Fashion

As I break away a bit of time to type down these thoughts, into this particular blog, another topic, a recent topic still flutters in my head. I discovered recently how someone had misinterpreted my words - not a new phenomenon, and oddly, from the same type of character. In a closed friend circle I threw the matter up and we discussed about the subject, comming to many interesting conclusions that branched out to an incredible array to aspects, that lead us to realize how diverse the understanding of people is. Thus, while some see the whole scope and deduce the message from it, others pic a part and induce the message. This last procedure often brings people to mistakes, as they don't really pay attention to everything that's said, to the construction of the message, but focus on certain elements and basically "invent" for themselves the rest, regardless of it being what was said or not. In my personal experience, people who feel threatened often proceed this way. Not that's bad or stupid for them, indeed it is a defense mechanism, trying to filter and fight threats, but saidly it trumps communication, and thus the ways to solve conflicts.

Now, I'd love to eventually (some other day) develop this subject working down the branches of language, and attached topics, but not today. Today's topic is "Fashion", but not in a Fashion Channel or Vogue form, but from the message of it. This is how, after this recent case, I found another way of pulling these ends together.

Like I said the other day, I was watching TV one day, zapping my time away, when I stumbled upon a fashion show. There was a lot of impressed people and oozing flatteries from - obviously - big shot personalities that had attended the event. Since Versace - Gianni, mind you - I haven't seen a fashion show where I had liked every piece. I rather tend to look at the pieces and think: "Yeah, I might use that". It suddenly makes me extra happy not to be a celebrity, so I don't have to wear those... things. Sure, maybe I'm simply a prêt-à-porter kind of customer, but these pieces are supposed to be prêt-à-porter. Who wears them? Well, sadly, not only the people who genuinely like the pieces wear them, but also a lot of people who's only desire is to be "fashionable".

It caught my attention also, how when the designers (more often than not, gay men) are asked what was their inspiration, they usually reply on the lines of "the modern woman who knows what she wants". I wonder what makes them think that the modern woman that knows what she wants (me being one of them, though then again I may not be so modern), feels the compulsive need to walk around in tiny shorts, transparent blouses and clivages that reach to their pubes, or where the pubes should be. These modern women who are strong and know what they want, get skeletically thin to fit these sex-advertizing dresses. So, exactly how are these, their unhealthy, abused, exploited, uncomfortable trends part of the woman who knows what she wants? Or is it that the modern woman wants to be seen as a sex-thing? The modern woman needs to advertize her body, sell it in bilboard clothes?

The woman who really knows what she wants - be it modern or not - doesn't follow fashions, doesn't pledge to the trend, but pics what fits her needs. She wants to show leg, she pics a leg showing piece. She wants to be comfortable, and she will go for the comfortable piece. She won't be paging a fashion magazine or scouting fashion shows to know what she must have in her gardrobe, but she will focus on what's important for her. Fashion doesn't make her image, or her "self", but offers pieces to her, to serve her, and she will decide, based on her needs, whether she gets a piece or not.

I wonder sometimes how some designers with a seeming detachment from everyday women, women who don't live and die for clothes and have nothing to do with the fashion business on a primal level, take to themselves to define "what the modern woman is and wants". Then, as we look around the gobblers of the fashion trend products, it becomes clear that the fashionable pieces are not meant for the actual modern woman who knows what she wants, but to the insecure, uncertain, undefined, weak, voluble women who want desperately a personality, any personality, and instead of building their own, they shed shells, and dress up to assume the personality a given dress advertizes.

Wear Benetton and you'll be young. Wear Prada and you'll be elegant. Wear Armani and you'll be high powered and successful. Wear Channel and you'll be beautiful. Wear... I don't know who and you'll be I don't know what.

Like the problems in understanding, with fashion a broken message goes to starved masses, to a vulnerable population that doesn't get the whole message and deduce the meaning from it, but pick up the bits and from them they induce a meaning. If they wear they are. A dress is an excuse.  You can be dumber than a bell, but of you are in an Armani, you are successful. You can tell them, that the clothes don't make the person, that by acting the way they do, they are becoming a subordinated kind, with no thoughts, no opinion, no peronality. Shells, no better than dolls, as they let them pump their wallets and dictate their attitude. Slaves of other people's personal interests. Not like it goes through.

The calls and songs of advertizing, the marketing machinery works to deconstruct the person off the person, and those trapped in their webs attack those pointing at the trap. And yet, still, you are not what you wear. You are not what's advertized. You've been tricked.