Fashion
I wouldn’t say I don’t care about fashion, or at least not with the “look at me!” note of pride some people say it. I would say that I don’t know enough about fashion to make informed fashion choices. I don’t “speak” fashion, if you like. But the devilish thing about fashion is that it’s a language we all speak even if we don’t know it - the unfashionable end up like foreigners, or speech impediment sufferers. Body types and budgets become like accents. This is why I jerk a little at sentiments like “there’s always something you’re trying to say” - it may be true, but it’s not necessarily very much to do with what you are ‘saying’. So the question becomes - what level of facility with fashion’s language should be assumed? What level is assumed?
Additional perspectives!
Honestly, Tom, I’m not sure. I feel like people who go around screaming about how they don’t care what people think are in a distinctly different category than the people for whom fashion just isn’t a priority.
Oh totally, I understand that’s what you’re getting at (I was trying to nod that way too in my first sentence) - and that “I don’t care about fashion” line tends to have all sorts of gendered overtones too (or gets elided into a general wannabe Bill Hicks schtick). I just used it as a jump off because it sparked ideas about fashion-as-speech. Just v interested at the moment by these areas of culture (netstuff being another) which are ubiquitous but inspire a level of angry resistance, a rejection of them being a part of culture almost…
(there’s a big anti-fashion bit in Retromania isn’t there?)
