Vogue editrix Anna Wintour recently sat down as a guest on The Colbert Report, batting down The Devil Wears Prada puns and teasing Colbert about his outfit. At one point, Colbert asked Wintour why she bothered with fashion -- and if she ever just had an urge to give it all up, throw on a tracksuit and go to Long John Silver's. Leave it to Colbert to ask the poignant questions. But Wintour doesn't lack a sense of humor, and so she played along congenially before bringing the point back up: Does fashion have merit? If so, what?
Colbert's query was more than satire, as I've faced similar lines of questioning. I've felt the need to defend fashion, and my interest in it, ever since I started reading Vogue as a sophomore in high school, trying to convince peers that yes, I could still be intelligent and read fashion magazines; yes, fashion is a natural place for art, love, history and culture to mix; and yes, there were articles in there. I'm certain I'm not alone in believing fashion is much more than the clothes on a model, much as I'm certain I'm not the only one who's received skeptical responses to their interest in subject.
Over the years, I've heard a variety of criticisms. To all of you naysayers, I wish I could shut you down with a verbal smackdown like the one Meryl Streep inflicts on Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada -- bless that woman -- but I don't have deliverance of that fortitude. At least not now.
I'll start with this. Agreeably, many of the prices in the fashion world are toeing the proverbial "outrageous" line, especially when compared to, say, the cost of a fedora from Target (and I love their fedoras). I'll admit that. However, in reality, very few people in the world today can actually afford couture, and the median household income of the women's luxury magazine readership falls at roughly $63,000 -- a far cry from salaries cut out for consistent spending on esteemed fashion brands. Even if one does have the money to spend on luxury items, clothes ring up at the lowest end. There's no question. But if so few people can actually afford the clothes that are being produced, what's the point?
Allow me. In the same way that most people who admire a Picasso will never be able to buy one, the majority of people who pine for an iconic Chanel suit will never feel that wool against their skin. Nevertheless, much as one can still appreciate Picasso's pieces and his invaluable contributions to the art world as co-founder of the cubist movement, one can still look at early Chanel designs and see how themes of women's empowerment and activity were manifested in the designs. You don't have to love cubism and you don't have to love Chanel, but perhaps there should be some semblance of equal understanding and respect. See my point?
I've decided fashion can be two things. It can be as simple as something you put on to make yourself feel beautiful, or as dynamic as something illustrative of culture, time and its transformations. As someone with previous fashion closet experience, I admit that holding a jewel-encrusted Dolce & Gabbana bodysuit, or running my hands over a pair of Charlotte Olympia mother-of-pearl Dolly shoes is an experience in and of itself -- and one mostly limited to luxurious trappings of the industry. But I would also I submit that those who take time to see past the surface of fashion -- those who understand its currents, influences, messages and history -- are able to see its merit.
Miuccia Prada, heralded designer and head of the iconic Prada fashion conglomerate, says one element of fashion is so simple it's often overlooked:
"Fashion is the first step out of poverty. You have nothing and then you put something on. It is one of the first things you do to elevate yourself. ... Why are people scandalized by spending money on clothes? Everybody is so passionate about this -- there's a resistance to fashion -- an idea that to love fashion is to be stupid. Clothes are very intimate. When you get dressed, you are making public your idea about yourself, and I think that embarrasses people."
As a society, we're taught not to judge a book by its cover, yet we often do. In this same spirit, I'd urge you not to judge fashion merely with a glance. Even if you think Wintour is an ice queen with a bias (for the record: I do not) and your only association with Prada is that the devil wears it, trust me on this one: As far as fashion goes, there's more than meets the eye.
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Fashion was the first step towards individual empowerment. Until the Industrial Revolution, ordinary people had hardly any clothes at all. They were mostly made of homespun fabrics and in the case of the peasantry it made them look like the dirt they worked in. Only the rich had beautiful clothes, silken embroidered fashions so lovely everyone would come out to stare and sigh as the cavalcade passed by. And then, back to feeling like a lump of earth.
Come the Revolution, and cheap brightly printed fabrics poured off the looms. Brilliant cottons and glowing woolens and even clever fabrics that felt just like silk. Soon "every shopgirl could look like a duchess' some snobby writer (whose name is escaping me) commented, horrified.
And better than that, every shopgirl could feel like a duchess, too. We all know how good we feel in a fine new dress and a pair of great shoes.
Fashion gave the working people a chance to feel like individuals, to start to feel they mattered. To feel like dukes and duchesses and to say, I want the things those parasites have and why shouldn't I have them?
Fashion is revolution! And along with cookery, it was probably a first step to civilisation itself. And furthermore, since 'real' art is so degraded and lacking in skill nowadays, it's in the fashion world that art now resides. No-one needs to defend fashion. It's high revolutionary art.
How do you get people to replace perfectly good items with newer items that work no better?
Fashion.
For all of the talk of the PATRIARCHY oppressing women by reducing them to nothing more than their looks, etc. feminists never utter a bad word about fashion.