GOOD TASTE, BAD TASTE,
YOU KNOW I'VE HAD MY SHARE

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Posh Spice tops Blackwell's worst-dressed list

LOS ANGELES — A decade after singling out the Spice Girls as fashion atrocities, Mr. Blackwell put just one of them — Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham — at the top of his 48th annual worst-dressed list.

The acid-tongued critic — who was designing dresses for the rich and famous when he originated the list in 1960 — skewered entertainment's biggest stars in the latest compilation of fashion follies.

More here.

Aw man, I just hate this shit.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to defend my least favorite Spice Girl here--besides, I'm sure all her fame and money do a nice job of taking the sting out of Blackwell's "criticism." What I hate is the whole elitist top-down attitude associated with the fashion industry and their faithful dilettantes.

Look, we live in a society that utterly consumerizes the artistic impulse. That is, people are conditioned by advertising, pop culture, peer pressure, and other influences to leave creativity to the "experts," which ordinary citizens must then be "smart" enough to choose while at the mall. The net effect of all this is that human creativity, that spark of divinity which most makes us like God, is atrophied in most Americans.

The ONE realm where people kinda sorta get creative is when they pick out the clothes they're going to wear in the morning. Headbangers decide what metal band they'll celebrate on their chest for the day. Businessmen, like robot-clones in their dark suits, wear a different tie every day. Even the biggest dress-down slob makes a creative clothing statement saying "the hell with it all; I don't give a fuck." In a country where culture is something that you buy at a store, the mixing and matching of garments remains a large exception to the rule.

Not that the capitalists haven't been desperately trying to change that for decades. Really, the entire fashion industry exists only to get people to buy more clothes they don't really need. All a big scam. "Out of fashion"? What a big joke. Who decides what's in fashion? Capitalist scumbags, that's who.

To be fair, Blackwell usually finds some pretty tacky stuff to condemn, and the assholes on TLC's What Not to Wear usually make their victims look better at the end of the episode than they did at the beginning. Still. I hate their attitudes. I hate the fact that what they say looks good this year will look bad next year. I hate the fact that some people really do make good clothing choices which defy the mundane mainstream, but are condemned, anyway, for not being a fashion lemming. It's all a big stupid high-schoolish dick-club existing for the express purpose of separating you from your money.

They humiliate you and rip you off.



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