Style versus Comfort
ARCHIE MODEQUILLO Many people will die for the look, literally. They will doggedly pursue a certain appearance no matter what it takes. They want to look like ‘this’ and will go to the ends of the earth to achieve it.
These people are slaves to fashion. They don’t mind if their fashion comes with the price of discomfort and even pain. It’s easy to spot discomfort: there’s certainly something mercilessly squeezed of the man in Skinny jeans, or a high risk of an accident for a woman wearing a riser (also known as high heels). And this is their situation the whole day, day after day.
Not a sign of the discomfort can be seen on their faces, though. They won’t dare spoil the very look that they’re willing to die for. The faces spell heaven, while the real feeling is hell.
Celebrities are a key example of this phenomenon. Lady Gaga is one
– her famous meat dress was far from comfortable, but it was a ‘great’ fashion statement. A statement like that “can bring backache and blisters yet bring joy to its observers,” according to a blog at www.fnomagazine.com.
It appears that looking good makes one immune to any discomfort. The almost suffocating tightness and the hot sweat that gets an all-prepped-up fellow all drenched after making just a few steps are a fair price to pay for the look. But, hey, every bit of that outfit comes at a price too!
People live to keep up appearances. The look is a standard – if not sole – consideration especially in high fashion. It seems that in order to look fabulous, one has to be ‘constructed’. In the process of such construction, comfort is rarely a point considered.
To ask for comfort and style in one package is like asking for the sun and the moon, only that here you can actually have one – either the comfort or the style. But the new breed of fashion creators would not be confined to such old-school truth. Modern chic designers try to marry comfort and style as much as they could.
New fashion concepts have since taken hold. The strict fashion sense from the Dark Ages may have faded much in today’s scene, but it is still there. It has only taken on a new face.
In general, comfort only comes with fashion on special occasions. Samantha Bobb-Lucas at www.fashionb-elle. blogspot.com writes: “When going to a party you take a risk, when going to the shops, you take crocs…” She means, while fashion conventions are still there, one may now take liberty to let go of the old fashion dogma, depending on her or his appreciation of the possible social repercussions.
Lucas adds that “being in flats, a hoody and jeans doesn’t make you less fashionable than the woman in a midi skirt, cashmere crop and jacquard-print blazer. Feeling comfortable in the way you present yourself is all that matters. Fashion is pain only if you make it [to be so].” That may sound like a dissenting idea – but that is right.