F-F-F Fashion

[woodwardiocom]

Apropos of nothing, I remain convinced that the entire purpose of the fashion industry is to convince people to buy new clothes, when they still have a closet-full of perfectly serviceable old ones.

Comments

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

This concludes the "No shit" portion of today's program.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I'm reasonably certain Anna Wintour would have a counter-argument. (Or possibly just a stiletto.) I'm not entirely clear on what that argument would be.

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

I like stilettos
The counter-argument would probably be, "Iago, you ignorant slut!"

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I like stilettos.

I should have clarified I was talking about a knife...

The counter-argument would probably be, "Iago, you ignorant slut!"

That's an argument with wide applicability.

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

To-MAY-to, To-MAH-to
So I'm not caught up on Vogue.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

You said it better than I would have. :-D

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. --Oscar Wilde

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

I thought it was every season.

[kalliejenn2.livejournal.com]

ha

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

To me, fashion is the process that ensures that, though I like pink shirts and strive always to have one available, I can only buy them every three years when pink is a current color for men. And that makes forest green even less often available.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

Forsooth! (I look great in green.)

[buxom-bey.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you do.

[ceo]

I figured that out when I was 12.

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

And this differentiates it from other forms of commerce in that....????

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

When the book industry tells me that a new book is different in important ways from the books I already have on my shelves, they're usually telling the truth.

The candy industry doesn't specifically insist I buy more M&Ms before I've finished the last bag (though I'm sure they'd be perfectly happy if I did).

The auto industry, while it does want me to buy a new car even though the old one still works, at least offers to give me a few bucks for the old one.

The computer hardware industry makes its products measurably better each year (faster, more capacity). Exponentially, even!

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

The pharmaceutical industry comes up with new drugs—but I've observed the effects of psychmeds for close to thirty years now, and the current ones really are not merely better, but astonishingly better than what was being prescribed back then.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the 'well, DUH' thought balloon over my head when I read the OP is far from helpful.

But then again, so is the fashion industry.

::posts with a nekkid icon for emphasis::

[beowabbit]

Yay emphasis! The world is better for more emphasis in it.

(But see my comment below — you’re making dresses that people are primarily going to use only once, but most people are willing to buy a wedding dress for one occasion because they want it to be specifically for that occasion, rather than just the first dress that fits and isn’t torn that they find when they open the closet door.)

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

True. Also, I'm making dresses that people can *choose* to wear only once, but I do offer to create the dresses in colors other than white (and so will look less bridal) and I offer to shorten the dresses to party length after the wedding so they can feasibly wear the dresses again.

The fact that most of my brides choose to only wear their dress only once is totally up to them. It's frustrating for me, but I can't really do much about that. ;-/

[phil-masters.livejournal.com]

That in itself is not the problem. The fashion industry is a branch of the entertainment industry, and if people choose to spend too much money on entertainment, that's their mistake. The problem is the extraordinarily abusive, physically and psychologically destructive methods that the industry has developed to achieve its ends. It's become pretty well the only legal industry I can think of that's built directly on life-threatening psychological disorders.

[beowabbit]

While I don’t have much respect for the fashion industry, fashion designers claim to be artists (and at least in some cases I wouldn’t argue with their claims), and I don’t think it’s ridiculous to buy a new painting or book when I have plenty of perfectly serviceable older ones.

Almost all of my clothes are interchangeable commodities, but that doesn’t mean that clothes in general have to be interchangeable commodities. (In fact, even on my bottom rung of the fashion ladder, I’ll sometimes pick out a topical T-shirt that’s better for a particular occasion than any other T-shirt I own.)

If the claim is that the fashion industry is evil, though, I certainly won’t dispute that!