How I love straight polemic like this: especially when it lays out the bones of an exceptionally complicated argument for me without having to return to the source;-)!! BUT I'm not sure that solely being worried about the iniquities of fashion -whilst important, crucial- goes far enough. What I hope for, though a tall order I know, is for some sort of resolution of fashion's problems that also acknowledges the pleasure that fashion also brings.

Marx of all people was aware of this. He drank fine wine, he lived in Hampstead, refused to live in Whitechapel (that I sympathise with); these were trappings of the Bourgeois life he derided and yet also enjoyed. Marx was fantastically human as well as being a genius. The thing about fashion is that we don't need a revolution to reconcile decent working conditions and ethically priced product with fabulous design. If we keep focusing entirely on the bad and don't accept that celebrating beauty is part of what it is to be a human being, we'll never interest the industry in getting its house in order.

By Sandrine at 17:06 Fri 14 Mar 2008
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Again .... wondering how our present world would look like today aesthetically in all the fields were AESTHETICS play a very important part , if the Egyptians ... Greeks ... and the Romans had denied themselves for whatever reason ..... their own 'FASHION" ? ... and I' wondering is it FASHION the source of the ills .... or shouldn't we perhaps look into ourselves and see how selfish, greedy and morally sick our societies have become ..........

I would like to go back to the story of Lee Miller (Becky Conekin Essay) ... and I quote a viewer on that, that perhaps ..... ' Lee Miller's turn away from fashion after witnessing the effects of the Holocaust.." and yet I am wondering how Lee Miller would had thought on the subject of 'fashion' .... had she been able to read the numerous personal stories and accounts written long after the war ... about how women in those appalling and totally inhumane concentrations camps would turn to any piece of clothe they could get their hands on and shredded in order to make something pretty for themselves ..... perhaps a way of being able to dream ... to feel good about themselves or simply to comfort themselves in such horrible and totally totally ugly circumstances ... we will never know for sure !!! ... but we can certainly try and make an educated guess.... :):)

Fashion has been used and misused that is what I personally believe ... and just to illustrate that ... I would like to mention about how 60% of the
teachers in England have ventilated their opinion and serious concern about how the whole celebrity cult ...( of course exploited by ' fashion ') has become so damaging for students ... focusing only on wanting to become famous .... just for the sake of being famous !!!... while abandoning any realistic avenue on how to become productive and useful in society if just for their own benefit ........... and make a guess who their ' heroes' or should we say role' MODELS' are !! ........ after all the ones in charge and in control of 'FASHION' have turned them into ...... Olympian ' gods and goddesses' .... so to speak

By Galileo's Universe at 06:26 Sat 15 Mar 2008
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