WHYYOUAREWRONGTOHATEFASHION

This morning I leisurely made a cup of coffee and started reading G2 over my breakfast. A nice story about sex addiction & then something that made me extremely angry for just 9.30 in the morning.

This article by Tanya Gold basically blames fashion for the death of a 16 year old because she was wearing heels when she tripped and fell into the path of an oncoming train. She goes on to talk about how fashion has continued to blite her life...basically.

I was moved to so much anger that I went on the guardian website and created a profile just so I could comment on her article. This is what I wrote:

Everything about this article made me extremely angry. I am a 17 year old english and physics student who also loves fashion. I do cram myself into a library and I do have an inner life but I also like beautiful clothes. That does not make me shallow. It also doesn't mean that I completely agree with everything the fashion industry stands for.

Forcing girls into a size that's completely unnatural is disgusting, and your right destroying girls as young as 14 because our 'ideal' has now become, supposedly, a pubescent girl, is ridiculous. But fashion is not there to alienate everyone at all. The high street is a depressing place, they force the art of couture through a huge funnel to produce 10-12 'key trends' that they then implant into every single women in the country as being what they need to wear to feel remotely normal.

But places like Topshop are just there to sell clothes, they are not concerned with how they do that, they do not care for the images on the catwalk and in Vogue. Fashion as it used to be was on a different level than anything you could see anywhere else, designers were innovative and created works of art that were more than beautiful. Now however, trends constantly circulate with nothing especially 'new' being brought out, and when it is the highstreet saturates this so much that it doesn't look like it should anymore.

If you are sucked in my advertising campaigns to buy things that do not flatter you then that's your issue not theirs. LIke I say they are there to present you with the facts. Possibly your issue with the fashion industry as you have never made the distinction between what they tell you to buy and what you should actually buy. Ostracizing a whole industry because they are an easy target and something you've never felt a part of is completely unjustified.

In reaction to your tagline though, I no longer get satisfaction from shopping for clothes. Highstreet stores are like supermarkets pumping out the clones that I have to go to college with, try actual markets where buying clothes is fun or fashion fairs where you meet lovely old ladies who've spent their lives in Paris couture houses and floating around Europe. These are the people who epitomize fashion and they are a hell of a lot more appealing that the ones who run the consumerism culture behind modern fashion.

Leading one DrMarcusBrody to comment:

I am staggered by the brilliance of the comment from @JessBunyan at the top of the comments. There is more truth and honesty in her comment than anything Tanya Gold has ever written - and she's only 17 as well (if that is to be believed)!

Someone at the Guardian should give her a job. And, no, I don't know her.

I am extremely flattered and amazed at how many people quoted me and agreed with what I said but I don't think it's right that people like Tanya Gold should be allowed to lead people into thinking that the fashion industry is some kind of monster leading us to buy things that don't flatter us or make us look ugly. If she has her issues that's up to her.

Please comment if the article angers you as much as it did me.

It's important that people like this shouldn't get away with spouted their personal prejudices in a paper that otherwise speaks a lot of a-hem 'middle-class' sense.

Oh & here's some more lovely pictures so it's not one of those posts.