...and don't panic! The Know brings you advice during housing
A true friend is always there for you, especially when you're drunk.
Miss Quit regresses to her childhood this week as the prospect of beginning the "University of Life" looms.
Once the work-wear of farmland Americana, denim has transformed over the past fifty years into the must-have item of the masses. The quintessential socialist garment, jeans adorn the behinds of rich and poor alike. If this were a world in which peace could be achieved through fashion, surely the jean would be its symbol. Sadly, even this humble item has become imbued with elitism.
Ok so maybe I’m being a tad dramatic, but ask yourself, would you spend the better part of £200 on a pair of trousers originally intended for hard-labouring miners? Some deluded people would, and do. This indicates the excessively mainstream embrace of the sturdy fabric engineered by Levi Strauss, which is perpetuated to this day by his countless successors. And its ridiculous – when Victoria Beckham can make a career out of flogging her denim ‘designs’ for such inane prices, its surely time to rethink the situation.
So foregoing the easy option, I opted to clad myself in something, anything, else. Despite my initial high hopes, the endless disappointment that resulted from this process was palpable.
Inspired by the release of Sex and the City: The Movie, I sought to channel my inner-Carrie, and imagined myself flouncing around (Old) York in impractical outfits, meeting my three besties for a sandwich in vertiginous heels and clashing accessories. But of course, in the real world, this only leads to abusive heckling, odd looks and sprained ankles. Damn those American TV/film producers and their totally unrealistic, empty promises. Life just doesn’t play out that way – its called fiction for a reason.
During the course of three days, and about nine outfits, I started to lose the will to live. The more you try to be ‘different’, the more generic you become. Jeans aren’t the problem; its clothes in general. You see, as fashion is so easily accessible and new trends practically fall into our laps one quick whiz around Topshop equips us for an entire season. Nine times out of ten you will see someone else in the exact same ensemble that you bought a week ago. How irksome.
Sadly, even I could not escape it through my jean amnesty. Running from here to there in my oversized-jumper-as-dress, tights and wedges combo made me just as inconspicuous as if I’d pulled on my skinnies. This could mean only one thing: to be truly, trendsetting-ly original in public, you have to be naked. I don’t really see that catching on, least of all due to the small issue of it being illegal. And cold.
Even shopping in charity shops (or ‘vintage’ if you want to be pretentious) has become de rigueur and finding those bargains that attract compliments is becoming an all too common occurence. Maybe I’m being too persnickety (oh how I love that word), but it is all rather depressing.
This is not a simple matter of wanting to look different to everyone else. Going back to my socio-political analogy, denim and clothes in general have become just another arena of conformity, another way of putting people into neat little boxes and categories. More and more, the sad fact is that what you wear labels you, not the other way around. This, to me, reeks of fascism.
The world is a shallow place, I realise this, but judging someone by the cloth on their back is no better than doing so by their race, class, gender, sexuality or any other social difference. Some people are sartorially challenged, and this is where denim comes to the rescue, shielding them from the judging eyes of society.
I may not wear jeans as often in the future, but I wouldn’t dream of thinking less of those who do. At the end of the day, all clothes are pieces of fabric made of some dense material or another. Just like human beings, really….
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