On fast fashion and good buys
My Aunt Linda likes to tell a cute story of the time that she babysat my sister and me and brought us with her to a department store. We were each between 3 and 5 years old, obviously too young to really evaluate prices-- but we spent the whole trip toddling around the racks, looking at price tag after price tag disapprovingly, clicking our tongues and saying: "Too much. Too much." We were parroting the behavior we'd witnessed in our mom-- a very savvy shopper, never fazed by marketing and never accepting less than a "good buy."
Cut to the present day: I've just become a wage-earning adult in the media-saturated, post-Sex and the City world, where womanhood and femininity are ostensibly defined by buying $150 designer jeans, "investing" in a $12,000 Hermes handbag, and wearing ridiculously overpriced Victoria's Secret "lingerie." Thanks to my mom, for the most part, I'm just not buying it.
And I'm not alone: Last week, England's House of Lords published a report criticizing the environmental and societal effects of the present "culture of 'fast fashion" in which consumers "dispose of clothes which have only been worn a few times in favour of new, cheap garments which themselves will also go out of fashion and be discarded within a matter of months."
It's terrific that the Lords are confronting this issue-- but I'd disagree with the interpretation that patronizing stores like H&M and Forever 21 should as a rule be eschewed in favor of buying from more "quality" fashion houses. The reality is that today, fast fashion happens equally at the highest and lowest ends of the market.
The majority of stuff sold in mainstream stores is fleetingly trendy rubbish, at all price ranges. Frankly, if I'm going to buy a cheaply-made imported garment, I'd rather spend $20 at H&M instead of $400 at Barney's. I know the workers are treated poorly and paid very low wages, so I'd prefer to line the pockets of the executives overseeing it all as little as possible, you know?
But that is only a lesser-of-two-evils approach. More and more, I'm trying to get away from buying new clothes at all, just because it's such a flawed system and the products are such crap. I like the concept of always shopping, but rarely buying-- continuously being on the lookout for nice pieces so that I don't have to buy fast fashion out of desperation. This idea seems very French to me-- in the aforementioned Elegance book, Madame Dariaux cautions the reader to "never be seduced by anything that isn't first-rate."
It's not easy, but Jezebel.com writer Sadie Stein is now "three weeks clean" from fast fashion, and I like her logic: "The small after-work of pleasure of a cheap top... is something we've become accustomed to very quickly -—such a thing would have been unheard-of a few generations ago -—and I'm guessing that, together, we can weather the withdrawal." Anyone else in?
Cut to the present day: I've just become a wage-earning adult in the media-saturated, post-Sex and the City world, where womanhood and femininity are ostensibly defined by buying $150 designer jeans, "investing" in a $12,000 Hermes handbag, and wearing ridiculously overpriced Victoria's Secret "lingerie." Thanks to my mom, for the most part, I'm just not buying it.
And I'm not alone: Last week, England's House of Lords published a report criticizing the environmental and societal effects of the present "culture of 'fast fashion" in which consumers "dispose of clothes which have only been worn a few times in favour of new, cheap garments which themselves will also go out of fashion and be discarded within a matter of months."
It's terrific that the Lords are confronting this issue-- but I'd disagree with the interpretation that patronizing stores like H&M and Forever 21 should as a rule be eschewed in favor of buying from more "quality" fashion houses. The reality is that today, fast fashion happens equally at the highest and lowest ends of the market.
The majority of stuff sold in mainstream stores is fleetingly trendy rubbish, at all price ranges. Frankly, if I'm going to buy a cheaply-made imported garment, I'd rather spend $20 at H&M instead of $400 at Barney's. I know the workers are treated poorly and paid very low wages, so I'd prefer to line the pockets of the executives overseeing it all as little as possible, you know?
But that is only a lesser-of-two-evils approach. More and more, I'm trying to get away from buying new clothes at all, just because it's such a flawed system and the products are such crap. I like the concept of always shopping, but rarely buying-- continuously being on the lookout for nice pieces so that I don't have to buy fast fashion out of desperation. This idea seems very French to me-- in the aforementioned Elegance book, Madame Dariaux cautions the reader to "never be seduced by anything that isn't first-rate."
It's not easy, but Jezebel.com writer Sadie Stein is now "three weeks clean" from fast fashion, and I like her logic: "The small after-work of pleasure of a cheap top... is something we've become accustomed to very quickly -—such a thing would have been unheard-of a few generations ago -—and I'm guessing that, together, we can weather the withdrawal." Anyone else in?
Summertime
Summertime makes me particularly prone to nostalgia. I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in this-- those Country Time Lemonade commercials are basically nothing but nostalgia overload, right?
The nostalgia coupled with the basic laziness of the season makes summer the perfect time for revisiting old favorites-- books, music, perfumes, foods, perspectives. So, here's a poem from one of my most favorite books growing up: Hey World, Here I Am! by Jean Little.
The nostalgia coupled with the basic laziness of the season makes summer the perfect time for revisiting old favorites-- books, music, perfumes, foods, perspectives. So, here's a poem from one of my most favorite books growing up: Hey World, Here I Am! by Jean Little.
Today
Today I will not live up to my potential.
Today I will not relate well to my peer group.
Today I will not contribute in class.
I will not volunteer one thing.
Today I will not strive to do better.
Today I will not achieve or adjust or grow enriched or get involved.
I will not put up my hand even if the teacher is wrong and I can prove it.
Today I might eat the eraser off my pencil.
l'll look at clouds.
l'll be late.
I don't think I'll wash.
I need a rest.
Zuckerberg vs. Thoreau
Portfolio has an interesting article by Simon Dumenco about Facebook's impact on CEOs. Basically, the main thrust of the piece is a comment by tech CEO Michael Fertick:
This really stood out to me, in large part because it so closely echoes a similar theory my college roommate Katie and I formulated circa 2004:
Granted, we were looking for prospective dates, rather than business partners or employees. And, of course, it's a complete generalization-- I can think of a number of compelling, descriptive, and well-filled-out Facebook profiles of genuinely cool people I know. But most of the time I feel more comfortable keeping my Facebook profile a bit, well, lower profile.
Maybe it all goes back to the first time I read Walden (to this day, one of my favorite books, although it isn't listed on my Facebook profile as such.) Among many of the highlighted, underlined passages in my nearly 10-year-old copy:
Makes you wonder what Thoreau would say about Twitter, no?
“There's almost an inverse relationship between seriousness and how much you participate in social networking."
This really stood out to me, in large part because it so closely echoes a similar theory my college roommate Katie and I formulated circa 2004:
"The length of your Facebook profile is inversely proportional to how cool you are."
Granted, we were looking for prospective dates, rather than business partners or employees. And, of course, it's a complete generalization-- I can think of a number of compelling, descriptive, and well-filled-out Facebook profiles of genuinely cool people I know. But most of the time I feel more comfortable keeping my Facebook profile a bit, well, lower profile.
Maybe it all goes back to the first time I read Walden (to this day, one of my favorite books, although it isn't listed on my Facebook profile as such.) Among many of the highlighted, underlined passages in my nearly 10-year-old copy:
"Society is commonly
too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any
new value for each other... We meet at the post-office,
and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are
in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus
lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for
all important and hearty communications."
Makes you wonder what Thoreau would say about Twitter, no?
Feed me
So after weeks of slaving away, hunched over my laptop poring over code*, you can now add my blog to your RSS readers! The moment you've all been waiting for! Just click on the little purple link at the bottom of this page that says "Subscribe to feed." I personally like using Google Reader.
*AKA occasionally looking over the shoulder of the very brilliant guy who added RSS capabilities to my blog in about 1.5 total hours of work
*AKA occasionally looking over the shoulder of the very brilliant guy who added RSS capabilities to my blog in about 1.5 total hours of work
