Today marks amongst other things the final day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The final day is known as 'Dare to wear it pink', which means donating £2 to the charity and wearing an item of pink for the day. My office, being in the world of healthcare as it is, decided to embrace this idea and get us in pink. Now I am not a fan of this shade, not in any sense. The only place I wear it is on my face, in blusher or eyeshadow. I'm more of a black and grey kind of girl and I am just not into pink at all, purple yes, pink no. In fact I only have one pink item of clothing in my wardrobe and before today I'd never actually worn it. It just kind of hung there next to all the black, waiting for a day when I might feel like wearing it. That day has yet to arrive but for today I am wearing it. I feel and no doubt look a bit daft but since everyone else, including most of the boys, is wearing pink at least I'm not the only one who looks a bit silly.
The thing that I dislike so much about pink is what is represents. I recently read an interesting article by Germaine Greer about pink and although her opinion was pretty extreme I do kind of agree with her. Pink is the colour of Barbie, it's the defining colour of girlieness and when I meet a blonde-haired girl (they always seem to be blonde, I don't think I've ever met a brunette who was heavily in to pink) who loves pink I can't help but take a bit of an instant dislike to her. It just seems so silly and well annoyingly girlie to like pink. When we were told about wearing pink for today I was so very relieved when the girls I work beside had no idea what they were going to wear, they were like me!!! The only reason I had any idea of what to wear is because it's the only pink piece of clothing I own.
Pink hasn't really been in fashion for a while either, it occasionally pops up on the catwalk but usually alongside something else and usually with a heavy dose of irony. Very rarely will you see a fashion show that is just a massive overload of pink. It's just not really the colour of a modern woman. It is the colour of Barbie, who maybe a popstar/moviestar/politican/cowgirl/businesswoman and who knows however many jobs she's had but she's most definitely not the definition of a modern woman. Although I am more than willing to put my two quid in the pot and wear pink for a good cause, I get the feeling that my pink jumper will be returning to it's rightful place on the bottom of my wardrobe at the end of the day.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/artblog/2007/nov/05/whyhastheworldgonepinkma
Friday 31 October 2008
Thursday 23 October 2008
Tuesday 7 October 2008
"It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it".
This blog was started basically so that I could have a place to rant when my love of fashion gets dismissed, ignored or insulted. However having recently found somewhere where loving fashion doesn't get me funny looks I've not felt the need to rant so much and have just been writing more general thoughts on here. However the rant is back.
Like most people I'm not really being myself at my work. No matter what your job is you have to wear a certain thing, conduct yourself in a certain way and get on with the job you are paid to do. That goes without saying. However when you do your job purely because it pays the bills and when people keep telling you that your lucky just to have a job because of the current state of the economy, you can't help but feel trapped in a job you didn't ever really want. Especially when that job doesn't fulfill you. Recently I have been enjoying a rather creative period and have been writing regulary, usually feeling pretty proud of the end result. However all that creativity just highlights how unfulfilling I find the 9 to 5. Those who are lucky enough to earn money out of the thing they love should appreciate every single moment of the experience. Whenever I hear a creative person say that they could never handle the 9 to 5, I feel like yelling at them, because I can't handle it either but I don't have a lot of choice, I hope my situation will change and I really hope that if it does I'm grateful for it. But right now the day to day grind is getting to me because I feel this urge to be creative and I have to stifle it and write memos instead. One of the biggest problems is not being around like-minded people. At least if you can spent your lunch hour talking about the latest fashion week and which shows you liked it makes the day go that little bit faster. I don't even get that. I bought the latest edition of American Vogue the other day and decided to take it to work to read during my lunch hour, a way to enjoy a type of creativity at the office. As I was heading back to my desk with the magazine tucked under my arm one of the girls I worked with was heading out to the staff room with her lunch. She asked me if I was still reading my magazine or if you could borrow it. I told her she could borrow it if she wanted and told her what magazine it was. Her response was to screw up her face and tell me she'd pass. I wasn't particularly surprised, if I'd had the latest copy of Heat I can almost guarantee that she'd be interested in that. American Vogue not so much. I wasn't disappointed, angry or anything, in fact if she had eagerly grabbed it out my hands I would have been really surprised. I just really wished I worked with people who didn't turn their nose up at one of the best magazines on the shelves, without even a second thought. I just felt genuinely sad that this was the situation I found myself in. I returned to my desk and my letters, holding onto my Vogue for all I was worth. At that moment it was the only thing keeping me afloat.
Like most people I'm not really being myself at my work. No matter what your job is you have to wear a certain thing, conduct yourself in a certain way and get on with the job you are paid to do. That goes without saying. However when you do your job purely because it pays the bills and when people keep telling you that your lucky just to have a job because of the current state of the economy, you can't help but feel trapped in a job you didn't ever really want. Especially when that job doesn't fulfill you. Recently I have been enjoying a rather creative period and have been writing regulary, usually feeling pretty proud of the end result. However all that creativity just highlights how unfulfilling I find the 9 to 5. Those who are lucky enough to earn money out of the thing they love should appreciate every single moment of the experience. Whenever I hear a creative person say that they could never handle the 9 to 5, I feel like yelling at them, because I can't handle it either but I don't have a lot of choice, I hope my situation will change and I really hope that if it does I'm grateful for it. But right now the day to day grind is getting to me because I feel this urge to be creative and I have to stifle it and write memos instead. One of the biggest problems is not being around like-minded people. At least if you can spent your lunch hour talking about the latest fashion week and which shows you liked it makes the day go that little bit faster. I don't even get that. I bought the latest edition of American Vogue the other day and decided to take it to work to read during my lunch hour, a way to enjoy a type of creativity at the office. As I was heading back to my desk with the magazine tucked under my arm one of the girls I worked with was heading out to the staff room with her lunch. She asked me if I was still reading my magazine or if you could borrow it. I told her she could borrow it if she wanted and told her what magazine it was. Her response was to screw up her face and tell me she'd pass. I wasn't particularly surprised, if I'd had the latest copy of Heat I can almost guarantee that she'd be interested in that. American Vogue not so much. I wasn't disappointed, angry or anything, in fact if she had eagerly grabbed it out my hands I would have been really surprised. I just really wished I worked with people who didn't turn their nose up at one of the best magazines on the shelves, without even a second thought. I just felt genuinely sad that this was the situation I found myself in. I returned to my desk and my letters, holding onto my Vogue for all I was worth. At that moment it was the only thing keeping me afloat.
