Fashion..........what's the use of it?

[Alan Medic]

Jeans with slits in the knee area. It now seems nearly every young person has to have them. Why? Can't they get their jeans on without them, given the legs seem so tight? Do they buy them like that or take them to a jean slitter? Why do so many people have to try to be like so many others? I resent all this 'cause once upon a time bellbottoms were the in thing and I had a pair. I resent that I ever thought I had to be fashionable. Why wasn't there someone like me to tell me I was being a mindless sheeplike fool? Where were you?

Catwalks and fashion shows. Now I don't blame young people for those. But who are are the idiots who think clothes designing is important? Given the state of the world you think people would find something better to do.

[Mick Mac]

Don't worry your pretty little head Alan.

[KalamityKel]

It's the same with golf no? ;-)

[TheArtfulDogger]

My Jeans slit naturally....

.. Which reminds me I must get my toe talons clipped 🙄

[Earl Aelfheah]

It's so fashionable to be anti-fashion.

[Sue]

The use of fashion, whether clothes or interior design, is to try to get people to keep buying new things to keep the manufacturers and retailers and all the others in business. Isn't it?

I had jeans with holes in the knees a year or so back. I was fond of them and didn't want to bin them. I used to wear coloured tights under them in the winter. I had to throw them out once the holes became on trend, in case somebody thought I was wearing them because they were in fashion :))

But then, I recall jeans frayed at the bottoms were fashionable in the ?seventies? and we used to spend ages making them frayed........

I don't see good clothes design as being about fashion, necessarily. Really good design is timeless. I still wear an Ossie Clark dress I've had for over forty years ..... I think good design is an art form, not a waste of the designers' time at all.

[DulwichFox]

Jeans have always had their place in fashion.... and how people wear them..

Fox..

[alice]

Fashion is a form of free speech

[Seabag]

In Al's world we'd all be kitted out North Korean style

Or wearing white boiler suits as in Wood Allen's Sleeper

[numbers]

But Dr Al your younger self wouldn't appreciate being told what to wear by your older, wiser self.

I love fashion and I think it's important. Not in terms of ' I must wear this colour or style this season'.

One of the 2 Gogglebox sisters always wears ripped jeans as does Scarlett. Every bloody episode.

[Burbage]

Alan Medic Wrote:

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> Given

> the state of the world you think people would find

> something better to do.

Ah, but that's the trap. There literally isn't anything better to do that anyone can afford to do.

It's primarily because we're a developed economy - probably an overdeveloped one - where money is no longer a means of exchange or even a store of value but, in and of itself, the purpose of economic (and, increasingly, social) activity. As one economist has put it, it's all about profiting without producing, and more money's now needed to support non-productive activities (those tied up in purely financial shenanigans) than are given up to providing goods and services.

To take a longer view, we've gone from an agrarian to an industrial to a knowledge economy, and now we've hit the buffers. The only thing left is a wholly virtual economy, and not in a good sense.

That's why, although our economy is growing in terms of GDP, productivity is flatlining.

Fashion is an aspect of this as it's an almost financial business. The goods, such as they are, have no relation to the money tied up in them. Slap a brand - the five minutes' work of a long-dead designer - on stuff you've got for tuppence a ton, probably on tick, from the benighted sweatshops on the other side of the world, and you can flog them to the dependents of kleptocrats and the cannier sort of estate agent for a fortune, even if, in a few months, they'll be decorating the rails of the charity shops or being picked for rags. It provides some sort of employment, but between the luncheon-voucher internships and the zero-hour shelf-stacking jobs, there's not much scope for trickle-down. Even where fashion could, arguably, do some good, as in its cancer-curing PR stunts, the fashion houses tend to act as fundraisers rather than fund-givers, and it's customers' money they hand over in the blaze of positive PR, not their own which is, for the most part, tied up in land banks or similar tax-avoiding wheezes.

In other words, because all the cancer-curing money is busy making more money by being hedged against hedge funds getting their hedges wrong, we're all stuffed and there's no hope for anyone. Which is, presumably, why people are hurling their rent at broken trousers as if there was no tomorrow. It's sad. But arguably an improvement. Not so long ago, it was difficult to get on a bus without suffering an eyeful of piebald knickers.

[Loz]

alice Wrote:

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> Fashion is a form of free speech

But, ironically, you have to 'say' what someone else deems is in fashion.

[????]

200

[Earl Aelfheah]

You say that kids wearing ripped jeans are acting like sheep, but they're still in the minority. Wearing regular fit chinos and a casual shirt (or whatever) is no less following a 'fashion' in the sense of it being conformity to a 'look'. It's silly to think that whatever one wears that it's not influenced by the norms and whims of others. Otherwise why would you not be wearing a comfortable moo moo and sandles?

[*Bob*]

Loz Wrote:

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> But, ironically, you have to 'say' what someone

> else deems is in fashion.

That is SUCH as fashionable thing to say. (This season)

[Alan Medic]

???? Wrote:

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> 200

That's bloody optimistic as well as being premature.

[Alan Medic]

How do you know what I wear rahrahrah? I actually have jeans with a hole in the arse of them though I don't think it can be noticed so not trying to set a trend. As for a moo moo and sandles. I thought the former was a cow and latter I can't stand.

[Alan Medic]

Seabag Wrote:

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> In Al's world we'd all be kitted out North Korean

> style

>

> Or wearing white boiler suits as in Wood Allen's

> Sleeper

You got it Seabag. Make deciding what to wear in the morning that much easier for everyone. I don't think we would need to have the same style hair cut, though I do wonder why women with lovely long hair choose to wrap it up in some sort of a bun which reminds me of a dead animal.

[????]

Alan Medic Wrote:

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> ???? Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > 200

>

> That's bloody optimistic as well as being

> premature.

Not with your new Views thing - which is crap

[Alan Medic]

Of course it is crap. Don't know why you need to be rude about it though.

[MsRial]

Fashion is all about expressing ourselves & what image we want to portray to the world.

It's great that everyone is so different & there are so many styles around whether you like it or not.

Although I am a strong believer in dressing to suit the occasion, I can't stand people who make no effort whatosever & turn up to a classy establishment, its a big NO NO!!!

[Loz]

MsRial Wrote:

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> Fashion is all about expressing ourselves & what image we want to portray to the world.

> It's great that everyone is so different & there are so many styles around whether you like it or

> not.

> Although I am a strong believer in dressing to suit the occasion, I can't stand people who make

> no effort whatosever & turn up to a classy establishment, its a big NO NO!!!

Surely they are just "expressing themselves"? You know, as in "whether you like it or not".

[Alan Medic]

I lied.....

[MsRial]

lol yes Loz I guess I am slightly hypercritical on that one.

[numbers]

Alan Medic Wrote:

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> Of course it is crap. Don't know why you need to

> be rude about it though.

You seem quite tetchy doc.

Are your jeans a tad uncomfortable?