A Fashion Reprieve
And so I've developed somewhat of a new found respect and understanding for some of Erica's more frivolent purchases, of which in my manly eyes are probably a majority of all her purchases. For the longest time I've pondered, questioned, jibed, mocked, ridiculed, etc etc the line of reasoning she gave me, that some of the things that she purchased can also double as an investment. In fact, this line of argument is one of the catalysts that brought about my post on "Fashion Vs Function" a while back.
I used to think it was somewhat of a cop out excuse that women give for the huge number of purchases that get avalanched onto their credit cards. Many times I've raised the question of the necessity of having such an abundance and copious amount of bags, shoes and dresses, many of which never even get used, and the rationale behind the female tendency to stockpile.
Really, women are like squirrels collecting nuts before the winter. Except, that instead of nuts you have items of fashion and instead of 3 other seasons in a year you have just the one. Erica has quite a number of things that she has purchased though never ever used and it is precisely this that is one of the reasons of which I give her so much crap.
However, now that seems to be changing. She has recently started to list the brand new clothes, bags, and shoes she's never worn on eBay and seems to actually be making a profit from them. Where she is successfully selling the items for more, sometimes far more, than what she had actually paid for them.
For me, Joe Average with his twig and two berries, it boggles the mind as for her to make money, means that someone else is losing money. Isn't eBay the place of bargain shopping? In my line of interest, one does not pay more for an item on eBay than they would in a retail store.
Hence the roots of my recent epiphany. For all my mockery of fashion, for all my pointed laughter and occasional scorn at the industry, I never realised another aspect of fashion. Fashion is like art. It's like art in the sense that it's unique. It's also like art in the sense that strange, bizarre, hideous things can fetch high prices but we won't go into that in this post :)
Art comes, art goes, art is always different. Just like fashion. Sure the nature and trends of fashion is cyclical and the old becomes the new, which then becomes the old, only for retro to come back in and so becomes the new again. Rinse and repeat. Fashion is ever changing, every evolving (or devolving if you will), and ever subjective.
I never thought about it this way before and only now understand how fashion keeps it's value and how certain aspects of it can be considered an investment. Seeing Ericas hideous pink Prada monstrosity sell for almost double what she paid for it, and watching her Alannah Hill clown shoes shoot up to above her purchase price with 5 days on the auction still left to go left me in shock, but also final understanding.
For me, a child of technology, products move onwards and upwards, never looking back. History has nothing to offer unless you made a rookie mistake of recording that home porno of you and a celebrity before she was famous on Betamax and now wish they'd make a new player so you could watch it again. Technology charges forward and leaves a trail of of devalued and redundant inventions behind it.
Fashion on the other hand, like art, can be poised to retain it's value. A style can come but once and never again now matter how long the future may stretch. Unlike technology where the past will NEVER be better than the future, fashion is an area of which the past can subjectively supersede the future.
I think about all the times where I've gone shopping for a new shirt and realised that the stock of the current season is just shite, where I wish I could just purchase my clothes again from a particularly previous season where everything fit, and just appealed to me. And I don't know when or how many seasons it may be before I again find something that I like.
It's funny how everything seems to make sense when you find the right perspective. I've had girls try to explain the concept of value retention in fashion to me before, and I just thought they were crazy. Probably high on too many cupcakes or finger sandwiches or whatever..... It's only now I realise.
My way of describing the fashion world is that there is almost no concept of a timeline. Compared to technology, where for the most you're shopping within a set year, where it would make no sense to buy things before a certain technological checkpoint, fashion is not grounded by the same rules.
Where a product shelf for example may comprise of things manufactured between 2007-2009 for technology. The fashion equivalent may be something like 1995-2009. Fashion purchases are generally not limited by chronological evolution and as such there will always be a market for items that others wish to sell. Whether they be brand new or second hand, they are neither better nor worse than all that come after it, however, they are different and unique.
My argument used to be that there is no functional difference between one bag and another for example, but I now understand that from a certain point of view, fashion can be it's own function, it's own warped sense of function. Like art.
Note: I don't have much appreciation for art.
