Nice: it can refer to a city in southern France, a biscuit or a person’s characteristics. I personally find all three to be quite favourable. I reckon I could have a wonderful time eating Nice biscuits in Nice with nice people.
Nice as a characteristic is not particularly fashionable right now (I’m not sure about the style status of the biscuit or city; biscuits rarely grace the pages of the glossies and anywhere in France is often considered to be a la mode by default of being French).
The word suggests a certain gentle, kindly and accessible type of person. A nice person is one who is well liked by the many. They say their pleases and thank yous whilst being careful to not offend any sensibilities.
In recent times, nice has become emblematic of a type of benign conservatism. To be described as ‘nice’ is an insult. It means you have little to say and even less personality.
This shift is most apparent in the world of fashion.
Why smile when you can adopt a far more fashionable surly scowl? Why wear a pretty frock, when you can make yourself look ridiculous in a pair of harem pants with parrots printed on them?
Even when ‘pretty’, ‘pastel’, ‘floral’ and ‘gingham’ are significant fashion buzzwords, the style bibles are urging us to subvert the niceness.
As I write, I’m flicking through a free magazine I received with my last purchase from Topshop*. Based on a quick glance I can reveal that smiling with bared teeth is style suicide but that wearing shorts that look like they’ve been stripped from a corpse buried in the mid-eighties is fine.
Take your pick of any of the countless styleblogs currently bloating the blogosphere and you will find a distinct lack of niceness. You’ll see countless harsh bobbed hairstyles, lots of ladies looking kind of witchy and many men wearing too-tight jeans. They all look so hip it hurts.
But what about those of us who consider pain to be something best avoided? Those who get dressed without the aim of getting snapped by The Sartorialist or terrifying small children?
Well, there are loads of us. All looking very nice and doing anything but being boring.
And herein lies the problem: nice has become inextricably linked with blandness. Take the world of celebrity; we don’t want to hear about how lovely they are, we want the bitch fights, the messy divorces, the hard drinking, over-dosing, DUI collecting bad asses.
Rizzo summed it up in Grease with the pithy phrase ‘she’s too pure to be pink’. Poor, plain old Sandra Dee with her nice yellow twin set and matching bow. Her niceness was a problem that needed to be fixed and her wardrobe was the main offender. (Now, I will argue that Sandy deserved the mocking, she was as dull as dishwater but, by the same token, Rizzo was a slutty bitch.)
What we wear speaks volumes about our personality; an ‘interesting’ outfit suggests an interesting person, right? Wearing something eye-catching makes you an interesting person, doesn’t it? I hate to disappoint, you little hipster scamp! No on both counts.
While it is true that our clothes say a lot about us, wearing something unspeakably ugly in an attempt to suggest your complex personality smacks of desperation and insecurity. My advice is to give it up, ditch the fugly floral print high waisted jeans and studded bustier. Embrace the niceness.
It is perfectly possible to be nice and interesting.
Niceness isn’t challenging, it doesn’t force people to ask fundamental questions about human existence or blur the boundaries of society’s norms and values. Why would it? And why should it?
Niceness is not an affliction.
Also, fashion is all about being one step ahead. If niceness is currently out of favour, then it is highly likely to be making a comeback soon. If you are ever stood on a dance floor feeling hopelessly uncool in your nice outfit, reassure yourself with the fact that you are the next big thing, baby.
*My last purchase from Topshop was a rather nice flippy stretch jersey dress in a lovely shade of lavender. I briefly dabbled with buying a barbed wire print crop top, because it spoke volumes about my barbed sense of humour and tough personality (ahem). I then decided that it was too much to ask for from a crop top and put it pack next to the acid wash denim jumpsuit.