Why I Hate Fashion

Disclaimer: This is a rant.

Fashion is the ever-changing, narrow focus of the most attention-deficit-disordered sliver of the population. It is not a study in aesthetics or what looks good; in fact, I would say that much of what I have seen paraded down runways at fashion shows is an assault to aesthetics, delivered by anorexic, lifeless, genderless celery-stalks whose gaits and facial expressions that suggest to me that they have no reason to live (even though they’re not short people).

Fashion is favored by those who are interested in clothing for entertainment, not function. Fashion has been cycling away for the past few centuries. I’m not here to convince people to stop being interested in fashion or to try to stop people from wasting money and resources on it, to prevent the needless release of carbon dioxide into our already-sweltering atmosphere as crates of these overpriced goods are shipped hither from third-world countries where unsentimental peasants work in sweatshops for salaries higher than they had ever dreamed of making in the rice paddies. No, fashion will march on, and I will remain standing still, or perhaps drifting very slowly, but not marching lockstep with fashion. My purpose here is to explain why it is that I personally hate fashion.

A few minutes ago I was reading various fashion articles from the New York Times fashion section. It is absurd that every season demands a new set of “looks,” which all seem completely random and arbitrary to me. I sense a lack of continuity, of pedigree, of connectedness. Fashion seems to me to be the random musings of a few designers who produce something new every season with the hope that persons of weak moral fiber will be duped into discarding their existing vestments so as to have the newest stuff. The items’ primary draw is not their actual aesthetic accomplishments but rather their price tag. Sensible common sense in design seems not to have been in the minds of the designers of, for example, the latest tight jeans (which arrive pre-ruined) or the latest ridiculously high heels (which account for 75% of the average podiatrist’s business).

While I agree that clothing important to us for more than its original, protective function, clothes are no throwaway items. I intend to use my clothes until they have been expended, not until those who sell clothes have decided that it is time for me to buy something new.

Perhaps I could be accused of having an anti-female bias. Indeed, women’s clothing is far more fashion-driven than men’s. Men’s clothing changes very slowly. The suits on the racks in August of 2011 will not look much different from the ones we see now. A man in a tennis (polo) shirt and trousers from the year 1950 would hardly stand out more today than he would have in 1965. Perhaps the trousers would be cut a bit large in the thighs, or the placket on the polo shirt might be cut a bit differently from what we’re used to, but this would be apparent only to the keen observer. On the contrary, women are much more expected to conform to present thinking in fashion.

This talk of gender, however, is irrelevant. Gender is only an accidental factor in this. There are members of both genders who are and who are not interested in fashion. My point is that I find fashion irksome. I do not believe that the people who decide what is to be “fashionable” are qualified to decide such. The desire to have the latest look is a vile corruption of the easily distracted, lightweight mind, a useful asset to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but today a mere tumbleweed blowing in the winds of change. Worst of all, I see fashion as a channel for jealousy, and a means by which those direly lacking self-confidence may deride others.

When those fashion people can concentrate for more than five minutes on one topic despite the penetrating infatuations of their shallow brains, and when they decide that they want to talk about clothes that actually look good, then maybe I’ll let them enter my house through some entrance other than the doggy door. Yes, I realize that their ridiculous clothes make it impossible to bend over enough to get through that doggy door. It doesn’t bother me because I don’t have a doggy door, and so I guess the idea that I’d even let them into my house is moot.

The cutting edge dulls fast, but a baseball bat never needs sharpening.