Years ago I saw a photo of a guy at a festival, he was an older guy, like a “festival Dad”. He had a tshirt, it was plain with just the words “Fashion is for Morons” written on it. Forgive me, 1200 blogs in now I may have written about this before but I was reminded about it again today as I finished watching the Minimalist movie.
Just as an aside before I get back to the fashion guy, the Minimalist movie is fundamentally based around a tour across America. Two guys who call themselves the minimalists and write a blog under the same title. These are exactly the same guys who are centred in the book “Stuffocation” which I spoke about here. The book was recommended to me by my friend Chris Navarro. The message in the film and the message in the book is so overwhelmingly obvious that it amazes me that we don’t get it.
But back to the fashion guy, in the film they explain the concept of “fast fashion”. I had never heard of this before but the fashion is for moron guy had it nailed down years ago and instinctively I got it. I tried to talk to people about it, but everybody thought I was some crack pot hippie. When my mum was growing up there were two seasons in fashion, cold and warm (or less cold if you live in Scotland). You dress for cold, you dress for warm, you can dress stylishly for either but they were the seasons. The concept of fast fashion is a rolling 52 seasons a year. The industry if now designed to make you feel that you are out of fashion the week after you’ve brought something. If you just think about it for a minute, the concept of throwing something away or even giving an item of clothing away that is still functionally, completely useful because it makes you feel like you are out of fashion is grotesque and only possible now because we don’t pay the price for fashion that it costs both in labor terms and in psychological terms. But the moronic nature of fashion is only one symptom of the problem overall. My interest in the problem overall is how it affects my happiness. I understand entirely that there are bigger issues that that. Way bigger issues, particularly in how it affects our habitat. But at the moment I don’t feel that there is any point in me rambling on here about that because no one will listen to that, certainly from me.
I don’t collect or hoard a load of stuff but I collect and hoard enough. There are items of clothing in my wardrobe that I haven’t worn in a year and I’m ashamed to say there are items in my wardrobe that I haven’t worn. Put aside the horrendous concept of waste associated with that and just consider for a minute the stress and underline unhappiness that that causes. The fact that I have reached a situation now were I feel I don’t have the time to clear out the stuff in my wardrobe which is surplus to requirement indicates how bad the situation has got for me. And I thought I understood this stuff. The very sad part of this is that we knew this all along. Again, taking from the Minimalist movie, here is a clip of Jimmy Carter’s confidence speech in 1979. Yep, its nearly 40 years ago, I was 7 and he understood it then. So the bottom line is that you are stupid (almost certainly) to in any way subscribe to this nonsense. The sad part (for me at least) is that I am as stupid as you. Watch the movie, its here.
Blog Post Number - 1283
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