The nav-spectacular fashion show preview

Hmmm.
I’ve decided to post it, just giving it a final listen-through. No, I don’t listen to all the songs right the way through, if I did that, it would take no less than 6 hours and 11 seconds.

I was debating the nature of fashion-shows, the sense of exhibitionism, scrutiny, pretension, and self-indulgence, among other things. Yes it’s all fluff, but there’s more to fashion than what most trend-haters believe. There’s a lot not to like, but there is plenty to love if you know what you’re looking at. OK, designers are of a rather peculiar tilt and sometimes you just have to blink and let a garment slide, but over the years I’ve grown to appreciate good fashion. It’s taken me a long time, and believe me, no-one was a more vehement hater of the industry than I was many moons ago, especially when I did a little research into the more horrible side of the career-models in the industry. You’re daft if you think it’s all frivolous fun, and while yes, in a sense they do choose the industry fully knowing what they’re getting into, it still doesn’t excuse the atrocities of the culture. Furthermore, not all models are self-obsessed and self-centred cows.

I know – it sounds like I’m heavily defending an industry that has a lot to answer for, but spare a thought for the tiny pockets of creativity where designers don’t favour bones wrapped in skin, they just want to design beautiful pieces of art. There aren’t very many, but they do exist.

So is it possible for me to create a fantasy about a pretentious event but have it devoid of pretension? Who knows. Perhaps I’m just caught up in the feeling of exhibition, the celebration of glamour and beauty, the romanticism of a woman’s movements and the clothing she wears. It sounds stupid, a very difficult thing to explain, it sounds like I’ve become a chauvinist who wants to surround myself with stick-thin women who have a lot of money. It really is difficult to explain, but this simply isn’t the case. For me this whole fictional fashion-show (shows, actually, there turned out being more than one) are quite something else. In my head there is an equality between those designing the garments, those wearing them on the runway, and those appreciating them from the crowd.

Bah I’m wasting words, if you’re a hater, there’s no way I’m going to convince you, and to be honest, I wouldn’t want to. The fashion industry is one where at times the negatives and negative effects far outweigh the positives. I would suggest that how each person perceives fashion is entirely up to their own mindset, but that still doesn’t excuse marketers from intentionally targeting 13 year old girls and subverting what is often at that age a very delicate sense of self in order to craft them into consumers of their products and culture. I know you’d probably laugh and suggest that without all of that horrible stuff, there would be no fashion industry, because by and large that is what the industry is made of. Perhaps you’re right, or perhaps we could turn it into something else – I don’t know, I’m not actually that passionate about fashion; myself I just wear jeans and a black t-shirt when I don’t have to wear business attire. But we’re amazingly creative beings. I really do wonder what fashion would be like with a little less selfishness and a little more respect for the diversity of common humanity.

How’s that for a grand introduction.

The nav-spectacular, coming soon.
(After all of that, and the even more elaborate intro that I wrote for the piece which you’ll get to read when I post it, the whole thing turned out to be essentially just a playlist of really nice songs and pieces of music. Go figure – that’s how contrived I can be).

After all the preamble, it’s midnight and I really have to go to bed.
I’ll have to listen through the Summer selection tomorrow and post when I’m done.