reflections on fashionalble minds and consumerism

introduction

I would like to quote Kennedy Fraser(1) from one essay appeared in 1976 in The New Yorker.

“… Many societes have been openly dominated by fashionable people, but our society is quitely permitting itself to be dominated and transformed by fashionable minds. The word “fashion” (with fashionable) isn’t heard much anymore, and even its successors “trend” and “style” have come to seem a little tasteless and passé. But fashion is everywhere around us just the same. It’s there wherever political strategies are planned, movies made, books pubblished, art exhibits mounted, critical columns turned out, dance danced, editorial policies formulated, academic theses germinated: wherever people think, speak, or create our shared forms of self-expression. Fashion is usually neither named nor noted but is simply the lens through wich our society perceives itself and mold to wich it increasingly shapes itself. This hidden, powerful, mental sort of fashion is thus worth taking stock of…”

abstract

We all want to look good, not only to ourselves but more so to other people. This whole preoccupation with looking good is the cornerstone of the entire fashion industry. We abide by certain norms on how we look or should we look.
This paper is an overview about fashion victims, who they are and how consumerism takes advantage from people’s insecureness about their way to look to other people.

“…A fashion victim is someone who follows trends slavishly, a person who is not necessarily captivated by the beauty of a new garment so much as the mere novelty of it and the social standing it conveys.In everyday life, the people we typically refer to as Fashion victims are tagged as such for one simple reason: they don’t look good…”(2)

keywords

fashion, mind, consumption

the meaning of the expression “fashion victim”

A fashion victim is someone obsessed by his image not just its own perception in itself, more about how they look like to other people. By wearing trends and brands, usually they are not worried about feeling confortable with their clothes with the risk to result ridiculous and with a bad taste in wearing them. Clothes and accessories or whatever people can perceive about you, belongs to the same idea of physical requisites: standards for height, proportions, weight and ideas of perfect beauty that we can see on fashion magazines, tv, cinema…
And what about the contropart of being fashion victim, the “trend” to be anti-fashion and the ostentation to do not follow trends and the paradox of the trend: to be not “trendy”? We would say, as an example, what is beauty? This opposite reaction could be seen in the beauty of Pidro Almodovar’s best actrees or in some ardvertising like the one from sisley, in witch a new reinterpretation of beauty try to feel the gap between real and hyperreal.

what people think a fashion victim is

If you try to do a research about what the term “fashion victim” means to
people you can hear various versions, someone is going to tell you that a fashion victim is someone that “suffers” by wearing something non natural or not confortable just cause it is not “appropriate” wearing something else, or even worst someone that damage his healt just to follow a trend.
Others say fashion victim is someone really obsessed in wearing brands, labels,a friend of mine from Canada call them label horses. In italy someone seems to be proud to define himself a fashion victim as conferming this need.
Examples of the first interpretation could be: ties we have to wear in really formal events, pointly ankle boots with a three-inch heel, young girls wearing spring clothes during the winter standing on the road trying to keep worm by pulling their thin coats around themselves, men shaving with wax their body? Trust me I’ve tried it hurts, what about Carrie Bradshaw from the tv series Sex and the City living in New York and spending more than half of her salary to by Manolo Blahnik shoes and saying “dolce dolce dolce” (sweet,sweet, sweet) holding her shopping out from the door of Dolce & Gabbana store in Manhattan, and then Victoria Bekham, Marhaia Charie and all the gossipy.

fashion and consumerism

The time when "fashion" was defined by French designers whose clothes could be afforded only by elite has ended. Now designers take their cues from mainstream consumers and creativity is channeled more into mass-marketing clothes than into designing them, so is a fashion victim the best customer a designer could dream? Or it is just about consumerism and compromises? Here some words I found interesting about this:

“…Why people buy things they don’t need?
Becouse they to need…”(3)
“…That is the simple answer to a profoundly challening question. Consumers buy things to satisfy a concrete, distinctly felt need. Many consumer marketers go little further than this: uncover the need target it in advertising, and voila, products get sold…”(3)
“…In the later decades of the twentieth century, essentials have captured far less of the consumers’ budget…”(3)
“…Today, over 40 percent of consumer spending is discretionary…”(3)

So consumerism takes advantage on people fears, dreams. As designer should I take advantage from post-adolescetn emotionally fragile girls, deisgning something they would be “crazy” about? Would be a victory in my career? Or just a mere strategy in trying to gain money or fame?
Giving an answer to this question would be easy for my, but when I try to put my self into the other side, in the world of “Non-fashion Victims” I feel a layer not just because I think I’m not a fashion victim but because when I see people so involved in being not fashion, or original, or strange, weird, rebellios I start thinking that they follows so strongly their own trend that maybe are fashion victims or we can say Non-fashion victims,but victims anyway!

PUNK from non-trendy to trendy

An example that I faced reading it is that one of the phenomeno PUNK generation, we are talking about the mid.1970s, P-U-N-K was a a violent reaction to the excesses of a once youthful hippie community that had regressed into the banal world of disco and rock star posturing, they were disgusted because they could not relate anymore to what they were seeing and hearing,fashion- and music-wise, punk became a lifestyle, a way of looking at things with critical eyes they wanted to undermine every known aesthetic cultural, social and political norm with their punk ethik…

The difficulty in finding an answer to my question lies in this paradox: we have two extreme example, on one side we were talking about fashion victims and all the negative aspects, then we were trying to answer to the problem talking about who is against trends and our “esagerated” example was to be PUNK.
Wich one is better? To be trends victim or to be anti-trends victm? The solution would sound as easy as possible: ignorance, people who doesn’t know does not care about what they look like, and this solution sounds even worste in my mind.

preveding trends

Actually agencies involved in social research are involved in searching new trends, trying to have a look around the world and seeing what is happening, their role could be discovering single cases around the world, interpreting these cases as probable future trends, and selling these research to fashion agencies or design studios. An example could be the Future Concept Lab(4) in Milan.

trying to find a solution

My answer will sound obvious, maybe non so common place as sayng “you should be yourself” I better say “you should be awere of who you are”
Are you a fashion victim? Are you against fashion?, I would not say you should be yourself just because I would justify who is ignorant, I admit you can be ignorant about trends, what’s the problem? But you should not be ignorant about yourself, I found the solution in being myself, someone who knows me could say that sometime I don’t act being myself in my totality, I would say this is part of being myself, I konw it.
So what if everybody is going to follows their trends with all the negative consequences? And even better what if I want to spend 800& to buy a Fendi bag? I’m a victim? Yes could be, but I permit it and in consenting it I’m not a victim anymore.

conclusions

So designing should not be a big problem, only a matter of doing, producing, selling something that can be appreciated as can dislike to people, and what about the strategy?
Now I am young I am just studying, it is too early for these compromises, maybe one day I will use strategies and I will be a “criminal” in designing, but I will be aware of that and hopefully my clients will be aware to be my favourite fashion victims, but for now I say I prefere designing expressing more my feeling and my ideas than thinking about the results in selling.

literature

1Fashionable Mind Reflection on Fashion by Kennedy Fraser published by Alfred A. Knope, inc.
2Fashion Victim Our Love-Hate Relationship with Dressing, Shopping, and the Cost of Style by Michelle Lee
3Why People Buy Things They Don't Need : Understanding and Predicting Consumer Behavior by Pamela Dazinger
4 www.futureconceptlab.com