I want to dress like Walter Benjamin

Thee edifying BBC podcast series "Thinking Allowed",  includes a segment on the German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin. 

The presenter, Laurie Taylor (and his guests, Jonathan Rée and Esther Leslie) discussed Benjamin's well-known flâneur persona, and the difference between flâneur and dandy. The flâneur dresses and behaves in a way where he can melt into the crowd, all the better to observe and absorb; the dandy dresses to draw notice. The dandy, the panel noted, is an engine of consumption.  

There's a symbiotic relationship between seeing and writing. Lately, there's been little to see but people in dun-coloured hoodies. What happened to the girls dressed like animé characters, the insouciant women in a brilliant jumble of vintage with the latest accessory, or ladypersons in trim, pretty coats? 

Perhaps, I thought, walking past papered-over boutique windows, the past half-year has eroded interest in display—we're involved with weightier issues. 

Benjamin memorialized the highly personal shops tucked into the arcades (passages) of Paris; he saw the department store as destroyer of this idiosyncratic mode of commerce.  

He saw fashion as leaping for the classical to the contemporary and back again without resting in one aesthetic configuration. He began to analyze its qualities in his book of unfinished essays and observations, "The Arcades Project" ("Das Passagenwerk"), which presented fashion as historical, mercantile, sensual, poetic, and part of the structure of modern life.

So—to take liberties with his complex ideas—we inevitably will quote the past while striding into the future.

In today's windows, clothes with hints of other eras, but contemporary, too—and ready for flânage, for joining the flow of life about us, on foot, open and available to each detail. 

Clockwise, from top left:

A long cotton shirt by Part Two (also available in white): if you find tunics too boxy, this is a neater-fitting alternative that also can be worn open over a tee or tank. Price, € 80.

Serena cropped paisley pant in hand-washable stretch cotton, Muriel Dombret. (The online store is open!) Price, $CDN 158. A polished, timeless pattern.

Off-white cotton/wool boxy jacket, Arket; price, $US 160. Also in black; machine washable. (Arket, part of the H&M group, is similar to another of their brands, COS.)   

Dusty pink cotton short-sleeve sweater, Arket; price, $US 69. A graceful, feminine v-neck and sleeves that are better than the arm-truncating cap. Care instructions not given, but it is 100% cotton so I'd wash in cool water and dry flat. 

Add one perfect scarf to wear with everything: Kitano scarf from Inouitoosh; 90% wool, 10% silk. Price, €105. Online shopping for EU; list of stockists world-wide on site.

In the 1930s, Benjamin noted fashion's insistent drive toward continuous change, the imperative to consume, and the detritus left in its wake. We are much farther down this littered road than in his day—could he have imagined Zara's 13-day restock cycle?— and finally beginning to question its effects.

The Passage reopens with a renewed focus on slow fashion—things that won't date in a year—and whenever possible, that don't need dry-cleaning. True modernity ought not to be chained to an outdated, expensive, destructive technology.