Fashion: Sartorial Opiate or Shamanistic Magic?

New word: sartorial means pertaining to tailoring. The history of consumerism is embodied in the glamorous, eye candy history of fashion. These writers have more direct awareness of the relationship between fashion and imperialism than most economists. Where economists seem to accept industrial growth and expansion as a good that will raise all boats, these art historians and cultural observers touch on the darker underpinnings of an elitism that could not survive without cheap labor to shore up the expensive tastes of its wasteful leisure classes. Christopher Breward, author of "Fashion", from the Oxford History of Art series, is particularly insightful in this regard.

From his rather dry account, I learned that "dynamic obsolescence" was invented by fashion stylists beginning in the mid 19th century with the concept of the fall and winter collection which aggressively rendered last seasons fashion out of style. Obsolescence is of course the driving growth of virtually all industries today.

Fashion being the most portable and accessible of cultural markers was spread from the three key cities: London, Paris and New York via print media, the fashion show and later film and television to other cities aspiring to rank as global players. (The fashion show was big in Bangkok where it was usually associated with royalty. I was a runway model for two of these events at the home of local royalty when I was five and six years old.)

So I was intrigued to learn that it is mainly in the West that fashion was ever changing while elsewhere it was static due to local customs and social hierarchies. This does parallel the rise of the cult of the individual in the West, but I would go further and look at the religious beliefs that allowed this cult of the individual to arise. Buddhism, for instance, with its teachings of no self would not lend itself to the cultivation of individualism and still doesn't, not with the skill of personal power that Western psychology has elevated it to.

But I am not in a hurry to label fashion as a tool of imperialist Western selfishness. These accounts of fashion also point out the influence of street fashion from the 19th century dandy to the Punk styles of the '70s. Vivienne Westwood, whose fashion footsteps I seem to be following, is credited with firing up the whole phenomena of Punk. She then went on to fuse 16th century, ie Renaissance clothing cuts, with modern materials and gender bending presentation. Fashion was certainly a part of the emancipation of women, had a hand in popularizing cycling and has been the visual marker of all kinds of anti-establishment movements including queer culture. It has been as much a tool of the outsider in communicating resistance as it has been a tool of the elite to dictate the parameters of the in crowd.

But to go even deeper, I remembered from the novel "The Mists of Avalon" that glamour is a word borrowed from witchcraft. Thus glamour is a concept used by witches to enhance spells that require the viewer to be enchanted by the appearance of the witch herself. (Kind of a sleight of hand like the use of the Force in Starwars when Obe One persuaded Stormtroopers to allow him entry through a security checkpoint.)

In this sense it could be said that fashion is akin to the use of hallucinogenic drugs. Where drugs were once an important part of shamanistic ritual, they are now taken without the ritual and have become portals to addiction. Thus fashion has become a portal for consumer addiction. But rather than take the puritanical route and declare a "fashion free" zone, I would prefer to reclaim fashion as an inspirational art force that requires a constant stream of creative manifestations to communicate ideas and ideals, but it would also have to be done without compromising values of sustainability. And I can do that as long as there is already manufactured materials out there to salvage. After that it will be back to the fig leaf.

The Travels of a T-Shirt In the Global Economy

This is just the kind of non-fiction I like–a journey in search of the truth filled with anecdotes about real people. The author, however, is an economist professor and one who upholds the ideals of the "free market" while acknowledging that one doesn't exist. Her quest is to find out whether the claims of recent student activists about the horrors of sweatshops are really justified.

The long view she offers through history taught me a lot about the influence of the textile industry as the primary driver of the industrial revolution—satanic mills and all that, not to mention driving the slave trade to work the cotton farms to supply those mills in England. Is this not an early example of globalization?

Then there's the history of protectionism which gave me a working knowledge of how politics work in the American congress and the role of the textile industry in the South re: trade and foreign policy. And the role these protectionist policies played in helping industrialize all the little players in all those third world countries that wouldn't have been able to compete with Japan or China, but were given their moment in the market because of US quota systems.

As a good economist would, the author sees this industrialization of all the corners of the world as a leg up out of poverty. She did give me pause in her claim that jobs for women in sweatshops working long hours for little money were an improvement over jobs at home on the farm working even longer hours for no pay under the authority of the family patriarch. We all know about the oppression of women in China, after all, so we'll go along with that.

The history of China's early textile manufacturing serves as an example of sustainable production. The farmers themselves, the entire family, carded the cotton, spun it into yarn and wove it into cloth on their home loom. They made their own clothes from it, then took the rest to market to sell. Her point is that this system created no bottlenecks so no Eli Whitney to invent the cotton gin or whatever was needed to ease those bottle necks, the solving of which would increase production (which would result in increased demand, but she doesn't mention that).

