intellectual properties

art: consumption: fashion

as i mentioned, my friends’ house burned down in tahoe earlier this week. i’ve been getting emails from them, and they’re being very zen about it. both R and J are very utilitarian and almost minimalist – not incredibly attached to possessions. they got a couple of car loads of stuff out before they had to evacuate. they didn’t take their wardrobes.
what do most people grab when their house is on fire?
photos, keepsakes, family heirlooms, pets.
i bet hardly anyone takes anything from the kitchen.
the only thing (besides the cats, obvi) i would take is my wardrobe.
i am very attached to my clothes. i have almost nothing else of value.

in this PBS series art:21 (netflix) (note: unless you’re really into art and the methods/thinking behind why people create what they create, this is probably really boring), which gives 15-20 minute glimpses into the lives of various 21st-century artists and categorizes them into themes by the way their art addresses modern life (“place”, “spirituality”, “identity”, “power”), one of the artists in the “consumption” theme (along with Matthew Barney) is Andrea Zittel, aka “A-Z Administrative Services”. during this filming, the thing she is working on is called a “pocket property” – a small floating island one could anchor offshore, sort of like a houseboat, but with the aesthetic of an island. in her interview she explained why she resorted to wearing only 2 outfits a year, which she makes herself:

“I’ve been doing this uniform project since 1991. It started because I had an office job and I was supposed to wear something respectable to work. But I didn’t have that much money and so I was thinking about how most of the time we can afford one fabulous outfit that you really love to wear. But there’s some sort of social stigma against wearing the same thing two days in a row. So I decided that, in my case, variety seemed more oppressive or restrictive than continuity. So for each season I’ll make one garment. That’s my fantasy garment or my favorite thing that I can imagine at that period in time, and then I’ll wear it every day for for six months.”

she then went on to talk about how some modern freedoms after a while begin feeling constrictive – too much choice, and the cultural expectation that you take advantage of as many of those choices as possible (particularly with fashion: if you wear the same thing every day, you’re considered fashionless) is, for some people (and some would argue for everyone), oppressive. this has been discussed at length in the press recently regarding electronic gadgets and other consumer goods — it could also be labelled affluenza.

i, of course, what with my previous statement that the only non-living thing i would save if my house were on fire would be my wardrobe, found this quite interesting – not so much that the idea was so surprising – of course fashion is oppressive – we all know that – but that she’d not only chosen to downright ignore it but to make such an extremely committed anti-fashion statement. in other cultures, this would mean almost nothing; the concept of a “wardrobe” itself is almost totally foreign, and people own only one or two changes of clothing. in our culture, however, it’s pretty powerful to say “i’m not going to buy into this.”

i’ll admit i have a consumption habit in terms of clothing. i don’t buy furniture. i don’t buy books. i don’t buy home decorations or kitchenware or anything you might find at Williams Sonoma until i absolutely need it, and then i’ll usually try to find it used a the Goodwill first. i also buy most of my clothing used, but that doesn’t mean i don’t spend more than i should on it. i spend 98% of my excess income on clothing (after debt, food and shelter). “thrifting” can be just as much a shopaholic problem as hitting the mall every payday – perhaps even moreso, because if you’re a thrifter you have to search a lot more/harder for things that that fit and that you like. i regularly hit up my favorite thrift stores by popping in for 5-10 minutes to check the racks. my wardrobe rotates rather constantly. i wouldn’t say i am necessarily “proud” of it, but given the amount of time/energy invested into it, my wardrobe is worth more than anything else i own, certainly.

i recognize that this is often a source of cognitive dissonance for me, and there are definitely moments when i FEEL what she means by it being oppressive. i certainly KNOW what she means: pressure to look good is at a ridiculous level in our culture right now, and we’ve seen the negative impacts of the fashion-consumer industry on our society in various hideous ways. i do not deny that, but for myself i’m fairly anti-consumerism when it comes to everything BUT wardrobe, and then with wardrobe i have a set of rules for what i think it’s ok for *me* to buy, and as long as i follow those rules i am ok with *my* consumption. but the thing is that for me, it’s not just consumption: it’s also expression of self. i recognize that this is not true for everyone, and i don’t expect it to be true for everyone, but it’s true for a lot of people, and i’m of the opinion that it’s sort of innate and healthy, the desire to make oneself attractive physically, or at least represent oneself in some manner or another. and with this belief and since it IS true for me, and because of my particular shopping rules/habits, it somehow seems less “bad” and more ….artistic?….than if i were just blowing money on clothes from Macy’s every month. it then becomes sort of a philosophical question: is consuming “consciously” any better than consuming mindlessly? am i just making excuses?

Filed in art, culture and random linkage, environment, fashion | Tagged with affluenza, consumption | Comment (0)