🇬🇧 Good taste and bad taste mix in the fashion industry?

Good taste and bad taste mix in the fashion industry?

There's a scene that I really like from the movie “Confessions of a Shopaholic” that is useful to illustrate my point of view on this. This text covers men's and women's fashion as well as personal style.

Becky, in case you're not familiar with the movie or the book, is a compulsive shopper. And someone, I don't remember who, asks her to join a “compulsive anonymous” group or something to control her addiction. One of Becky's best friends is getting married and, accidentally, on the day she goes to get the dress she would wear at the wedding, she is caught by the leader of that compulsive meeting and the woman doesn't even want to know what it's about, she already thinks that bag with a dress is more of a consumerist spree on the part of the girl (it was Becky's first meeting in the group that day). And so, there comes a moment when she freaks out (rightly!) when she sees the dress being worn by a homeless woman because that group of anonymous consumers took the dress and put it in a kind of charity shop.

I like this scene because it is obvious that the dress on the homeless woman is not as elegant as Becky, a girl who has information on fashion, well-groomed hair and skin, etc. It's the same dress, but who wears it makes the difference. Like everything when it comes to personal style. It is not enough for the pieces to be coordinated with each other. They need to express nuances of the personality of the wearer. And that you don't learn for free on the internet, or in quick courses.

A well-made and well-cut dress will always be a well-made and well-cut dress, but if the person wearing it has no common sense and is vulgar, the result will be ridiculous. And responsibility for error is not from the fashion industry. The responsibility lies with the lack of sense and style of the wearer. There are clothes and accessories of the most varied profiles every season. And there are always clueless people who, even with a lot of information available in the media and having a mirror at home, want to force situations that are ridiculous, for not really knowing the fashion industry or having a well-developed personal style. Some examples are:

• Short women wearing pantacourt (that looks ugly on anyone, but on short women it's worse, but there are idiotic people who think that if you're in fashion, anything goes).
• Man who is over 40 wearing a cap and common clothes in teenagers.  They are too big to know how to dress with style and good taste, but there are always the clueless ones who haven't learned anything, perhaps because they think that fashion is a woman's thing. Fashion may be, style is not.
• Fat women with prominent bellies wanting to show off their stomachs or wearing jerseys that makes them look like a Michellin doll. There are much more elegant options. For beer-bellied men who only know how to wear a t-shirt and polo shirt too.

Bad taste is in the clothing industry that doesn't fit - in the classification I use - as a fashion industry. And also in people who consume clothing, including many who consume fashion products. I've talked about classification here and on social media before, but to make your life easier, I'll summarise that the fashion industry is the one that creates for the most innovative customer profiles, not the one that sells to the masses. Cheap apparel - and some not-so-cheap brands - made for the masses, I classify as the apparel industry.

All this talk of inclusion that is currently a fad is making people make more idiotic style decisions, because clueless people don't seek to educate themselves, they think everything is obligatorily in good taste. And that's pathetic!

There are elegant solutions for just about anyone, but if you don't seek expert advice, you risk showing your bad taste with vulgar clothes and accessories that bring out the worst in you.

To answer the initial question, no, good and bad taste do not mix in the fashion industry. There are people with good taste and people with bad taste. And there are brands that produce for people with bad taste and others that produce for people with good taste, and these can be used by people with bad taste, generating horrible results.

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Nycka, the Nomad