Fall is almost here but for the fashion industry, it has arrived! This time of year is like the Super Bowl season for the fashion industry with all the anticipation of rolling out the latest, greatest full out fabulous.
During this time of the year, the fashion industry gears up for an all out effort to entice, seduce and provoke, aimed directly at you to ooh and awe with the goal of getting you to rush into the stores and…buy!
Also at this time of year, there are trend reports touting, wear this, wear that, this is how you should look, buy this, buy that. I started to create a trend report for you, but after I started, I stopped.
I think the fashion industry is damaging to a woman’s self esteem.
As I flip through countless voluminous glossy magazines, scour fashion websites and visit stores to checkout the newest arrivals, I get angry.
It makes me feel angry when the images in the magazines show such a narrow range of beauty that an average sized woman in middle age can’t see herself. I can’t relate to the parade of monolithic, post pubescent glamazons. When women over 35 are shown, they are airbrushed beyond recognition and end up resembling mannequins.
It makes me angry to know that some stores or brands only carry up to a size 12, some even up to a 10!
It makes me angry when a saleswoman gives me the once over and says, let me check in the back to see if we have your size, and I’m a size 6!
These realities carry such damaging messages and they scream, NO, you’re not slim enough, young enough, or all-the-other fill in the blanks of not enough.
This all makes me feel so angry AND sad. I can’t pretend that I don’t notice or care.
This is my ambivalence coming out during the biggest fashion season of the year about an industry that has given me so much yet has caused so much emotional damage to women. I have always heard and known it is not kind to us as we age, just as our bodies are changing. This is the reason I have held back from jumping in the mix with my version of a fall trend report exclaiming, OMG, here it is, the best of the season! It’s tough to celebrate when I know it also provokes so much pain.
But, my passion is stronger than my pain. I feel swept by the passionate pursuit to empower women with the feeling of inclusion, beauty and self-acceptance despite participating in an industry that does not care to do the same.
I’m more interested in providing solutions than sidelining with the thought that I could have shared a perspective that can help a woman find something that is empowering, for her to know it is possible for her too, despite being shut out and treated like she is invisible.
And…I do love beautiful clothes. I love the thrill of finding just the right choices for a woman to show her style, and I love how it feels when she feels beautiful. So I’ll pound the pavement and edit, fueled by my passion so that you can remain unscathed, self esteem firmly in tact.
So…after I’ve had this opportunity to vent, I’ll go back at it, and share my recommendations for the best of the season. But…I’ll do it my way, sans the tall, skinny, teenage models that slip through the eye of the fashion industry needle propped up to wear the clothes for our age.
I’ll see you next week with my Fall 2013 Trend Report.