Fashion Week Doling Out the Gross Consumerism Feminism

There aren’t many weeks in the year quite as blatantly self-unaware as Fashion Week. The trendy consumer culture of haute couture shouts from the private rooftop parties about inclusiveness, fat models, feminism and super well-dressed resistance. All while producing gross profits derived from the insecurities of women and enabled by a female slave labor force working for pennies in Southeast Asia. So, there’s that.

This year’s Fashion Week is touting diversity so hard you might actually believe it was a meaningful part of the assembly line of churning cash. Clinton confidante Huma Abedin and Gloria Steinem sat side by side as designer Prabal Gurung explained how form fitting clothing for wealthy anorexics actually was very similar to Les Miserables mores:

“..traditionally feminine forms reimagined for a modern, liberated woman who might wear a corset “as a vehicle for irony, resistance, and self-creation”

Imagine the irony in an inability to take deep breaths and pushing up your titties. Don’t worry. It’s all for the cause. This is absolutely positively not about being appealing to the male gaze or attracting a wealthy husband. Resist the obvious.

Designer Christian Siriano invited Leslie Jones to sit in the front row of his show next to Gina Gershon’s new breasts and hoot and holler every time a non-skinny white chick walked down the runway in clothes that will ultimately be sold nowhere. 

“I love plus-size period because that’s realistic, that’s what real women look like. That’s why I love Christian, because he fits all women, all women of color all women of size.”

Women of size sounds adulatory. Something to strive for. Though certainly not how the young 30-something Project Runway contestant turned himself into a millionaire designer. Guys who cut patterns for heavyset women live off a $40K salary and die young, intentionally.

To believe that Fashion Week and the fashion industry is representative of anything progressive, you have believe that rich people who trade in ultra luxury goods are reflective of social benevolence because they attend expensive AIDS galas thrice a year.

There is no meaningful distinction between the fashion industry and hobbies such as exotic boating or jewelry shopping or Picasso art dealing. Save for those tens of thousands of young women not allowed to pee in their sewing sweat shops in Myanmar. Expensive clothes are escapism for the well-to-do. Which is blessed and condoned in a free market. Though rarely objectively called out as admirable or inclusive.

Everybody knows what open invite night looks like at the restricted country club. It’s when they take all those multicultural photos for their public relations efforts. That’s Fashion Week. When the circus leaves town, they beat all the elephants.

_{Photo credit: Getty Images / Splash News}