How far would you go to look good?

By Jade Anson
First created 18 December 2008 | Last updated 28 January 2010

I’m not about to start going on about the fashion business in the same way that those journo’s do on channel 4. Not eating anything to try and be a size zero - what a load of b*****ks that was!

Firstly, nobody could be so stupid that they think the way women look in magazines is how they look on a day to day basis! All women slob around the house, admittedly some probably do so whilst rolling around in the thousands of £’s that they’ve just made from a 2 hour photo shoot but my point is that we all know airbrushing is a fact of life. I will admit that clothes do look better modeled on thin people. I have my own personal battle going on here, you see, I want to be one of those perfect women in magazines. I want to be wearing Prada in New York, not Primark in Stretford! I diet, I try to get thin - but I love food too much and on the other hand what’s wrong with having a few extra pounds hanging around? Why deny myself a slice of that amazing double chocolate toffee cake with extra cream? The answer: To look good in the clothes that I want to buy. Be honest, everyone wants to be thin and not for health reasons either - it’s pure vanity.

So anyway, the designers design the clothes that then get modeled at fashion shows. Shops buy the clothes to sell to the public. High Street shops that sell contemporary fashions at low prices then figure out what clothes are going to sell and they pass similar designs to sweat shops in the developing world to copy. Whilst this enables people like me to look like I’m in fashion and at an affordable price, what is the real cost of this process? Designers create the demand by advertising their products to all of us, but then they limit the supply by only selling to the economically elite. This has led to the birth of what could be described as a legal ‘black market’ in the fashion industry. Should this be allowed to happen?

Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps this is a brilliant way of providing jobs in areas of the world where there wouldn’t have been any? The problem is how do we really know that what we have bought hasn’t been made by a small child working by candle light stitching sequins and getting paid next to nothing? Remember the scandal about Gap? Does buying expensive designer clothes clear your conscience and ensure this isn’t happening. I don’t think so. There’s so many questions that when you try and get answers it’s near enough impossible to separate the truth from fact. If we made cheap clothes in Europe then they wouldn’t be cheap, without cheap clothes I won’t look good. What’s the answer?

In the news once, there was this guy (slightly mad I reckon) who decided to burn all his possessions with a label: ‘Bonfire of the brands’ he called it. I wonder how he got on. Personally I thought it was a bad idea burning perfectly good stuff, he should have given it all to charity. Very selfish I thought. But I suppose his underlying point was we don’t need labels to be happy. I know that and surely most sensible people know that too. I didn’t really understand why he had to burn everything though.

The truth is, as a woman I’ve got this thing in my brain that makes me smile when I see new shoes or when I see sparkling jewelry – to be honest, it makes my day. I don’t know how or when this happened but it’s in my nature to try and gather as many pretty things as I possibly can. Then I hide them from my other half and once I’m brave enough to wear them and he comments on how he’s never seen them before I say, “Oh, these old things, I’ve had them years!” or “Yeah…I err, saw them in the market for £2.99 - such a bargain - I had to buy them!” All lies of course but I reckon he knows the truth. It’s unspoken about and personally I think he’s given up trying to question me about it. In my defense, I can’t help it if I’m addicted to new stuff. I confess that in all honesty I’d rather have a new pair of shoes than the money to eat for one day but it does raise a serious dilemma when the person that made the shoes in the first place might only have been paid enough to eat for one day.