I love the fashion industry. With a single outfit, I can celebrate a period of history, an exotic culture, and my unique personal style. I can speak to strangers without saying a word. I can summon, court, deter; laugh, whisper, and shout. I can change my age, my social class, my profession with a single swing through the closet doors.
I hate the fashion industry. As I flip through magazines the pages sneer because my body is not fit for runway fame and I can not afford the designer brands that they say mean success. Fashion imposes a common definition of beauty; it flashes images to women, men, and children of what we are supposed to believe is the look of joy and embodied perfection.
I toss the coin of opinion, spin circles in my mind. Even my government joins the conflict; these days, I can apparently fight a war, boost the economy, and balance world trade with just one more trip to the mall. Television programs nip and tuck us with game show festivities, tweezing those who don't fit into the shape we are told to want to be. I watch in horror as the styles of my country invade the rest of the world; spread a haze of counter-culture uniformity, material desires, and eating disorders; seduce youth into believing that their future happiness depends on a pair of designer blue jeans. Or sneakers that are worth dying for. Killing for.
Through collage, I remind myself of the playfulness I want to feel in the fashion game, of the creative exploration of styles, colors, patterns, layers, and personality. I study traditions, opinions, perceptions. I look on with the watchers, and smile coyly with the watched. I speak with the innocently exposed, the knowing promoters, and the wide-eyed willing victims like myself. I become what I loathe, and do my best to walk away with what I love, refusing to close my eyes to true prices in this fashion land of the free.
