The Sins of Fashion

No one knows when it began, but our country eventually found itself left with only one option: to ban fashion outright.

Fashion had slowly become an unspeakable topic—or perhaps it had been destined to become one from the very beginning. In any case, ever since this collective evasion took hold, people have grown tongue-tied and evasive whenever the word “fashion” comes up. Fashion, well… it has become like accidentally licking a hard candy already licked by someone else—still warm, still sweet, but above all carrying a saliva that must be feared. An ordinary tongue would never dare to grind itself against it with any steadiness, nor wish to wrap around it casually and skip about. Those who dare approach the topic head-on are inevitably the sort of people who never change expression no matter what they discuss, who do not blink when a traffic light suddenly flashes before them. From that moment on—whenever that was—it seemed only unshakeable scholars and fanatics so obsessed with fashion that they had abandoned all shame continued to speak of it. One could almost say that, feeling themselves insufficiently fashionable, the public generally assumed these uninhibited commentators to be narcissistic lunatics, people who produced fallacies the way post offices sort parcels. Even when the world was already filled with misjudgments, they managed to ignore them, step lightly over them, and then lecture others on how easy it was to leap across such traps; or else instruct those stuck in the pit on the correct method for calling for rescue.

Ordinary people, rather than discuss the present state of fashion, preferred to investigate its origins. Knowing almost nothing about what “fashion” actually meant, they hoped to discover some definition—some verdict—that could nail fashion into its coffin for commemoration. And so fashion historians stepped forward to educate the masses, tracing fashion from antiquity onward, probing its birth and describing its evolution. They sought to identify its roots, from the most fundamental forms to contemporary schools of style. But wait: ancient fashion? How could fashion be ancient? How could the fashions of antiquity replace those of the modern world?—Ancient fashion. The public found such research absurd and useless. Time was linear; fashion was perpetual renewal; the new must overpower the old; and in any case history could be lived, not retrieved. In this climate of sweeping skepticism, the fashion activists of the moment seemed to find new leverage, though perhaps their greatest worry was this: at the very moment they spoke or practiced fashion, were their clothes truly fashionable enough? Or, more precisely, were they fashionable enough to withstand the attacks of their peers—both trendsetters and fossils—and the doubts of the masses? Generally speaking, they needed to maintain an unbroken posture of aggression to fend off these opponents, a stance that demanded enormous energy and fervor. Moreover, fashion was only ever a fleeting accomplice. Even if its practitioners used their personal charisma to avoid risk, who could guarantee that, before long, fashion wouldn’t betray them like a sly criminal fleeing the scene—erasing every trace of the conspiracy and leaving the helpless accomplice to rot alone in the prison of “false fashion”? And after being doubted, even the most correct self-defense takes on the appearance of guilt.

In the end, a portion of the audience remained fair—or rather, appeared especially fair precisely because they were always suspicious and always exacting. The few fashion figures who survived wave after wave of judgment eventually fell into a vicious cycle of miscalculation: they could no longer tell whether their own words conformed to the terminology of fashion, nor whether their clothing and gestures still captured the right current. Even in moments of misstep or complete collapse, they continued to thrash about in a dried-up swamp, performing vigorously, constructing the illusion that their feet were planted atop gushing springs of trend. They still froze mid-gesture for the camera, striking various poses. But by then these more exacting spectators could no longer be persuaded. Pursuing ever greater objectivity in their judgments, they felt only embarrassment on behalf of their former idols. Within this overwhelming embarrassment, the decision to walk away was easy; to remain and continue watching—or offering feedback—was far riskier.

For the fashion practitioners, these silent departures were fatal. It was precisely the gaze of the audience that clothed them in power. Once they obtained that power, they would strip off the original coat and replace it with one they believed more fashionable and inviolable, as if diverting the very source of fashion’s currents into their own pipes and claiming that everything thus obtained was of their own creation. But even the most stubborn narcissist loses the will to perform after the last believer disappears, and allows himself to be stripped bare, sinking like a stone into a well full of water. And throughout history, waves of doubt have always swept over waves of fashion, washing the old colors into blurred, charm-less remnants. Even what remains is often so hardened by sediment that people choose to bury it, letting it become ruins to be trampled upon—layers of strata with no hope of resurrection.

Fashion, it seems, is something that yields no result even when thoroughly discussed. It has become a kind of formless thing. The idea of constructing fashion through grandiose speech has become dangerous (fashion must, above all, be seen), yet to practice or create fashion without discussion feels equally futile (who can know whether something is truly new, rather than a ghost from the past?). For a time, any claim to fashion tended to produce paradoxes within the fashion world. Those who spoke openly about fashion were seen as show-offs, half-full bottles rattling noisily, or accused of merely reheating the insights of others—if there was no innovation or breakthrough, how could they claim to lead fashion? But is true fashion something that can be led? Humanity cannot grasp fashion by its handle. Could fashion be the natural product of an era, or is it man-made? Human-made products are difficult enough to accept, and a human-made fashion no less so. Yet what we call “the spirit of the times” is itself produced by countless mediocrities.

When people publicly praise someone as “fashionable,” what they usually mean is the opposite: that the person is not fashionable, that they flaunt themselves without self-awareness—in short, that they are pathetic fools in every sense. And there are some even more foolish who take such praise at face value—but perhaps they cannot be blamed. If no one ever clarifies who the truly fashionable are, how could great fashion ever be born or spread? Is fashion so limited and tiny that it cannot extend or expand? If so, it does not deserve the name. If, in an era when no one dares consider themselves fashionable, we still fail to distinguish who truly is, people will grow anxious, lose faith and interest in fashion altogether. Has the fashion we avoid discussing ever truly existed? Fashion has never brought profound impact; it is always diffuse and lightweight as mist, and always imposes a natural debt on those who dare to touch it—more like an invisible disease. Who can guarantee that the fashions of the past were not myths, rumors, or outright hallucinations?