This Is High Fashion

This is something that has sprung up from my sociology lectures. We are looking into popular culture, and one of the things that has drawn me out of my boredom and fully engaged me is - HIGH FASION. 

This is a world filled with #runwaymodels, stick figures that breach the very laws of health and physical existence, yet they live, and worst yet, WE strive to be like them...

So I went and looked into the definition of this bizarre word that had us starving ourselves, mutilating our bodies and worst of all, drove us to feel so inadequate as human beings, as WOMEN that we would go to any lengths to BECOME the word - - - > HIGH FASHION`

 

I looked through the most simplest of sources, Wikipedia, but it redirected me to ""haute couture" which I still believe embodies what I am interested in.

Haute couture: (French for "high sewing" or "high dressmaking") refers to the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing. Haute couture is made to order for a specific customer, and it is usually made from high-quality, expensive fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable seamstresses, often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haute_couture)

The meaning, first of all shocked me. The models we see on TV are young women, women who have had to suffer in order to look almost skeletal, so as to fit the demands of high fashion. This led me to this question, if high fashion or Haute Couture is designed to fit the consumer, why then, does the consumer find himself/herself bending precariously to fit the needs of high fashion. High fashion is not a person, it is not an entity, it is pieces of material that are put together in order to complement individual bodies.  In the way that it has been used today, high fashion has become an unreachable standard we all pursue, we see skinny models, who have been photo shopped to look the impossible, and in our acts of desperation, we refute the facts, we strive for the unattainable.

The facts are :

Ø  It is physically impossible to look some of the way that these girls look, the masses of them are unhealthy, and as certain reports show, some models have died due to anorexia – in their efforts to suit the demands of high fashion.

   

Ø  It is biologically impossible to have    identical bodies; even twins do not have the same features. How then does this fit in with our perverse   need to look like other people? I.e. #runwaymodels?

Ø  The models we see in high fashion magazines have been photo-shopped, because they themselves are still imperfect enough to meet the needs of high fashion

Ø  Beauty is a changing word, it is not constant nor is it universal. These models are our epitomes of beauty, and in our acceptance of them as ‘the beautiful’ we refute our own beauty, subordinating ourselves to an entity that does not really exist

This is all general knowledge that we choose to over look. “What is this inherent feeling we have inside ourselves to feel inadequate” – that is the question we should strive to answer. High Fashion should be a word in our vocabulary, something we SEE but are not hassled by, something we can simply shake our heads at and move on.

FINAL THOUGHTS.... We are made differently for a reason, lets rather strive for the attainable: happiness, love, health and peace