This is an essay I wrote while attending the Fashion Institute of Technology. I apparently didn’t like the instructor who gave the assignment.

WHAT IS FASHION?
by Monica Neumann

Fashion is yet one more way to control how the mindless millions act and think. It is an outlet for vanity. It is a cause of numerous adolescent heartaches over the years. It is a source for general feelings of ill will worldwide. A small handful of self-proclaimed experts make arbitrary decisions about what colors and silhouettes people will like because they don’t know they can decide for themselves. Money is the root of all evil, and fashion is a branch of that wicked tree.

We need only to look at costume history to see that this is true. When humans first started wearing clothing, it was purely functional. A purely secular view is to say that nomadic tribes didn’t have homes to protect them, so they wore their homes in the form of clothing. Biblically, of course, the first clothing was meant to hide the naughty parts.

It was only when man started seeking beauties and riches and a more far-reaching power that things started getting a little tense. Certain men could go to other lands and bring back things that the folks at home couldn’t, and those certain men would hold these things over their heads. They brought back foreign gems to adorn themselves with, and they brought back dyes. With their rarity in some parts of world, the usage of these dyes became a status symbol. Only citizens of Rome, whose qualifications made them a surprisingly small group, could wear a true toga. And only senators, an even smaller group of men, could wear a red sash, made with those rare dyes.

The expense of dyes and the dying process made colored cloth symbolic of royalty, for they were the only people who could afford them. Time goes by, the middle class rises, and to show this, they start adopting some of the habits of the aristocracy. They wear clothing made of dyed cloth to show they are gaining in importance. Even with this turn of events, a few colors, the most expensive to procure, are still reserved for the kings and queens and princes and dukes, etc.

People developed the habit of dressing to show their importance in their respective cultures. One could see a person walk down the street and know what social class they were in merely by the clothes they were wearing. A perfectly wonderful human being could be reminded of how close to dirt he was by seeing another’s purple robe or red dress.

Our society has talked much of equality. A good human being, some would say, should try their hardest to look at everyone without judgment. Too much of the time, however, clothes get in the way. Fashion is a weight that helps keep too many good people down and lets too many dead fish float to the top.

Spring 1998