Fashion

Memorial Day weekend came and passed, while I stayed at home hesitant that if I go to the mall I will definitely end up buying something. I did go grocery shopping however, and tried to buy everything Organic which has definitely doubled my food expenses.
Anyhow, so I sat at home and watched the Cannes Film Festival on TV as the the celebrities attending the Cannes Film Festival appear one by one displaying their best couture gowns while the critics scrutinized every detail of their donned fashion. At this point, I was drooling over the extravagant gowns and elegant dress, wishing for one of those high fashion items myself. Then, being a student in Asian American fashion class, I thought about why that is so?

As Kawamura states in her Fashion-ology book, the celebrities function as fashion leaders in our society today and we try to emulate their styles. Every little accessory they don immediately becomes fashionable and we desire to own it. This can be seen in Madonna’s case of making the bindis fashionable and "Liv Tyler rested dreamily on henna-adorned hands on the cover of a 1997 issue of Vanity Fair" further orientalized mehndi. (Maira) We borrow from everywhere, in many ways, we don’t really have a style of our own, it has been picked out and intentionally made famous and publicized by the celebrities. The fashion critics and magazine editors serve as the gate-keepers who choose the specific fashion from high couture houses to be made public. So they actually decide what will be in stores every season and what we will wear. Thus, when we long to have the jeans and dresses that the celebrities wear, we are just propagating the chain of fashion propaganda. While we might think that we have a unique style, one can argue that it is not so because we are all buying the items already picked for us. The more I thought about this, the more annoyed I got and the same dress that appeared gorgeous few minutes ago didn’t seem so appealing any more. And I switched the channel to something more pleasing, which can be very unique and personal—Food network.