaning around that garment that gives it ‘power’. 

During lockdown, with a large percentage of the population now working from home, the idea of dressing for work when you're not crossing the threshold of your front door may seem pointless.

Get dressed for work, she said, even if you’re only going to your kitchen table.

“In a work sense, your opinion of yourself is everything,’ says Forbes-Bell. ‘It’s how much you quote for a job, or how much confidence to bring to a pitch meeting.”

“For me, how I dress is an expression of that value, to both the outside world and myself, so it makes business sense to put the effort in - a quietly polished look is immeasurable in terms of your mood and attitude to yourself.”

It’s sage advice and a philosophy that London-based charity SmartWorks is built on - they provide a dressing and coaching service for unemployed women with confirmed job interviews.

The premise is simple - to style women in an outfit which will boost their confidence, ultimately helping them to secure the job.

Once they’re employed, they may return for five further items - perfect for making a good impression in their new role.

Feedback is phenomenal - 94% of clients reporting that SmartWorks boosted their confidence.

And what about colour?

“Choosing a colour is very closely connected to our mood so wearing a certain hue can spark a feeling of happiness and joy.” says Jenny Clark, head of colour at WGSN.

‘If we want to feel uplifted, strong and positive, colours with more chroma will give us a boost.”

It’s something that Emily Brooks, an award-winning designer and illustrator from London, embodies. 

Her passion for colour, and the joy it brings, runs through her collection of stationary and cards, her home, and, of course, her wardrobe.

‘Clothing is a powerful tool when it comes to transforming mood, confidence and outlook,’ she says.

‘I will consciously fight low self esteem or lack of motivation by wearing something bold and colourful to bring out my inner sass and positivity.”

The point being that a vital part of dressing happy is being true to ourselves.

“When I wear one of my favourite outfits I feel great and I feel like me,’ says Helen, a solicitor from Nottingham,

“What we wear is our identity,” agrees Mair. “Social media has allowed for a celebration of uniqueness - more support for being our true selves rather than fitting into a very narrow stereotype of what a fashionable person should look like.”

“Ultimately”, she says, “dressing for your true self means knowing what clothes makes you feel good, caring less about what others may think, and having the confidence to carry it off.”

It’s a powerful philosophy.

The Psychology of Designer Handbags

Birkin bag

LONDON, United Kingdom — A woman walks into one of the large flagship stores on London’s Bond Street, where she is greeted by a vast display of handbags. Pouches, totes, cross-body, baseball style, shoulder bags and shoppers — the whole handbag family is there, with price tags upwards of £1,000 ($1,317). She is businesslike in her approach, wasting no time on handling them or deliberating over her choice. “That one.” “That one.” “That one.” “That one.” “And that one over there.” She points at five. “I’ll take the rest.” The story was told with both amusement and delight by the store manager.

Ah, the glory of the bag — it’s the item that every brand hopes will sustain them through good times and bad. The product that has been relied upon for sales when ready-to-wear is having a weak season, or in better times, is simply the lovely, high-profile icing on the cake, adorning store windows and providing catwalk fodder, while contributing only a small percentage to the bottom line.

You might have thought that there were enough handbags in the world to see us through to Armageddon. Yet, every season the showrooms of the world’s biggest fashion houses are crammed with new ranges to tempt the customer. Devoted PRs are given the task of enthusing about the newest and most telling details — the reworked links on the handles, the innovative clasp, the soft-sided capacious lightness, the elegant simplicity of the handheld style. And of course, with each season comes the introduction of the new ‘Icon’ bag — a phrase that every time I hear it makes me wince, for its overused appropriation, and which should only be employed in the case of something truly powerful. Not a calf leather tote, no matter how gorgeous.

Still, handbags do so much more than simply the role they fulfill. In the canon of fashion items, the handbag is a relative newcomer having arrived as the new kid in town in the early 20th century. Hermès’ fascinating monograph in “Carried Away”, a lavish illustrated volume, published to accompany a former “Le Cas du Sac” exhibition, features an ancient rock painting in Algeria, where one of the terracotta stick figures appears to have a bag in the crook of their elbow. But as civilisations evolved, bags were rarely attached to the body and were relegated to the company of animals and servants.

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Why are so many people so obsessed with Supreme?

It's 9AM on a Thursday and 300 young men are lined up along a street in Soho. The guy at the front of the queue, 18-year-old Nick from Wembley, lets out a sort of pissed off yawn when I approach him. He's been waiting here 23 hours, he says, trying to sleep on one of the camping chairs now piled up across the road. The guy at the back of the queue, 17-year-old Werner, flew into London this morning from his home in Finland, just to stand in this line for the rest of the day. 

In about an hour the doors to Supreme's London store will be opened, and everyone here – tired Nick; patient Werner; teenagers from Cardiff, Newcastle and Canterbury; the guy wearing a Supreme sleeping bag like a slanket – will get their chance to walk inside, past the sculpture of a smiley white ghost, and flick through the first batch of caps, coats, hoodies and T-shirts released this season. 

The majority of queuers are heading straight for the shirt featuring a photo of gloomy vegetarian Morrissey. The photo he didn't want Supreme to use, he said, because they once collaborated with a burger chain – and also just because he didn't like the face he was pulling. Werner knows he isn't getting the Morrissey shirt; it'll have sold out long before he makes it inside, along with all the other stuff he actually wants. But that's fine. He's happy to pay for a flight and a hotel – and then queue for six hours – in the hope he'll find anything in his size, even if it's just a pair of boxer shorts. 

This is completely normal. Every time Supreme releases chunks of new stuff at its ten stores across Europe, America and Japan – which is every Thursday from the start of each collection – hundreds of people skip school or work to get first dibs. A couple of weeks after my visit, the London shop manager tells Supreme's British disciples that if they're planning a pilgrimage they'll need to start queuing on the Thursday morning – instead of the Wednesday night – because the weekly influx of rough sleepers in £300 trainers is rankling the local council.

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