The selling out of fashion
Originally posted on May 10, 2010
The fashion industry is frustrated. For a while now, it has tried to push its ideals onto the masses through fantasy and experiences so far removed from the realities of everyday life without so much of a bite. When you walk downtown, you see ads upon ads of ‘life’. At least that is what you think it is until you realize that you and those around you look nothing like those metaphysical beings in the Banana Republic/Diesel/Gap ads. It follows us home as well. We go home and are constantly being barraged with television ads in and out of syndication.
Its not so much the fact that beautiful people are playing our roles, and are trying to define our lifestyle, for most of us can see beyond the painfully obvious. It is the things that you don’t really see so much. The things that stick around in your head way after you turn off the set or pass by a huge billboard. It is the ‘life’ that is unreal, it is the ‘life’ that slowly gets placed into subconscious, something that belongs in it only because we have become systematically taught to believe it is ideal.
However it is not real. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself, for believing in the life they sell only leads to disappointment. That’s not to say that you can never feel beautiful, for some of us can. Some of us look better than those we see in ads, or at least feel that we do at times. The fact is that, although you may feel like you belong to the ‘life’, and that you can sometimes find happiness in being ‘beautiful’ and perceiving yourself as belonging within the billboard window looking out into the world –a boundary has been created.
On one side you have reality and on the other side you have the ideal. If you are on the side of reality, you are unhappy because you are rejected by the ideal, and the ideal is good, the ideal is the goal and the goal equals ultimate happiness. If on the other hand you perceive yourself as fitting within the ideal, you will find that it is only a matter of time until you realize that you are living a lie, and that there is no content behind that lie. When the ads stop and the next season comes along, you either reinvent yourself to follow the trends or snap out of the trance and find yourself a mess of high maintenance materialism – a soul that has pledged its undying allegiance to the GAP.
The good news is that most of us realize this, and that is precisely why the fashion industry, in particular its marketing division, is frustrated. For the most part, it can’t get the average consumer to buy into its lifestyle anymore, and thus can not sell its products. I myself like their ads. I enjoy seeing what gimmicks and stories the fashion industry creates. Hell, being a designer, it is my job to help such companies find a way to grab interest, to lure, to sell the impermanent and to define a lifestyle. Perhaps that is why I can sympathize with the fashion industry, because in a way, their problem is my problem.
So what is the answer? How can the fashion industry succeed. In trying to define how people should live, in trying to push an ‘experience’ that may or may not have existed, they have created a new form of entertainment. Or is it the other way around? I guess what I really want to say, at least the reason why I started this whole thought process, is that I’ve seen the fashion industry for the first time, try to create a new ideal. It is the ideal of reality. Perhaps it has been done before. No, in fact I know its been done before, but it seems to be more prevalent these days. And its not just that fashion industry, it seems that every marketing scheme nowadays are focusing on the ‘real’ person. Is the fashion industry as well as the rest of the marketing world coming to grips that they just can’t win? Are they in fact, giving up to reality? Only time will tell.
