Roman Stoad’s Rules for the Road: Part 6

Patronizing the Fashion Industry.

Don't you love us!

Well, it’s fashion week in NYC again. Another disgusting display Of the Rich and For the Rich—isn’t that the new motto of America? Fashion is a huge pink ornate tongue stuck out at the lower classes. Michelle Martin recently interviewed some fashionista on her show as to the appropriateness of such a display of wealth and arrogance in our troubled times. The fashionista didn’t get it. She answered something like, “Face it, the rich are not suffering and they want to buy these clothes.”

It’s no coincidence that fashion week comes up at the same time as this year’s 9/11 tears and fears fest. Fashion itself is a terrorist attack disguised as economic good times. It is a bomb exploded in the middle of a flailing culture and no one even smells the smoke. Think of the millions of young women terrorized by the fashion industry into poor self images, terrorized into thinking they can never look good enough, or have enough clothes. Think of the young men terrorized by the rise of de rigeur male cosmetics and clothing lines. Think of the death and depression fashion wreaks on vulnerable psyches who can never physically or financially measure up to its demands. The fashion industry thrives on insecurity, ego and greed.

While the masses weep and wring their hearts out over 911, and the media hype this sentimentality to their stars, the fashion industry sneaks into the cracks and brainwashes the people into thinking they have to look like space men or cowboys or whatever the in-look is that year. And to what point? I’ll tell you what point: profit and control.

Everyone knows that fashion is just high-end capitalism wrought in fabric and fake tans. Among the most useless of industries, it spawns useless people just as it spawns the constant production of useless goods. In our grandparents era, or maybe our great grandparents, people wore the same clothes for years and mended them when necessary. Occasionally they bought a new suit or dress. But their very definition as a person was not reliant on what they wore, and/or the fact that a person wore something different every day. Today if you are caught wearing the same thing two days in a row you are considered to be socially inept. If you have a job you could even be fired for it. And if you are seen wearing something that was “in” last year you will never get the job, the girl, the guy, and may even be denied service at trendy restaurants and clubs.

Indeed, most people could easily get by with three public outfits and a few extra clothes for painting and yardwork. And it’s ironic to note that many of the clothes produced are made to make you look as if you do something or are something that you are not. There’s a not-so-secret code being propagated.

Roland Barthes was pro fashion (I hear this from gradschool campfire brethren), claiming it was some kind of code of power. But not being an eco-warrior himself, Barthes never considered the monstrous vacuum cleaner-like suction the fashion industry applies to the raw materials of the planet in its endless production of clothes that have no real purpose other than temporary ego massage. And “temporary” is the word to attend to, because fashion cannot be truly fashionable unless it has the stink of death on it, unless it is condemned to be discarded to the realms of the uncool, the has-been, the oblivion of “last season.”

And who can talk about the fashion industry without talking about the sweat shops, the abused labor in third-world countries. Look at the label—what do you think the word “imported” means? Or who can talk about the fashion industry without talking about the ten-pound magazines that the industry produces and requires? The”look” books distributed around the world like ten-pound packages of human shit on the doorsteps of the craven. (Here’s a note for the next “Whole Earth Catalog: a section on how to build a house out of the wasteful fat fashion magazines printed every month.) Think of the inks and the acids and the chemicals needed to print this crap. Think of the hernias of the postal employees condemned to carting this waste around.

Have you seen The Devil Wears Prada, or any of the other fawning films dealing with the fashion industry. Have you seen the people who inhabit this planet of privilege? Have you seen the sucked-in blonde faces, the distorted ridiculous bodies, the over-decorated eyes of the brainwashed fools whose decadence is paid for by your subscription to their values. These people are the harbingers of the decline of the human genetic tree, the last bones of the race unable to think or breed anything but themselves. But they are able to shop. Well, actually they don’t need to shop—they produce shopping. (They have everything given to them.) In fact, they exist to to get you to shop—to get you to buy whole new wardrobes every season. They have evolved to fill this particular bio-economic niche, like a parasite in your blood or in your brain that gets you to behave a certain way.

Nothing is more celebrity-noteworthy than when some fashionista gets pregnant. The world is awed by their actual fertility. It reminds us of the indomitable womb. But that womb is being rapidly depleted.  And I mean here the womb of the earth.  Why not strip the mountains of Africa for a mineral out of which to make this month’s hip new color? Why not decimate an ecosystem to procure the rare goat hair for this month’s cool scarves? Why not threaten entire species for today’s look? Why not indeed? Why the hell not burn the halogen lights for thousands of unnecessary hours, while celebrities preen with their sweaty over-made faces for the cameras, assured of their status by their front row position at the runway. Who is looking at who here?

Disgusted yet?

Roman says, “You want terrorism? Why not get your ass up to Bryant Park and pull the plug on this masturbation session for the rich. Shut down the lights, turn off the heat. Send that money to Somalia or West Virginia. Do you think for a second that those starving peasants give a fuck about Leo or Mizrahi or Ralph Lauren. Why not parade the starving bodies of drought victims down the runway? What designer has the balls for that? Why not promote the withered flesh of the hungry as a fashion statement? No clothes needed.

Roman says, “Citizens rise up and march to Bryant park and tear the fucking tents down. Gut the fat grips and the lighting designers and feed the hungry on their excess flesh. Stop the madness. Arrest the clowns who think this matters. The editors of the magazines and the critics and the reviewers who feeds their disgusting greasy faces off the manna of this invisible blood sacrifice.

Roman Stoad is a rolling stone

He gathers neither moss nor habit nor fashion

He is not ashamed to stand naked

Before the judgment of his peers

Vote for Stoad in the upcoming election

PS.  Roman has been up in the flood zones of the north and has seen an alternative to this capitalist madness. Open centers where everyone brings in their unwanted clothes and people that need clothes come and get them. Nothing new needs to be produced, because, as we well know, there is plenty of “stuff” already around to supply the human race for several decades. We could close the China sweatshops, we could close the retail mills of the West (ending much carbon dioxide-spewing traffic congestion in the process) and nothing would change. People would still be able to get dressed in the morning, and they might even look more interesting and creative than they do now.