Why your fashion is more than a passion
Oscar Wilde once said “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months”. It’s a typically arch observation but it’s one that is worth taking seriously for a moment, for all its oxymoronic twist. Is fashion really something that deserves to be described in this way?
When it comes to clothes – which is what we ordinarily think of first when anyone mentions fashion – what’s to complain about? It’s the impetus for a refreshing and uplifting variation in styles that gives everyone something to play with. Fashion on these terms isn’t something to take seriously. It’s about self-expression, experimentation and – above all else – fun. It’s almost like a game.
And for all that dear old Oscar was ostensibly grumbling about clothing, the subject needn’t just apply to what we wear. There are fashions in all sorts of things, interior design, the colour of cars, types of food – you name it, there’s a fashion for just about every niche you could poke a stick into. Even geeks are trendy these days.
Interior design is a good example, since it tends to move in cycles that are that bit slower than the high street. There isn’t much doubt that the way we fit out our homes is very different from how it was back in the day when a gingham tablecloth and a paper napkin counted as cutting edge.
The accessibility of online homeware stores have given everyone the chance to accessorise, stylise and glamorise their homes irrespective of where it is or what the budget is. And what’s more, because so much is out there that is made so affordable, moving with the times isn’t just the preserve of the would-be aristocratic well to do.
That same playful sense of bouncing along with the times that we talked about in terms of clothes is every bit as relevant when it comes to the way we furnish and decorate the spaces we inhabit. And the fact that there are trends in everything we do – including the way we date and the politics we advocate – means that going with the fashionable flow is not something we should really be too concerned about. It has happened throughout history and it’s not about to stop any time soon.
Of course the joke is that Oscar Wilde was a famous dandy. Fashion was a passion and the quotation above was itself a form of self-mockery. Oscar loved nothing so much as well-cut frockery. He even edited The Woman’s World fashion magazine for a while.
So the real story behind that little aphorism at the top of the page is that fashion is something that allows us to explore beauty and self-expression on a continual basis. It’s almost as though it were part of our nature.
Far from the stop start six-month schedule that Oscar was pretending to send up it represents a historical tide that gives us all something to riff on. It’s like the base notes to our lives, moving us steadily along, keeping us in time, and giving us the framework to conjure our own personal melodies.
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One Response to “Why your fashion is more than a passion”
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