So through the process of trying to squeeze some humble pie into my already full mouth which embarrassingly seems to contain my foot, I apologise not just to my darling wife, but to all women out there. To all the servants of fashion whom I used as a butt of many jokes (and no doubt will still continue to do so), I humbly say... You have a point. Fashion is not all that bad.
However technology is still better! *runs*
I used to think it was somewhat of a cop out excuse that women give for the huge number of purchases that get avalanched onto their credit cards. Many times I've raised the question of the necessity of having such an abundance and copious amount of bags, shoes and dresses, many of which never even get used, and the rationale behind the female tendency to stockpile.
Really, women are like squirrels collecting nuts before the winter. Except, that instead of nuts you have items of fashion and instead of 3 other seasons in a year you have just the one. Erica has quite a number of things that she has purchased though never ever used and it is precisely this that is one of the reasons of which I give her so much crap.
However, now that seems to be changing. She has recently started to list the brand new clothes, bags, and shoes she's never worn on eBay and seems to actually be making a profit from them. Where she is successfully selling the items for more, sometimes far more, than what she had actually paid for them.
For me, Joe Average with his twig and two berries, it boggles the mind as for her to make money, means that someone else is losing money. Isn't eBay the place of bargain shopping? In my line of interest, one does not pay more for an item on eBay than they would in a retail store.
Hence the roots of my recent epiphany. For all my mockery of fashion, for all my pointed laughter and occasional scorn at the industry, I never realised another aspect of fashion. Fashion is like art. It's like art in the sense that it's unique. It's also like art in the sense that strange, bizarre, hideous things can fetch high prices but we won't go into that in this post :)
Art comes, art goes, art is always different. Just like fashion. Sure the nature and trends of fashion is cyclical and the old becomes the new, which then becomes the old, only for retro to come back in and so becomes the new again. Rinse and repeat. Fashion is ever changing, every evolving (or devolving if you will), and ever subjective.
I never thought about it this way before and only now understand how fashion keeps it's value and how certain aspects of it can be considered an investment. Seeing Ericas hideous pink Prada monstrosity sell for almost double what she paid for it, and watching her Alannah Hill clown shoes shoot up to above her purchase price with 5 days on the auction still left to go left me in shock, but also final understanding.
For me, a child of technology, products move onwards and upwards, never looking back. History has nothing to offer unless you made a rookie mistake of recording that home porno of you and a celebrity before she was famous on Betamax and now wish they'd make a new player so you could watch it again. Technology charges forward and leaves a trail of of devalued and redundant inventions behind it.
Fashion on the other hand, like art, can be poised to retain it's value. A style can come but once and never again now matter how long the future may stretch. Unlike technology where the past will NEVER be better than the future, fashion is an area of which the past can subjectively supersede the future.
I think about all the times where I've gone shopping for a new shirt and realised that the stock of the current season is just shite, where I wish I could just purchase my clothes again from a particularly previous season where everything fit, and just appealed to me. And I don't know when or how many seasons it may be before I again find something that I like.
It's funny how everything seems to make sense when you find the right perspective. I've had girls try to explain the concept of value retention in fashion to me before, and I just thought they were crazy. Probably high on too many cupcakes or finger sandwiches or whatever..... It's only now I realise.
My way of describing the fashion world is that there is almost no concept of a timeline. Compared to technology, where for the most you're shopping within a set year, where it would make no sense to buy things before a certain technological checkpoint, fashion is not grounded by the same rules.
Where a product shelf for example may comprise of things manufactured between 2007-2009 for technology. The fashion equivalent may be something like 1995-2009. Fashion purchases are generally not limited by chronological evolution and as such there will always be a market for items that others wish to sell. Whether they be brand new or second hand, they are neither better nor worse than all that come after it, however, they are different and unique.
My argument used to be that there is no functional difference between one bag and another for example, but I now understand that from a certain point of view, fashion can be it's own function, it's own warped sense of function. Like art.
Note: I don't have much appreciation for art.
So through the process of trying to squeeze some humble pie into my already full mouth which embarrassingly seems to contain my foot, I apologise not just to my darling wife, but to all women out there. To all the servants of fashion whom I used as a butt of many jokes (and no doubt will still continue to do so), I humbly say... You have a point. Fashion is not all that bad.
However technology is still better! *runs*