Fashion's Silent B

Commenting on what people are wearing has the knack to bring out the worst in pretty much all of us, and we all take on the role of fashion messiahs when we take the liberty of critiquing someone else’s ensemble.

You need only read or watch The Devil Wears Prada to realise that fashion is a bitchy game. Who amongst us hasn’t poured over images of Kate Moss and Cindy Crawford looking less than their best and gleefully forwarded them on to all our female friends? There is something about ridiculously expensive clothing, glamorous models and the who’s who of society that makes the normal of us get very nasty. It’s probably the fact that we can’t afford the clothes, are not glamorous models ourselves or will probably never mix it with society’s big wigs. But if that’s all it is, how do we get caught in the trap of bitching about fashion in our day to day lives?

You need only take a stroll through your local mall to realise that not everyone has a knack for fashion. In fact, some people seem to be making a conscious and concerted effort to snub anything to do with dressing well. For those of us with almost obsessive tendencies towards clothes, shoes and accessories, this mindset is unfathomable, but does that give us the right to comment? From the amount of bitching many of us females engage in, it would seem so!

Just last night after a few too many Cosmopolitans, I indulged in a bit of fashion critiquing myself. I just couldn’t help but comment on how incredibly short a fellow bar fly’s dress was and my girlfriends and I pondered where on earth another party girl would have found the atrocity she had on. I immediately felt terrible, so why couldn’t I have just kept my mouth shut in the first place?

Is it really that offensive to see a little too much of a larger girl’s thighs? Or are we really bitching about her ability to show off what she’s got when maybe we don’t have that level of self confidence ourselves? I tend to lean towards the latter. Maybe all this bitching is really about us. Or in the case of last night, me.

Fashion is all about self expression. It’s about creating an identity for yourself, and what you wear makes a clear statement to the world about what you like, and what you associate with more so than almost anything else you can do on a daily basis. So if you’re comfortable wearing not much at all, it basically says to the world “I think I’m hot.” And what’s so wrong with that? No one fashion is ever going to suit everyone’s taste, and for those of us who just don’t dig a certain style shouldn’t we be able to silently accept that someone else does? Look at Harijuku. What a perfect example of fashion that some people devote themselves to, whereas others just take photos of the “crazies”. Many of us would never be caught running around town in a Little Bo Peep outfit with bright pink hair and matching staff. But if that’s someone else’s thing, we should be able to say good for you as we make our way to David Jones. To a similar extent couture and designer junkies are the same kind of fanatics, and probably bring about the same level of conversation and bitching. When having an Ugly Betty day, most of us have probably been guilty of saying “She looks like she’d be a total bitch” about the immaculately dressed, beautiful girl who swans past.

I’d be lying if I said that after thinking through the reasons for the “b” in fashion I would never bitch about what someone is wearing again. I would probably need to give up alcohol to make that happen, and that definitely isn’t looking likely. Although a lot of bitching really does come down to an insecurity, or the realisation that you don’t have the confidence to carry off what someone else has on, there are occasions when someone does look so terrible that you really can’t help but comment. Not because you secretly wish you didn’t care what people think of you, and not because you think their self esteem must be ten times the level of yours. But just because they are dressed horrifically, and you need to point it out to someone else.

So when I do fall into the silent b of fashion trap, and the bitch I try to keep quiet does rear her ugly head, I console myself with the fact that someone, somewhere, is probably saying something equally bitchy about what I have on.