Compact Challenge and Fashion

When I first heard of the Compact Challenge I didn't think much of it. Reason being was because, I thought it applied strictly to fashion. However, it appears that this challenge extends to all purchasing needs, such as gadgets and games, and entertainment. Which definitely makes it more difficult than I originally thought. Buying clothes has never been something I've been addicted to. Someone mentioned the movie Shop-a-holic, and when I saw that movie, I thought thought to myself... this girl is so wasteful and illogical. She has piles of clothes and a debt collector knocking on her door, yet she continues to spend money she doesn't have? It just doesn't make any sense. I've always thought of clothes as a utility; you wear it to keep warm or cool. I simply never understood people who spend hundreds on dollars on a pair of jeans to be "fashionable". Additionally, with Kawamura's introduction to Fashion-ology the ideas around fashion is more complicated. Kawamura quoting Cannon says "Fashion is an inherent part of human social interaction and not the creation of an elite group of designers, producers, or marketers" (28). Which completely goes against my intuition of fashion. I have always thought it was a manufactured product of people with too much money. It's a tool to create identity and culture by people with spare income, something that people of the underclass probably does not care much about, when they are struggling to survive. Therefore, it can not be as "inherent part of human social interaction" as Cannon lead us to believe, right?




Continuing on this line of questioning, of what is fashion, is Cosplay fashion? I think it definitely produces an identity but it seems as if Fashion can be unintentionally created. Are there other cases where this is true? I don't think Cosplayers view their costumes as a fashion statement though. In this case fashion occurs rather naturally, as opposed to some high class designer producing fashion. Would cosplaying still be considered fashion with the fashion world?\

Hoa Truong
Post#1

Kawamura, Yuniya. Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies. New York: Berg, 2005.

Pikachu man from : http://pixltigr.tumblr.com/post/216893311/i-will-be-making-a-casual-man-sized-pikachu