Fashion - A deformed thief

Further to my previous post Fashion - A Matter of Proportion, this is a follow up which highlights the other side of fashion.

Fashion has often set up a false standard by which people are to be judged. The expenditure of many households is adjusted by what their neighbors have, and not by what they themselves can afford to have; and the great anxiety is, as to who shall have the finest house and the most costly equipment. The weapons used in the warfare of social life are not rifles, guns and shells, but chairs and mirrors, and vases, the wardrobes, and the electronics.

There isn't just one cause today of more financial embarrassment, and of more dishonesties, than the determination to live as well as or better than others. There are people who will risk their eternity for one fine looking glass, or who will strike out the splendors of heaven to get another piece of flashy jewelry.

"My house is too small". "But" says someone, "you cannot afford a larger". "Never mind that; my friends have a better residence and so will I". "A dress of that Pattern I must have. I cannot afford it by great deal; but who cares for that? It is the latest and I must have one". There are scores of men in the dungeons of the jails, who risked honor, business, morals, ethics - everything in an effort to shine like others. Though the heavens fall, they must be "in the fashion".

Excessive fashion makes people unnatural and untrue. It is a factory which has produced more hollow pretenses, unmeaning flatteries, and hypocrisies, than Binny Mills ever turned out blankets and garments. Fashion is the greatest of all liars. It has made the society insincere. You know not what to believe. When people extend their invites, you know not whether it is an expression of their heart, or just a plain civility. They apologize for their appearance, as though it were unusual, when always at home they look just so. They cry out aloud their most luxurious entertainments, vacations, just to win a shower of approval and eyes of praise.

From many circles of life, fashion has driven out vigor and enthusiasm. Instead a frozen dignity floats. There is a round of bows, and grins, and flatteries, and oh's! and ah's! and smirking, and namby-pambyism, a world which is not worth one good round of honest deep prolonged sound of laughter.

Fashion is incompatible with happiness. For those who depend on the comfort from the admiration of others are subject to frequent disappointments. Everybody tries to outlive everybody. The jealousy, the detraction and the heart burns!

The worst thing about fashion is an intellectual depletion. Its hard to find a man or woman of extreme fashion, who knew much.

It has become so very essential to realize that the beauty of harmony, grace and good rhythm depends on the simplicity. The most important  thing to remember is that, its not the Gucci bag or a French cut jean you can take anywhere, but, it's an open mind.