It seems to me that today is a good day to be thankful. The weather is heating up, the birds are chirping, new season is out and this morning I spotted an Alexander Wang bag so beautiful I openly quivered with excitement. The uber cool Alexa Chung look alike who sported the lust worthy bucket bag and possibly noticed me drooling gave me a smirk that said “if this was a fashion battle I would blue steel all over your 5 year old Oroton tote.” And you know what? I can graciously say that what her smirk inferred was 100% correct.
It was only when I shaked off my feelings of inadequacy and got the movement back in my legs whilst shamefully obscuring my bag from vision did I think; is it wrong to feel such bone crippling emotion when I see such a beautiful object? This is not a one off instance demonstrating my clothing obsession either, I often try to supress memories of pretending to trip on the bus earlier this year so that I could feel the leather of the studded jacket that a fantastically grunged up uni student was sporting. On reflection maybe my “accidental” trip was a little too obvious as I promptly received a “Hey. Do you mind?” from the girl. How is it that I can be so utterly enthralled by an item of clothing that I feel it is perfectly alright to grope a stylish stranger? Has fashion become an unhealthy obsession?
My faith warns me that such an obsession with material possessions can be dangerous and misplaced. Although I am not the most religious of people I can’t help ponder this point. I recall a time a few years back when a young man sat next to me in a food court clearly there to sway me towards “finding the light”. “What do you do for a living?” he asked, “I am studying to work in the fashion industry” I replied. He seemed quite taken aback by this and proceeded to ask me how I could have such a desire to work with material possessions when there are millions of people all over the world that live in utter poverty. This is a conversation that I often think about, and although it sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable, it is a justified point.
The reality is that clothing and fashion are, put simply, material possessions. We obsess over what to wear because we are a vain society and often place value on ourselves through the parading of objects and personal style, but is that wrong? I don’t believe it is. it is merely the fulfilment of a basic human instinct. Belonging. As I have mentioned in my previous posts, fashion is a mechanism of which can set you apart as a leader or as an indication of the belonging to a group. It is a survival instinct which is present in every culture, country and era in history. Even the poorest and most detached of communities such as the Sara people of central Africa follow a common trend or fashion by its women wearing a plate in their lower lip. The bigger the lip plates the higher the economic status of both her and her family. It may be a fashion in its simplest and cheapest form but if the Sara people suddenly found themselves in the midst of big city living, it is almost a certainty that instead of lip plates they would use Gucci as an indicator of social status.
So is fashion a dangerous obsession or powerful tool? Fashion is what you make it but it will always be inescapable.
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