11:49 a.m. - 2006-01-02
Fashion Zombies
It has been said that, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." In starting out with this quote by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe you may be thinking, ”ok here we go again another ultra left wing political smear merchant bloviating about how the Patriot Act is taking away our rights or maybe something about the domestic spying scandal we’ve been hearing so much about”. But in fact I’m not going to touch on either of these subjects or any other politically charged area. What I am so up in arms about is the state of fashion these days. Ok, to rewind a little, the other day I was at the store shopping for clothes, which I try to do as little as possible and only when necessary because I find the act boring, pointless, and non-essential to the more important things in life. I do however understand that it’s a necessary evil that on occasion I am doomed to cross paths with. It is for this reason that I have become somewhat of a creature of habit in this area because I firmly believe that when you find a pair of pants that looks nice they have sort of a timeless quality about them that transcends any trend or period of time. For instance, I believe that if a pair of jeans looks nice now, not anything like bellbottoms, lowriders, hiphuggers or any other trend that seems to be sweeping through at the time just a simple nice pair of jeans, that that pair of jeans would look nice lets say if in were the fifties or years into the future. It is for this reason that when I find a pair of jeans like these that I tend to stick with them, remember the old adage “if it aint broke don’t fix it”? And so, the other day I find myself weaving through the sea of fashion zombies that tend to frequent large chain clothing stores finally finding my way to a store rep and asking, “Where can I find the Lucky brand jeans?” The lady kindly pointed me to a section that, to my relief, was apparently abundant with the types of jeans that I was looking for. After rummaging through the selection of jeans before me I finally found my size, pulled them from the rack and started for the fitting room. I took not two steps before I realized there was something wrong with this particular pair. In places they where worn, frayed and even torn. For the first five seconds I thought that someone had pulled some kind of scam and replaced their old jeans for a new pair leaving the old ones on the rack. At that point I looked up at some of the other brands of jeans hanging next to me on the other racks. I began to get that sinking feeling when saw that the other jeans were worn and frayed as well. I remember thinking for a split second, “Did I somehow through all of the post holiday chaos inadvertently wander into a salvation army”? However, in this case the truth turned out to be far worse. I was in a major retail clothing store and these people were actually selling this garbage, and that’s what it was garbage. I had come the store because the pair of jeans I had at home looked just like the ones that I had in my hands bearing the sticker price of $78.00!! After a few split seconds of grandeurous thoughts of starting my own jean empire by jumping from dumpster to dumpster selling what I find to these retarded fashion zombies I shook myself to my senses and started back to the Lucky jeans section hoping that this was some kind of joke. Unfortunately this was no joke, every pair of my style of Lucky jeans looked like it had been worn for two years and washed 300 times, there were even places were it was obvious that they had intentionally worn the jean so far down that they would rip at the first bend of the knee! I then found myself thinking,” is this what the public wants or is this what the fashion industry is telling us we want?” Does the public drive the trends or does the public follow the trends? As a conspiracy theory it makes perfect sense, I mean these jeans couldn’t last more than a month at best. As panic began to subside and reality began to set in I realized that I would have to go with another jean style. This agonizing process of elimination I will not bore you with here but I will again ask the question, do we the majority of society make the trends or merely follow them?
