framework
[the magnetic myths of caged consumerism]

Imagine a wire shopping basket, the type you tend to see as an icon on the top right-hand corner when you find yourself browsing online. Have you ever considered its resemblance to a cage? An open-ended cage, I must add, but still a cage. Well, I have come to identify these shopping baskets as such: open-ended cages we, as consumers, are somehow trapped in, whether we acknowledge it or not. This sparked a curiosity in me: why is it that we don’t escape this cage? Because, as mentioned, it’s open-ended, therefore not tying us down. In researching, I became aware of the role of language in all this, so I wanted to hone in on the linguistic obstinance by which we seem to be raised. As for my research, that meant taking a closer look at the repercussions of language on the act of dress, specifically its effect on fashion as an embodied practice. 

Overall, language is considered rational. Not to mention, the language used within fashion already tends to leave little room for interpretation. It’s considered factual when it essentially concerns mythology. Myths that we as consumers consider truthful. Their thought-out language pungent yet somehow soft to the touch of our being. Magnetic. Gently steering us into a one-way street of perception. By inserting small moments of repel - in which we may distance ourselves from the fashion industry, not wanting to be associated with it – the industry has developed a strategy, a mechanism to give us the impression that we do have a sense of agency. However, exactly at that point, when we tend to feel ‘self-sufficient’, the fashion system will strike again, luring us back in by the attractiveness of a myth of some kind. A myth consisting of linguistic signs that will then engrain themselves within the tissue of our being. Which leaves us with a fixed idea of what’s the done thing. Paralysed in TIME and SPACE, all credits to fashion’s LANGUAGE.

Caged in by what I have come to identify as ‘magnetic myths’ – generally rooted in a normative understanding of LANGUAGE, as well as TIME and SPACE – many people find themselves trapped within a ‘consumer cage’. Even though they wouldn’t necessarily identify as such. Intrigued by this very ambiguity of being trapped yet not acknowledging it or even being aware of it all, I wanted to unravel and retrace the mechanism behind such myths. Since it is these fashion myths, constructed by and in favour of the fashion industry, that act as gatekeepers of this caged consumerism.   

    so, imagine this shopping basket
    an open-ended cage
    yet still trapped

Trapped by the vast magnetic field of these ‘fashion myths’, stitched together by norms taught and passed down to us through language. The narrative of our lives seemingly spelt out for us, instead of being left to us. Which, ultimately, keeps us at bay from a more embodied experience. Garments physically so close to us, yet mentally so far removed from us. So, it seemed about time to re-curate the TIME [memory], SPACE [movement] and LANGUAGE of fashion to get back in touch with a more embodied fashion experience.


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