The most fun chapter is about the used clothing market. Unlike e-waste, dumping our used clothing on poor countries around the world isn't toxic. Though the documentary T-shirt Travels claims that such dumping destroys the local clothing industry, she makes the observation that it was already destroyed through mismanagement of the local governments and because socialism didn't work because factories didn't seem to produce and things just didn't get done.

Whenever pro free market writers talk about mismanagement by local governments, I've learned to read that as a sign of lazy thinking. Local governments may be mismanaged and corrupt, but they do not have nearly the power of destruction that large scale economic policies enacted by the World Bank and IMF do. Her anecdotes of the entrepreneurs she meets does convince me that socialism is miserable at providing incentives for workers to produce and innovate, but then she didn't see The Take about the power of democratically run cooperatives to produce for whatever markets they can find usually local.

It's too bad the student activist that inspired her didn't also shout something out about the deterioration of the planet because not once does she mention how industry impacts the earth, polluting it and using up natural resources and she was writing this in 2004, so no excuse.

The Bush Agenda

Covers much more than just the Bush agenda, going back to the first influence of the Neo-cons with the Carter doctrine drawn up by Paul Wolfowitz. Covers all the usual territory about PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) and how that group first expressed themselves by asking Clinton to go to war with Iraq. Much of this story I already knew; what was illuminating were the details and background on the four companies that are major war profiteers and supporters of Bush's global agenda, namely Halliburton, Chevron, Bechtel and Lockheed Martin. Except for Haliburton, the other three are based in Northern California making it a local story for me. I was particularly illuminated by the history of Bechtel and how George Schultz angled to overthrow US policies that would help his company gain business access to the whole world to build nuclear power plants, thus kicking off the global proliferation of nuclear arms.

My father worked for the defense industry (as an engineer) so reading about Lockheed Martin recalled the work he did and the eagerness with which he wanted us to go to the Persian Gulf war so he could field test the heads-up pilot's helmet for which he was able to patent some solution of his that was crucial to making it work. That I was a peace activist did amuse him so especially because he was so confident that war was inevitable.

The author lays out the history of the oil industry both in Northern California and Iraq. Know the history of oil and everything falls into place including who has power in American politics and why we support repressive regimes in the Middle East. She also gives a nice run down of the destructive policies of the World Bank and the "structural adjustment policies" of the IMF that have been the undoing of national economies world wide.

Most fascinating was the story of how the Bush agenda proceeded to erase all of Iraq's existing laws that they didn't like in order to dismantle the socialist infrastructure and force the country to favor the services of multi-national corporations. Changing a countries laws is illegal per the Geneva convention and why everything is such a mess, but no pundit is really going to discuss it in a big picture way because it means discussing how the socialistic government ran things much better for the populace while capitalism is all about looting multi-nationals. We do know bits and pieces like how the Bush agenda fired key workers who were running the country, but I don't remember anyone saying they were replaced with Haliburton and Bechtel scabs from Pakistan. They also fired the Iraqi soldiers and apparently let them go home fully armed. So here we have key people out of work supported by an armed contingent while their foreign replacements are making an expensive mess of the reconstruction, doing things the American way when all the existing fittings and hardware were from France or the Soviet Union. Who would support this nightmare?

I heard a speaker on Iraq talk about how the Iraqis have a saying about the American reconstruction. "To heal the wound you must first pull out the knife."

And despite this story being called the Bush Agenda, it is not a new one. Under Clinton, the economy of Yugoslavia was similarly invaded for the purpose of replacing nationally controlled infrastructure with private enterprise. But she doesn't mention that. I read it in To Kill A Nation. What is new is the extent to which the Bush administration has taken this strategy especially by forcing the signing of "free trade" policies that would make the WTO cream its pants, not only with Iraq but with other middle eastern countries thus forming MEFTA.

It becomes clear through the details, Antonia Juhasz gives, that this is not a war, but a military takeover by American corporations. Particularly telling were the provisions put into place to rewrite Iraqi textbooks. Gives new meaning to the phrase "history is written by the victors". Reading this book convinced me that we should not even say the words "war in Iraq" because that is essentially a euphemism implying that we are defending ourselves from aggressive violent outsiders while protecting innocents. From now on I'm going to call it the American occupation of Iraq, make that the illegal American occupation of Iraq.

This is one of the few non-fiction books I've read whose author is a woman. I'm glad to see that a woman will tackle economics as a world organizing principle. I was beginning to fear that, while women excelled in discussing psychology and social justice, they were resistant when it comes to the importance of economic health. The last woman I read who tackled this territory was Frances Moore Lappe of "Food For A Small Planet" fame. Her book Food First was my first glimpse into the continuation of colonialism through corporate globalizatio