I've written a piece about how the current state of the music industry frustrates me, and now it's fashion's turn! I love fashion and I read magazines on a regular basis. The one thing that has struck me since I was a teenager has always been 'why are there so many clothes on these pages that no normal person can afford?'
My knowledge of the fashion industry is very limited, unlike music that I worked in for over 10 years. I know fashion is all about image and aspiration, but it always amazes me how far removed from the real world fashion is. I get the fact that they use skinny models with unattainable bodies, but that I don't have so much of a problem with. My main gripe is that the clothes in the fashion spreads are more often than not a combination of things that, a) wouldn't look that good on a 'normal' person, and b) 'normal' people cannot afford.
I consider myself to be a 'normal' woman who's very into fashion. I spend quite a bit of money on clothes & shoes, but have never spent more than £150 on one item of clothing, and that was a coat! When I see fashion spreads with clothes costing upwards of £500, I really wonder what the point is of showing these. Some magazines mix designer with high street. Grazia is very good for that, I really think they have more a grip on reality than the Elles & Cosmopolitans of this world. I understand that fashion houses need their collections to be seen by a mass audience, but the mass audience don't actually buy anything high couture do they?
The weekly free women's magazine, Stylist is probably one of the worst for expensive clothes in their fashion pages, as people don't even pay for it! At least with Elle, Cosmo and so on, you've paid for the privilege of looking at couture. The style sections of weekend newspapers also appear to have no concept of reality either. Considering their readership is more a cross section of society than hardcore fashion buffs, you'd think they'd show a few items of clothing under £50! Guardian & Sunday Times I'm talking about you!
I'd love to meet a woman who buys the clothes she sees in fashion magazines. I for one surely earn a lot less money than she does. Despite having no children & a reasonably paid job, there is no way I am ever going to buy a Gucci shirt for £400! Even if I earned double my current salary I still wouldn't! At the end of the day a shirt is a shirt, as is a pair of jeans. You can argue about fabric being of higher quality & the cut of the garment being sharper, but at the end of the day if clothes fit and look good on you, why pay so much?
There is obviously something I'm missing. Of course I don't want to see expensive items banned from fashion magazines, I just feel they should be mixed a little more with affordable garments. Surely that's what fashionistas generally do anyway? Of course I love to see what wacky concepts high couture has to offer, but not on every single page! I just don't see the point really. It's perhaps like a food shop only displaying caviar & fois gras in the window when it's only something a tiny percentage of customers ever buy.
I actually find extortionately expensive clothing in magazines far more offensive than the skinny teenagers modelling them. In a way blame can be tossed towards high fashion for getting women into debt as it does for causing eating disorders! Fashion shouldn't be blamed for either of these, but there's a big difference between aspirational & unattainable. At the end of the day fashion is fun. All of us girls who care about how we dress see shopping as a pleasure along with looking at fashion magazines, but I for one would like a little realism every now and again, even in a fashion spread. How much harm would it do to occasionally have say perhaps a size 12 model aged 30 or so wearing Topshop, M & S, Debenhams, John Lewis? We identify, we buy.
That's my opinion anyway, but as they say with all indulgent things, 'everything in moderation.'
