"You're so very special."
To wax philosophical about the mysteries of the fashion industry is a waste of time. No one cares, as evidenced by MTV's long-forgotten House of Style, the ever-decreasing word count in the fashion rags and, most recently, reality TV's Project Runway, which is more about wannabe designers bitching at each other than about setting a sleeve. Fashion, like any art form, simply plays to our unquenchable desire for novelty.
No one needs a new pair of $200 jeans. But want and need operate on entirely different agendas. "Want" needs something new. "Need" wants anything at all. The difference between one screen-printed tee and the next is nearly nonexistent, but the mysterious forces that compel a preference for one over the other are a topic of great concern to the poor schlub shelling out his 60 bucks.
The smiling sales staff has been trained to sell you on the quality of their garments while avoiding any mention of the trend they satisfy. They will always insist that these jeans, this tee, that hand-tooled leather belt with brass embellishments made by the formerly exploited native artisans of a remote Balinese fair-trade workshop, is an excellent example of expert craftsmanship, and available in three colors. And you will undoubtedly pass what you've learned from their pitch onto the belt's countless admirers.
But the truth is, that picture of a slim young thing totally nude except for said leather accessory, reclining on an Eames reissue, in combination with the streaming E! TV broadcast still canvassing the entire United States that decreed this season the official return of uber-expensive leather goods as sported by pop super star Justin Timberlake, is what really sold you the belt. That and it made you look skinny.
We would all like to claim that we make our choices independent of commercial influence, that we are unlike other consumers who blindly follow the glossy style guides. And we often assert as much. So often, in fact, that the ads that sell us our one-of-a-kind goods mirror the very same mantra. We make unexpected choices. We stand out. Each of us is an icon of individuality. We don't need, nay, want to fit in. Each of us is a free-thinker, defiantly unique and inarguably special, just like our friends and favorite celebrities.
To argue that you are indeed a uniquely stylish individual, please send a picture of yourself circa 1984 to Jennifer Henry c/o
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