Nodding Nots

Thought-provoking essay questioning the pervasiveness of certain myths in fashion by
means of a small questionnaire, simply to be answered with either yes or no.

No strings attached, right?
Or are there?

Whenever your answer is YES, tie a knot in the provided shoelace.

Have you ever...

   disapproved of what you look like when catching a glimpse of yourself?

   judged someone else based on what they were wearing?

   felt like you couldn’t wear a certain garment because people might have seen it before?

   endured discomfort of some sort for the sake of a look?

   held on to something in your wardrobe that was too small, hoping it would fit again one day?

   considered a garment fitting only for special occasions?

   renounced a particular trend, later to find yourself persuaded by it after all?

   felt compelled to buy something you might not have felt great in but others liked?

Now take a look at the shoelace you’re holding.
Out of the maximum of eight knots, how many are there?

If you are left with an (almost) uninterrupted tie, I applaud you, for it is not easy to always stay true to yourself amidst such external pressure and influences as those of today’s society. However, I assume you’ll likely be holding a rather uneven, bumpy lace. Confronted by questions you’d wish to negate yet found yourself nodding along to, perhaps more often than you’d like to admit. Am I right? Confronting indeed. However, you’re not to blame. Visual culture, on the other hand, is. Well, those in control of today’s overestimation of visual culture are. Your internal desire of ‘surely not’ unwillingly reciprocated by an external nodding, inflicted by fashion’s mythology. A strategy the fashion industry is fond of and excels in: ideas concocted to be sold as realities. To make something seem plausible, when in fact, chances are, you may never find yourself starring in the scenario fashion spelt out for you.

So, in a way, the knots you’re holding are reminiscent of the bumps you’re likely to encounter when living in a world that conforms to a capitalist mindset. Where all that seems to matter is to sell an image, whether truthful or deceitful, somehow justified as long as it results in sales. And that which is being sold, forever rooted in visual discourse, your whole being supposedly able to be captured in an image. Fashion, with its fixed idea of what you should look like, and you consciously or unconsciously conforming to this. You, in a way, more loyal to the deceitful nature of fashion than to yourself. The relationship between you and your body and garments clearly fading. Perhaps not that clear to you, but all the clearer to fashion, a system that senses its triumph in your surrender to its myths.

Now, imagine there would be another path. One where you could tie the (figurative) knot with your body and garments. Not a single trace of judgment, prejudice, bias... to be found. Neither one more sublime, but a relationship rooted in equality. Garment and body as equivalents instead of opposing forces. Such a scenario, for now, unfortunately, ruptured and shattered by society’s immense bias for all that concerns the eye.

MARCH.2024

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