I will NOT be taking any fashion lessons f rom a g rey-haired attack dog in chinos! ALEXANDRA By SHULMAN
wear interesting shoes rather than the low black courts which are a female politician’s default.
After a difficult eight minutes I left the studio, wondering, not for the first time what it is about fashion that makes so many people unable to react to it with the serious attention it deserves?
Bang had gone my hopes of having an interesting and educated conversation on one of the most listened to current affairs programmes on radio.
John was obviously having a good time scoring some points – and I remain a fan. His personal interest in and general knowledge of the subject was no doubt low, and he probably thought the combative approach would liven up what he might have considered a shallow subject for discussion.
And that is my objection. Fashion is not trivial.
Although some of the follow-up comments on social media focused on his ‘mansplaining’, there are many female newspaper columnists who make John’s inquisition look sympathetic when it comes to sounding off about the dire effects of fashion on our world.
Size zero seems to be a treasured go-to newspaper column filler when a writer is stuck for a couple of hundred words, and it knows no gender boundaries.
Yes, of course questions of health and body image matter, and I understand why films such as the recent Netflix movie To The Bone, starring Lily Collins as a woman battling anorexia, generate so much debate. But it is frustrating that fashion, a business that contributes a staggering £28 billion to this country’s GDP, which employs just short of a million people, which is a part of everybody’s daily life and which combines creativity and commerce in a uniquely fascinating way, is so often portrayed as a negative.
Fashion is not some totalitarian state which deems everybody needs to look identical to models in fashion photography, or which tolerates only a slavish adherence to a rigid style, dictated by some Spectre-like global criminal organisation.
FASHION is not some weird and evil conspiracy that lures the unsuspecting into spending their hardearned cash on things they don’t need. Nor is it some malign social force which encourages eating disorders, slave labour and narcissism.
The truth is that fashion is a fact of life. An interest in how we appear and dress is one of the things that makes us human – driven by people’s desire to use clothes to demonstrate their taste, status, wealth, creativity and sexuality.
I dread a day when the prediction I jokingly made on Today – that we will all end up wearing unisex jumpsuits – might actually come true. The fashions of the day emerge from the general culture we live in. Corsets were thrown out when the world changed after the slaughter of a generation of young men in the First World War and it became more acceptable, necessary even, for women to work.
The hippie style came about as international travel become more Alexandra Shulman with supermodel Cara Delevingne accessible in the 1960s and a booming economy gave young people the opportunity to escape the conventional treadmill. Punk was a reaction to the economic downturn and political chaos of the late 1970s. Designers react to the times.
Even the silliness of some elements is enjoyable. Why else do newspapers routinely scour the fashion shows to fill their front pages with the most unwearable and outrageous look they can find on the catwalk?
Why are so many people obsessed with the lives of the fashion models, designers and the new Instagram stars?
Fashion gives most of us great pleasure, and were it such a malevolent force I very much doubt there would be the vast number of boutiques, departments stores, high street chains, pop-up initiatives, and online sites thriving around the world. How many of us enjoy snapping up something inexpensive as a treat for the weekend, or saving for a dress or shoes or handbag we will treasure for years?
Fashion is fun. It makes us feel good and adds to the whole richness and beauty of the world we live in. And I for one say hurrah for that.