I don’t think I will ever fail to be dumfounded by our (by which I mean “the public’s”) willingness to, in a nutshell, “follow fashion.” I know it’s a perfectly normal tendency of human beings, which has been going on for centuries, probably longer, and maybe I should climb down off my virtual soap-box and just accept that “that’s life”… but I can’t help it! It just seems most odd to me, and most transparent, that most of us don’t seem to be able to see (or don’t want to see) the very obvious and direct link between those who are telling us “what to wear” and those who are making money off our wearing thereof (so to speak).
Fashion is… and here’s a cliché and a half, but one that is very much grounded in truth… a religion. We don’t want to see the blatant, directly connectable economic forces behind it all; we just want to Worship at the Altar of the Wise. The “Wise” being the “Style Gurus” of our day – the Trinny & Susannah’s, the Grazia’s, the GQ’s, the whoever’s-doing-”What-Not-to-Wear”-in-place-of-Trinny-&-Sussanah-these-days’s, The Gok Wan’s, the Jimmy Choo’s, the FCUK’s, the Posh’n’Becks’s, the SJP’s… and so on and suchlike and so forth. Because these people, these magazines, these labels, these Bishops of the Boot-cut, these High Priests and Priestesses of Haute Couture; these devote, infallible Ministers of Style know what is “in” this season, they know what is so-o-o 2007, and they know this because… well… they just know. That we don’t question. They receive The Knowledge from On High. And They pass it on, graciously and benevolently, to us mere mortals. Forever and ever. Amen.
[...] then there’s clothes and the following of fashion… I have spoken about this before, so I won’t, as they say, “go on,” but are we really so blind that we cannot see [...]