I love this video. It conflates shopping with a social duty.
Instead of shopping because you need or want something, it advocates shopping itself as a pass time. It doesn’t matter if you can’t afford it and don’t need it. Shit, you might not even want it. But designers are depending on you! You should go shopping anyway. Already have 45 pairs of shoes? Buy another!
I wouldn’t say go shopping or don’t go shopping. I’d say, if you want something and you can afford it, sure, go buy it.
I’m just not sure that women sublimating television induced sexual frustration and photo-shop self-esteem issues into shoe purchases in a futile attempt to fill that ever increasing emptiness on their insides, endlessly consuming the products of slave labour so that they can have something to do in the afternoon, their greed and vanity compelling them to pay usurious interest rates on credit cards, though which they mortgage their future, destabilize the economy and remove us all from any sort of reality, all to support the career of a designers, as if a fashion career is some sort of GM-esque charity, really constitutes a duty.
So yeah. Don’t shop. Or do. But you don’t owe these designers jack-shit. And you can live without them.
6 comments
Nadia Lewis
July 22, 2009 at 8:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Everyone’s all boohoo about Christian Lacroix tanking, crying out that luxury is dead, but me? I laugh — it’s fun to watch dinosaurs fall. Don’t get me wrong — I’ll splash out for high-end pieces, but that’s money spent in the service of my vanity, not at the altar of the alleged Fashion Gods.
I like the subtext of the video: that you are a mindless shopping sheep who needs to be corralled by these bossy bitches into becoming a mindful anti-shopping sheep. If I didn’t know to spend my money on myself before they barked it at me, I don’t think a video could help.
It’s all irrelevant anyway, as handmade is the new couture.
Ryan Oakley
July 22, 2009 at 10:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My favourite part is when they start begging on behalf of department stores. I laughed out loud at that.
Danielle
July 23, 2009 at 6:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chanel doesn’t need the boosterism, and who would cry, really, if Macy’s deflated?
I think there is a seed of a neat idea in here – it would be nice to see a little cooperative grass-roots fash-blog support for designers who are under the radar, and I like how the video provokes people to talk about shopping or not shopping.
The indefensible problems with this one are: a confusing message, bad sound production, too many white girls, and its too long/needs editing.
Ryan Oakley
July 23, 2009 at 12:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think fashion blogging already performs that function. But I’m not sure of that function’s importance. Unless you’re something like Chanel, people don’t buy your name or your brand. They buy your product and forget your name.
Runway shows, brand promotion online and elsewhere, might be nice for an aspiring designer’s ego but I doubt it translates into dollars. The product is usually bought at the point of purchase by people who just like what they see and don’t care who made it.
And my honest feeling on this video is that it’s more about the bloggers’ egos than anything else. They want to be on camera; they want to think Macy’s and Chanel needs them. Hence the lack of editing. Hence the sound production. (No matter how badly they say it, people will still listen.) They’re just carried away with themselves.
The whitemare of it all is, I believe, simply reflective of fashion as a whole. Fashion is about as white as hockey.
Danielle
July 23, 2009 at 1:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I will argue with you on the “white as hockey” point – that hasn’t been my experience at all, as a blogger, a fashion student, a freelancer and an employee. But I’m not going to go on about it here.
This: “And my honest feeling on this video is that it’s more about the bloggers’ egos than anything else.” Yeah I think you’ve got the gist of this (and the last word). It seems like whenever fashion bloggers “get organized” it always ends up being about ego, doesn’t it. =(
Ryan Oakley
July 23, 2009 at 1:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Doubtless, you’re right and let me footnote that: The people doing the work probably aren’t white –they so rarely are– but the face of fashion? As a Negro I once saw on the television said: “Fo’ Shizzle.”
I have no idea what he meant but I certainly liked how it sounded.