Whenever I feel that fashion is giving me a bad reputation I like to go back to some of my favorite quotes and the extremely intelligent women who tell it like it is. From Zooey Deschanel reminding everyone she can wear a peterpan collar and still be a feminist to longer, more poignant essays that really resonate with me. This one by Greta Christina is full of gems. She states, "fashion is one of the very few forms of expression in which women have more freedom than men. And I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s typically seen as shallow, trivial, and vain. It is the height of irony that women are valued for our looks, encouraged to make ourselves beautiful and ornamental...and are then derided as shallow and vain for doing so. And it’s a subtle but definite form of sexism to take one of the few forms of expression where women have more freedom, and treat it as a form of expression that’s inherently superficial and trivial. Like it or not, fashion and style are primarily a women’s art form. And I think it gets treated as trivial because women get treated as trivial."
The rub of course is: people (men and women) aren't going to stop thinking fashion is frivolous anytime soon. People will still ask "wow you bought another dress" or "what's the point of knowing the names of all those models, talk about useless trivia." So, what can you say when people start knocking your personal interest/hobby? My personal response to people questioning the value of fashion as an interest and/or hobby is to discover said person's own hobby. How much money does he/she spend every year on tickets to games, or even just hours glued to the television cheering excitedly for their team? In the uselessness of sports enthusiasm I find a passion for personal style far less silly...How do you respond when someone rolls their eyes at your interests?
*picture: Kinga Rajzak backstage at Miu Miu
