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  • Introduction:What Does It Really Matter If Nothing Is Ever New?
  • Maureen Anne Mahoney (bio)

The name Calvin Klein defines reinvention. In the 1980s, he became a household name by redefining men’s boxers, women’s briefs, and blue jeans as high-end, luxury products for ordinary consumers. Rather than inexpensive utility items, Klein made them the sexiest pieces of clothing in the everyday wardrobe of the everyday person. For over a decade, millions of men and women were easily convinced to purchase his body-hugging jeans and the costly boxers and briefs that prominently bore his name around the waistband. When consumers grew tired of images of celebrities like Mark Walberg and Brook Shields wearing very little apart from strategically placed denim or the iconic waistband, Klein turned his attention to women’s high-end fashion. Starting with a white, barely there, scoop-neck, spaghetti-strapped minidress, worn by Alicia Silverstone in the movie Clueless (1995), the designer has reigned over fashion that is minimalist, monochromatic, contemporary, and modern. What helped Klein to reinvent his brand was the pink, charmeuse, floor-length gown Gwyneth Paltrow wore to the 1996 Academy Awards ceremony. Almost overnight, that dress became emblematic of his new aesthetic focus on “sensual simplicity.” This aesthetic continues to resonate: Paltrow’s gown has consistently been ranked amongst the best red carpet looks of all time. Time and time again, Hollywood stars have been drawn to Klein’s sleek, spaghetti-strap look. Jennifer Lawrence, Reese Witherspoon, Fergie, and Jessica Chastain, among many others, have received accolades in recent years for their own red carpet appearances in Klein’s sensual, simple, and elegant monochromatic gowns, updated by playing with the colour, material, or straps (although Klein ceded creative control to Francisco Costa, in 2003). There is something about Klein’s “sensual simplicity” that women cannot resist recreating and critics cannot resist celebrating. As celebrity fashion stylist, Brad Goreski said, in 2011, “[I]f she [End Page 161] [Paltrow] wore this on the red carpet [today], she would be best dressed all over again.”

Americans do not have to gaze at red carpet images in glossy magazines to find instances where something old is being remade into something new. The idea of renewal has permeated the fabric of urban American daily life for decades, if not longer. Robert Moses, “master builder” of the twentieth century, is a classic example of city reinvention with which most scholars of American Studies are probably familiar. Not long after World War II, he became a household name (among residents of New York City, in particular), through the development of large-scale freeway projects that connected distant suburban areas with the downtown core. Direct economic relationships between downtown and suburbia were not new in the 1950s and 1960s, when Moses’s influence reached its peak. But his projects, like the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway and the Staten Island Expressway, redefined mainstream perceptions of downtown. Rather than a place defined by cultural institutions, Main Street, and tightly interconnected neighbourhoods, Manhattan increasingly became a high-end commercial district; a place reserved for office towers and specialized operations, where ordinary pedestrian activity was dedicated to white-collar employment. Once-stable working-class communities, especially, were razed to make way for his monstrous office towers, freeways, throughways, and bridges.1

This story of urban–suburban development is once again changing. Some of the most interesting and thought-provoking scenarios are coming out of cities like Detroit, Michigan, where municipal bankruptcy is forcing companies, residents, and governing bodies to innovate. Take Corktown, a residential area located just two miles southwest of downtown Detroit. Originally established in the mid-1880s, the area has been dominated by successive waves of Irish, German, Maltese, and Latino immigrants. Although the people changed, the neighbourhood remained relatively the same: a working-class community, whose members lived in detached homes, were devout parishioners at local Catholic, Evangelical, Lutheran, or Episcopal churches, and believed firmly in the traditional family unit—until the 1950s, that is, when Moses’s vision of urban renewal inspired city officials to raze the area to make way for light industry and office space. Although these plans were largely abandoned (only a few original...

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