Glamour Girl
A recent op-ed in the New York Times from an unexpected source is not only poignant in its own right, it has also prompted musings about a perennial debate: what’s the point of fashion?
First, the unexpected source:
That’s designer Issey Miyake, he of the detailed pleating and origami-like creations. I had never seen a picture of him before, never heard his voice, never read his writing. As his NYT op-ed points out, there’s a good reason for that. Among other things Miyake reveals, he says, “I gravitated toward the field of clothing design, partly because it is a creative format that is modern and optimistic.”
This op-ed appears in a section of the newspaper normally reserved for politics. Why should a mere fashion designer—someone engaged in a profession that, to quote a journalist colleague of mine, “doesn’t matter”—be granted space there?
I often hear people say things such as, “Oh, I don’t think about clothes,” “I don’t notice them,” “I don’t care about them.” As if that’s some mark of serious-mindedness. You know – I have more important things to think about, I can’t possibly be bothered by something as superficial as clothing.
Well, first of all, it’s my contention that they’re lying. They’re being completely disingenuous. In fact, they’re posing just as much as people who walk around as if on display.
If clothing doesn’t matter, then why don’t we all just go around in pajamas all day (I know, I know, some people do)? Because the human impulse to adorn one’s body is as basic and powerful as any other human impulse.
Asking, “what’s the point of fashion?” betrays a profound ignorance. What’s the point of music? Of art? Of literature? With so many more “serious” concerns in an often brutal world, why waste time on anything as trivial or as frivolous as creativity? What’s the point of beauty? Of joy? Of aesthetics?
I would argue that it’s precisely because the world can be such a cruel, barbaric place that we need beauty, we need pleasure, we need self-expression. We need the dreams and fantasies of designers made incarnate.
And it’s not all just a Madison Avenue conspiracy, another inane theory floating around out there. Maasai teenagers in Kenya don’t primp and preen in front of car mirrors in the bush, comparing their red shukas and trying to one-up each other in adornments, because they’re being pressured by ruthless advertisers. Their sisters and mothers don’t spend hours and days fabricating intricate beaded jewelry because some corporate titan came along and urged them to do it.
Oh, and my favorite—the pseudo-feminist argument that fashion is a method of oppressing women. As a proud loudmouthed feminist, I’m particularly rankled by that one. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian women had for the first time in their lives the chance to buy beautiful, lacy, feminine bras. Yes, bras. Middle-class and blue-collar women would save up for months, forgoing other needs, just to buy one beautiful bra. Why? Because Western capitalists were trying to oppress them? No, because they craved beauty. (Would love to link to the article on this bit of post-Cold War history, but it’s from February 8, 2000, and the Sun’s on-line archives don’t go back that far. If you have access to Lexis/Nexis or some other means of finding it, it was written by Kathy Lally of the Sun Foreign Staff and is called “Red era yields to pink lingerie.”)
Clothes are symbols. They are an extension of the self. Clothes are a way of communicating just as much as words are. There are clothes that whisper, clothes that scream, clothes that challenge, clothes that attack, clothes that rebuke, clothes that soothe, clothes that cheer, clothes that sadden. There are clothes that convey respect, and clothes that offer a big F-you to the world. Tom Wolfe falls into that last category. The celebrated writer, author of THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES among dozens of other things, often dresses in a super-fancy, dandyish style. Wolfe has been quoted many times about this—he says he does it as an act of aggression.
But I like a simple quotation from an otherwise scholarly tome, Men in Black, by John Harvey. He writes:
“We find our clothes, our clothes find us: they save us from being lost.”
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/17/09 at 12:09 PM
