Clara with old records, and bags to drop off at the consignment shop. The bucket might symbolize my need to clean out my entire house...
It's Thanksgiving Eve and I am taking a vow of non consumption. It's about time! Last night, with daughter Clara visiting from NYC, I pulled out clothes I didn't want anymore - because I just didn't wear them, had no reason to wear them, and I could see her looking much better in them than I do. In a frenzy of sorting through my closets, I was forced to face the reality of excess clothing. Too many of us suffer from the uncontrollable urge to purchase, and we can't seem to put a stop to it. Retail therapy helps in the short term, but in the long term, whatever it is that is causing the uncontrollable desire to acquire has yet to be addressed.
Maybe the book I'm reading, which I picked up at a feminist book store on the Lower East Side, can help with this addiction. It's called Stitched Up and it's all about our love/hate relationship with the garment industry which has awful labor practices. Cheap labor is abundant all over the world, the garment industry will never run out. The more I read, the more disgusted I become with the rapaciousness of an industry that could pay its workers higher wages but won't because it might give one retailer or manufacturer a slightly -- ever so slightly -- less competitive edge against its competitors.
The book also points out the absence of minorities in fashion ads.
I noticed right away, while perusing one of these street fashion web sites, that indeed ethnicity is almost completely absent. Plenty of gender bending, but not much ethnic diversity, in the people nor in the clothes.
Meanwhile, my friend Laure who awaits me in Paris, is sending me announcements of "vide dressing" in December. We are going to be each other's partner in abstinence.
Unless of course there is that perfect thing that goes with that other thing that I don't wear because it's too odd or I don't know what to wear it with.
excerpt from "conversation" on FB, for the French speakers:
