"W" of March '99 (Posted at Fashion Only Forum 2/27/99)

"W" is my favorite of the mainstream fashion magazines. I seldom buy it, but did this time because it's one of the special issues, meaning that it's big enough to justify it's price in fireplace fuel value alone.

Popular pundits of the proletariat perform prognostications concerning fashion, style, purse size and other essentials, as part of an erroneously scheduled millenium shift. All of which is pretty good reading, especially for $3.95. Consider though all of the predictions of how we would now be living made by those in the past in order to get some idea of the accuracy of such predictions.

There is, however, a section predicting the future of photography, with opinions of many credible people, beyond the Kate Moss/Karl Lagerfeld types usually asked about how to solve the Balkan crisis. I have no idea of the future of photography myself, but was very pleased to read the thoughts of interesting, intelligent, involved (sorry - there goes the alliteration again) individuals concerning the stuff I love. Those pages were worth the admission price.

There is another section on fashion that starts out with with the prediction that fashion (and luxury) will finally be recognized as only having validity when linked to personal comfort. That definition caught my attention when several designers independently stated as much in a similar thoughtful article in one of the avant garde mags a few months ago.

The thought process here goes something like this: what can money buy that is of value, and what is "value?" Money can get more money, of course. But we all have something like 75 years to live, give or take a (rather large) deviation from the mean. During those years, stuff for stuff's sake doesn't have a whole lot of intrinsic worth. The quality of one's life is measured differently by different value systems, but all of those systems are externally imposed. Taught to us. The one thing that requires no teaching is that no one wants to be physically uncomfortable. Thus, comfort is a universally shared value, and probably worthy of pursuit. And comfort, therefore, should drive all actions beyond mere survival, including fashion.

Whaddya think? Did I drink too much coffee?

-Don