Saturday 4 October 2008
Fashion Victim
The fashion industry is huge, from those who work in your local Primark to the creative directors and fashion designers of the most well known luxury brands. Its not surprising then that its the second biggest industry in Europe. I'm not alone in noticing though how it seems to just keep getting bigger and bigger. A few years ago there was no store like Primark, offering ridiculously cheap, throw away fashion. If it was cheap it was completely dated, bad fitting and ugly. Suddenly most of the stores on the High Street can keep up with the fashion designers showing at Fashion Week. In the past most people shopped on the High Street because they couldn't afford the high-end clothes. Now the High Street is a shopping destination in itself. With fashion designers like Karl Lagerfeld, Stella Macartney, Roberto Cavalli, Emma Cook and Giles Deacon having all designed lines for High Street stores, lines that are priced the same as the other products in the store. Celebrities are now joining in on the act as well, it seems there are very few celebs who don't have their own line. Some of them, like Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B line, are more fashion forward, stylish and worth investing in, others like lines by the girls who star in reality show, The Hills, just aren't even worth mentioning.
No matter where you look fashion is there, it's even invading the televison. After the Clothes Show disappeared, (a programme I loved growing up), there really wasn't another programme looking at the world of fashion in any way. There might have been the odd documentry on a particular part of the fashion world, but the magazine style show had disappeared. Suddenly there's several cropping up, again the standard is varied. There are more fashion magazines, several glossy weeklies along with all the monthlies that have been around for years. You can't even go for your weekly food shop without seeing fashion, as all the major supermarkets have there own clothing lines now.
Now I'm not complaining or anything, after all this is the industry I want to work in so the bigger it gets the more jobs there are. Also if the standard of the High Street is high it means there is so much more choice and it makes shopping even more fun. What I can't help wondering though is; how far is this going to go and how long for?
With all the recent financial problems there have been, even the cheaper side of fashion might seem like a rather frivolous thing to be spending your money on. Even if that's not the case and people still spend money on clothes to help them forget about the stresses of life, surely there are only so many magazines and T.V shows that we can be bothered with. Over saturation of any market allows the consumer to be picky about how and where they spent their time and money. Fashion is an industry that in difficult times still continues to grow and at the moment is showing no signs of stopping. But you only have to look at the music industry to see how things can change. There have been several music retailers facing reduced profits or just folding altogether in recent years as they struggled to compete with online home delivery or downloading sites. With more and more fashion stores having websites and great online stores like asos.com and net-a-porter, surely at some point there has to be a victim. As much as it's great to see the industry grow and expand there has to be a saturation point and I can't help but worry what will happen then. In the meantime though I'm just gonna put on my Giles Deacon for New Look tee and my Emma Cook for Topshop boots and say a little prayer to the fashion gods that things level out. Cause where we are right now is pretty damn good.
No matter where you look fashion is there, it's even invading the televison. After the Clothes Show disappeared, (a programme I loved growing up), there really wasn't another programme looking at the world of fashion in any way. There might have been the odd documentry on a particular part of the fashion world, but the magazine style show had disappeared. Suddenly there's several cropping up, again the standard is varied. There are more fashion magazines, several glossy weeklies along with all the monthlies that have been around for years. You can't even go for your weekly food shop without seeing fashion, as all the major supermarkets have there own clothing lines now.
Now I'm not complaining or anything, after all this is the industry I want to work in so the bigger it gets the more jobs there are. Also if the standard of the High Street is high it means there is so much more choice and it makes shopping even more fun. What I can't help wondering though is; how far is this going to go and how long for?
With all the recent financial problems there have been, even the cheaper side of fashion might seem like a rather frivolous thing to be spending your money on. Even if that's not the case and people still spend money on clothes to help them forget about the stresses of life, surely there are only so many magazines and T.V shows that we can be bothered with. Over saturation of any market allows the consumer to be picky about how and where they spent their time and money. Fashion is an industry that in difficult times still continues to grow and at the moment is showing no signs of stopping. But you only have to look at the music industry to see how things can change. There have been several music retailers facing reduced profits or just folding altogether in recent years as they struggled to compete with online home delivery or downloading sites. With more and more fashion stores having websites and great online stores like asos.com and net-a-porter, surely at some point there has to be a victim. As much as it's great to see the industry grow and expand there has to be a saturation point and I can't help but worry what will happen then. In the meantime though I'm just gonna put on my Giles Deacon for New Look tee and my Emma Cook for Topshop boots and say a little prayer to the fashion gods that things level out. Cause where we are right now is pretty damn good.
Thursday 2 October 2008
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