Making an Entrance.

A Fashion Statement

“Fashion…is commerce masquerading as hip.  I’m not at all interested in fashion, which is why I rarely buy new clothes.  The fact that fashion goes out of fashion and then comes back into fashion based solely on what a few people somewhere think they can sell, well to me, that’s insanity.”

                                  Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

                                  Oscar Wilde

         When I was a child, my mother and grandmother made my clothes, except for coats, sweaters, and shoes.  Even though both my grandmothers worked in department stores, we could not afford the clothes sold there.  Besides, my mother loved to sew.  Sewing was her creative outlet.

         I always thought that when I grew up and had my own money, I would buy whatever I wanted.  I would go into a store, choose a beautiful dress and be a fashion plate.  But a funny thing happened.  I grew up to be my mother!  I go into a department store and look at beautiful clothes, and then at the price tag, and simply turn around and walk out.  As Randy Pausch goes on to say in his book, “My parents taught me: You buy new clothes when your old clothes wear out.”  Needless to say, my wardrobe is far from fashionable.

         Actually, I kind of take pride in being ‘out of the norm’ with my clothes.  I love it when other people give me things, when I find clothes I like at a thrift store, or when I can re-make something discarded.  I like to take my sons’ discarded shirts, cut and cuff the sleeves, and embroider flowers, or funky designs on them to wear as over-shirts.  My mother’s genes are alive and well in me.

         I’m reading Susanne Collins trilogy, The Hunger Games.  In it, the people who live in the capital spend gobs of money to adorn themselves.  They’re painted and dyed and altered in a multitude of painful ways simply to compete for attention—to be hip.  In the book, one can see what a silly and shallow practice this is, but in real life, we seem oblivious that we do exactly the same thing.  What is with those six-inch heels women are wearing!  One wrong move and you forfeit an ankle. 

         Maybe this is just me being me, but I think our obsession with fashion is another fear-based activity.  Fear of being who we are (many of us don't actually know who we are), fear of aging, of not fitting in, of being considered ‘old and frumpy’.  Whatever it is, we spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year chasing it only to have it change with each new season.  Lord, have mercy.

                                  Keeping the faith,

                                  Jane