Holier Than Thou

Lace.

It is the soul and cloak of sensuality. It is delicate; it is coquettish; it is hopelessly and proudly romantic. Provincial and urbane, antique yet ageless, lace is a beautiful and confounding mystery almost as enticing as those who wear it.

Lace is without peer in sophistication and expression. Versatile, joyful, and sheerly pretty, it queens over every false pretender to the great upholstered throne. Cotton is dull, wool impossible, polyester obscene. And leather! Leather is brutal, blunt, and impenetrable; it shouts hostility and self-absorption in the clumsiest way. Leathercladsters do not extend the hand of mercy or drink from the cup of kindness; they have no opportunity to surprise or deviate from the frowning visage their garment cuts out for them.

Lace, on the other hand, is more than a ready-made punk megaphone. It can be dark, certainly, and heartless, icy, and predatory. But it can also be sweet, fitting clean on the hem of girl’s Sunday dress or a grandmother’s hanky. Yellowing and frayed, lace promises nostalgia, history, earl gray tea, the impossible romance of dying refinement. But black and premeditated, it can be a vixen’s miracle. And what greater pleasure can there be than in transforming your grandmother’s nightgown into a weapon of mass destruction?

Leather’s rumored appeal is only a reflection of our masochistic society’s desire for cruelty and dominance, a manifestation of our guiltful self-hatred and bourgeois thirst for direction. Its gross texture and putrid origins can never compare to the precise craft of lovely, lovely lace.

If I did not loathe PETA and object to animal rights as much as I do, I might frame leather as the dark twin of fur, a needless, superficial robbery of life, and point out our absolute piggishness in demanding bestial satiation for our own vain insecurities. But I’d hate to fall in with the wrong crowd there.

Speaking of the wrong crowd, please also take note of the lace-related http://www.qalace.com/.