The Triangle

Issue date: 3/14/08 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: MCT Campus Designers like Elie Tahari have developed their lines based on the idea that smart women can look sexy.

It is winter term. Every day that I manage to wake up, I wake up tired-I am underpaid, overworked, stressed and stretched-and every other Drexelite I've spoken to feels the same way. I don't get out of bed; I fall out of bed and stumble out into the real world. But no matter how close to death I am, I refuse to look that way. The weather outside is already gray, so why should I be? So I pull my Tahari pinstripe blazer over my red striped polo from the boys section, which is worn over my Prada slacks which are tucked into my $5 thrift store boots. And I run halfway towards the door, stop, run back, grab my pink pashmina scarf, then run out.

I am a paradox-and not just because I pair Prada luxury slacks with cheap, discount store boots, but because I don't feel as though I have to choose between being intellectual and being fashionable. I do feel as though the culture of today offers women limited, and one dimensional roles to assume. Just because women assume certain roles doesn't mean that they are consumed by them. For example, just because we may read articles about Paris Fashion week doesn't mean we view the event as more magnanimous or more important than the G-8 summit. I was impressed by John Galliano (the creative designer of Dior) but not anywhere nearly as impressed as I was by the late Benazir Bhutto.

To most, fashion is fickle. To most, it is just an industry based on consumerism and the bandwagon mentality. But I don't really see how that is any different than any other industry. The film industry creates just as many five-second fads as the fashion industry and even more toys and Happy Meals to accompany those five-second fads. To those that claim fashion is irrelevant because it changes so quickly-I rebut by bringing up the ever-changing and expensive iPod, the constantly improving computers and cell phones that are updated weekly to include the most irrelevant of features. Is a phone capable of playing movie trailers really any more necessary than a fedora? I don't think that there is anything wrong with wanting either.

To me, fashion isn't really about the brand, the fad, the industry, the consumption or even the clothes themselves. Maybe that's because I can't afford the brands, hate the fads, am not a part of the industry, and ignore the consumption. Fashion, to me is an important cultural phenomenon and is crucial to social phylums. True fashion is always accidental and unconscious. Early underground punks wore their black combat boots to exemplify the edge in the music they loved. And hippies of the '60s embraced flower power with tie-dies and free flowing skirts. Neither of these groups intended to instigate a consumer movement, they were extending their art to their bodies. And that is what it means to have style.

And thus, I don't like being told to choose between my books and my beaded belts. I also don't like being told which beaded belts to wear. I am interested in fashion, but I hold that interest separate from what the fashion industry tells me I should be interested in. My best friend, Katie Quinn (who herself is a fashion maverick), quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson to me all the time.

Emerson said that, "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." So I unapologetically promulgate my love for both clothing as well as literature here and now.

And to all those readers that are scanning this article with contempt, seething over the flippancy that they perceive fashion to have, I would just like to tell them that being anti-fashion is the most vogue fashion statement that they could possibly make.

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