DSKNY: Fashion and Women's Rights

The ugly incident with Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York which caused a renewed world-wide debate on the treatment of women, the abuse of power and position by men and of course on the balance of press freedom and privacy has inspired me, among other things, to produce this t-shirt design.

It is of course a variation of the famous DKNY by the American designer Donna Karan which many women have been wearing for years on their shirts – as a fashion item, but also as a statement of support for the working women philosophy as expressed in Donna Karan's work. 

Donna Karan became famous in the 80s when she took over as the leading designer at Anne Klein. I had a brief passionate affair with fashion journalism back then writing for Russian and American press. I even had a cover story in W magazine (my feature is pre-internet, not on their site). I've moved on since, but have kept an interest in design and fashion, especially where it reflects the public agenda.

Interviewing Donna Karan I was very much impressed with her ideas for creating stylish clothes for working women. She designed them with liberation in mind – liberation from worries about what to wear and how to look great. Her clothes do look great, but they are also comfortable at work and easy to rearrange so that a formal professional look magically changes to casual, or casual smart, or even very smart evening look, all by adding or removing a few elements, a jacket, a scarf, a piece of jewellery, the elements that can be taken along to wherever a woman's day takes her.

Other designs make it easy to disguise what a woman might think of as her 'problem' body areas and also to look different every day without having to invest in several different full sets of clothes.

The design is available on spreadshirt.net (click on 'Choose design' and type DSKNY in the search window, then adjust the position of design and choose the size and whatever else you want to customise).


Wikipedia on Donna Karan here.
Photo of DSK from here, cropped in Pages, read how to crop a photo using Pages here.
A slightly more technical version of this post is on I Work in Pages.

I Miss You, My Faux Amis

In French une injure is 'an insult', but English 'injury' is une blessure in French.

And how come tu me manques, literally 'you me miss', means 'I miss you'?

If you are not familiar with the concept, 'faux amis' – false friends, are words in a pair of languages that look or sound the same or very close, but mean different things. In the case of French and English, so closely connected through history and culture, the number of faux amis is really astounding.

Among linguists, students and users of French and English there is already a body of jokes and quite a few collections of faux amis online.

But Ellie Malet Spradbery put together a delightful little book False Friends – Faux Amis based on her own experience of traveling in France. I recommend it to anyone who has a lust for all things French, and it should be a must have book for Brits who settle in the old Angevin Empire - from Normandy to Poitou to Dordogne to Provence.

The book is not an academic study of how words travelled from French to English and from English to French acquiring different meanings, nor is it a dictionary. It is rather a fun collection of language curiosities picked on the move. And it reads as such, which makes it really enjoyable.

With the French bemoaning the English invasion of their language and the English sniggering at Franglais, it is refreshing to see how much it is the other way round – how deep is French penetration into English.

The publishers' note sent to me suggests that Faux Amis is an ongoing project and the book is to be expanded and improved. Spradbery runs a blog at elmalet.blogspot.com, so I hope anyone can go there to offer their own finds.

A few nitpickings.

I wish there was an alphabetical index of all the words, English and French included in the book. It would be better if it had more examples of how the words are actually used - or misused by both the French and the English. And of course while spelling may be the same, pronounciation is very different. Coin in French is not pronounced as coin in English, but koo-ehn. Euro in French sounds more like Ero from Eros. There is very little, if any, help on how to say words the French way which is a pity.

One of my own favourite faux amis are cheminee (fireplace) and chambre (bedroom). You can see French estate agents describing property as 'three-chamber with chimney' (three-bedroom house with an open fire). This is not in the book.

Another one, demand (request, in the book) slips into English-in-France so quickly, many stop realising they are different. And every time I see the sign deviation on the road I go mad trying to remember the actual word used for the same purpose in England – diversion.

As for tu me manques you just have to get used to the wider use of passive constructions in French. Put 'I miss you' as 'you are missed by me' and all becomes clear.