CPL was quick to recommend Alan Moore’s recent offering from Avatar Press, Fashion Beast, and lent me the first 8 of 10 issues. A graphic novel all about the power of fashion? Spot on with that recommendation. Opening issues: Mysterious designer auditioning humans as living mannequins with nuclear winter on the horizon. Yes thanks.
Fashion Beast is so my new epithet.
This text gets into the philosophy of fashion, the power of appearance and therefore of transformation. In this case (for the designer), clothes are king, and appearance trumps all. I don’t think fashion has to be viewed from a serious or philosophical standpoint but it certainly can be (yet another lens through which to survey existence, yours, mine, and ours), and when it is, some very interesting things begin to happen. At least, to me. Namely, I pay more attention, I become more careful in my choices, I become that which I am always striving to be: a creature who does things on purpose.
That is not to say I know why exactly, or know what I am doing*, just…that I chose it, from an array of other choices I deemed inferior or less appealing.
*DEFinitely not saying that.
“Our clothes are bigger than we are, are beyond the petty lusts and difficulties of the creatures that inhabit them.”
Yes, clothes can inspire us, like a beautiful environment they can motivate us to live up to them and be worthy of them. They can reflect the best of us. They can help us to belong in a chosen environment or a chosen persona. They can Do Stuff.
“They knew the meaning of glamour; its oldest, original meaning. Glamour means ‘magic’.”
I don’t want my clothes to wear me but…right on.