Disenf***ingchanted

While cussing it out is completely unnecessary, I can’t help but feel more disenchanted with fashion than I have ever felt. I got home from a month of frolicking around and promising myself I’d make all sorts of purrty things, only to feel uninspired and even a little jaded by the whole prospect of dressing people up. It could be the market. I know I’ll get myself in trouble by saying so, especially given how sensitive people are, but seriously the market for high fashion (whatever the fuck that means) needs to GET A FUCKING GRIP. We’re talking about clothes, pee-ple. It’s fabric. Shitloads of it are spun each day only to produce shitloads more in the money hungry interest of some prissy connoisseur, and you’re all losing your cool?

I still trawl fashion blogs and read magazines, because I do seriously enjoy what that side of the world has to offer. Let’s face it, clothes are beautiful. Each and every creation first took root as a haze in someone’s mind, and was spun out of the sincere need to create. And just like any craft, a tremendous amount of toil and tedium is required in its perfection. Isn’t this what the word fabrication stems from?

There is a degree of artistry and craft to fashion that is impossible to ignore. But at the same time, I read all these UNBELIEVABLY IDIOTIC REMARKS about the whole endeavor that just make me want to get as far away from it as humanly possible; remarks like “Dear God, If you love me you will give me a pair of YSL cage booties, my life absolutely depends on it.” Seriously, woman? Do you seriously feel the need to bring God in on the equation for your booties? Your booties were probably made by some disgruntled factory worker hammering away under the eyes of another god altogether. And then what, you’ll go for a round of fasting for something to wear with your fucking booties? Then again, fashion loves a woman who fasts.

The thing is, my attitude towards fashion comes through in every job interview I’ve been on. I haven’t even entered the industry yet, and I can already feel my soul getting sucked out under the weight of it. On one hand we have the actual commodity and the market of materialistic, fashion hungry mavens who will shell out ridiculous amounts for an object that costs less than 3 US dollars to make. The fashion industry strives for their patronage and wants to create more of them. While I’d make a lot of money, off of a fashion victim, I’d probably end up losing it by paying him or her to shut the fuck up. On the other hand, we have the side of fashion that treats the commodity as freight, volume, and a meaningless series of standard procedures. I’ve heard people say “Buy some shirts at ____, rip the tag off and slap our label on, just give them what they asked for”. After all, “what they asked for” is just a label.

Maybe I’m just overthinking it. I remember before stepping out of the apartment every day, whoever I’d be living with in the States would tell me not to “think too much”. Is that the only way to get by in fashion? By not “thinking too much”? And is “not thinking too much” the cesspool from which statements like “I will die without this dress by Phillip Lim” comes from?

The Sun Machine is Coming Down, And We’re Gonna Have a Party

I’m home! So far I’ve gone on a job interview, bought a hula hoop, and gotten very moderately drunk with Reg and Carlene. The hula hoop is awesome, while walking around Greenbelt in my corporate job interview garb with the hoop around my shoulder, Reg said I looked like a stripper (thanks). Then I found out from http://hooping.org that it’s a foot and a half too small for me, so I have to make my own using a PVC pipe; after all, hooping is serious business. So if there’s anyone out there 4’7″ and under who would like to place dibs on a red, white, and blue hoop, feel free to take this one off my hands.

Why hula hooping? Why not. Along the way, I realized that being employed puts food on the table and airfare in the bank; but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee a huge degree of fulfillment, as opposed to so-called success or accomplishment. I’ve complained incessantly about the boredom and the repetitiveness, but it’s a means to an end.

The thing is, I really can’t tell anyone what success looks like from my perspective. I know I’d be a bundle of nerves if I had to survive from paycheck to paycheck, so I guess success involves dodging bankruptcy. I also know that success has a lot to do with not going hungry and having the option to stay warm and dry come rainy season; but that can’t be all there is to it, right? I don’t know how it’s come to this, where it’s easier to recognize failure over success. Reg put it best when she said, “I can’t tell you what I want or what my dreams are, but I can tell you what my house will look like.”

I forgot who it was, but I read an interview in which some woman made it very clear that the worst thing a parent could do is live vicariously through his or her children. The worst thing you can do is place parameters on someone else’s dreams. Dreams are highly personal, but that’s often forgotten in favor of the “dreams” we allow society to craft for us: the house, the insurance policy, the promise of immortality or something like it, the endless list of academic credentials, and the list goes on.

Besides, hula hoops are fun. They’re round, if crafted correctly they’re practically unbreakable, and unless they’re doused in gasoline or made of sandpaper, they can’t cause any serious injuries. And when used correctly, they look and feel infinite–even in the most mundane way. So right now success is keeping a ring of PVC around my waist. My record so far is something like 5 seconds, so I’ve got a long way to go. Success is perpetual motion.

I’ve seen the Flaming Lips live and confirmed that Wayne Coyne is made of man bits. Now I want to learn to use a hula hoop correctly. But I/we/you and I will always, always travel.

“We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes and saw machines of every shape and size.”

I love David Bowie.