Fashion and Suburbia

I just finished watching a documentary entitled The September Issue, which covers the development of the most important issue that American Vogue puts out every year. It's the big issue that introduces the most important styles and concepts in fashion for the coming year. The film centers on Vogue Magazine's Editor and Chief Anna Wintour and her closest associates at the magazine.

Now I have to say that my feelings about fashion have always been that it's frivolous at best and banal at worst. Irrelevant body decoration dumbed down for the suburban masses. A way for giggling high school girls to emulate their favorite celebutants, and for their mothers to max out their credit cards.

After watching this film I've changed my opinion substantially. If you put fashion into the context of art and design, it takes on a new significance. It occurred to me that fashion, at the couture level, is no different then modern art, architecture, food, music or any other artistic pursuit . When done well, in it's purest form, it is something to be admired and emulated. It only becomes an object of ridicule when it is dumbed down for the suburban consumer.

This is no different than the menu at a chain restaurant -- unimaginative, tasteless, predictable. There's a reason that the food tastes the same in Orlando as it does in Kansas City -- Suburbanites are afraid of anything new and different. Anna Wintour says it herself at the beginning of the film, “...fashion has a way of making people nervous”. Modern art, modern architecture, fine dining and avant garde music all have a way of making people nervous... lack of understanding and an unwillingness to experience anything outside our comfort zone is creating a nation inhabited by stupid sheep... ignorance is bliss seems to be the suburban mantra.

Let's give fashion, as an art-form, a chance. A more beautiful and intellectually challenging world is a better world. Perhaps fashion seems unimportant, and to most people so does art and food and music. But these are the things that separate us from dumb animals. Critical thought is vital to our growth as a society – and it doesn't matter whether it's about art, music, food or fashion... it's the process that's important.