Why Do We Praise Fashion Models
In Praise of Wearing a Dress Again and Once again
Tiffany Haddish is a way office model for our time.
There is something seriously wonky nigh a world where a famous person wearing the same outfit more than once is exciting news.
Always since Tiffany Haddish appeared in her white halter-neck Alexander McQueen clothes at the MTV Movie & Tv Awards last weekend for the fourth time — fourth time! — subsequently wearing it in July 2017 at the premiere of "Daughter'due south Trip," and so the following Nov when she hosted "Saturday Nighttime Live," and then to present at the Oscars in March, and information technology became something of a crusade célèbre, I can't stop thinking about it.
The same matter happens every time that another glory known for shopping her cupboard, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, appears in a look she has previously worn. It could be the xanthous Alexander McQueen coatdress she wore to her daughter's christening in 2015, at Trooping the Colour in 2016 and during a trip to Belgium in 2017; or the beaded Jenny Packham gown she wore in 2016 to a gala for the East Anglia Children's hospices and in 2011 to the ARK 10th Ceremony Gala Dinner. Amongst many others.
Every time they do it, nosotros throw upwardly our hands in excitement. Yet what nosotros should really be asking ourselves is: Why this is the exception rather than the rule?
In our civilization of disposability and influencers, wearing something in public more than than once is often perceived equally a sign, somehow, of failure: of not being rich enough, or powerful plenty, or desirable enough, to continually acquire things. We avidly check Instagram and street mode (even though nosotros know how manufactured it is) to see What Boldface Names Are Wearing Now! and the Top 10 All-time Looks! — all of information technology feeding our seemingly unending need for the new and different.
This is what drives stylists to demand dress straight from the runway for their clients, earlier they even attain stores, and what spurred the come across now/buy at present moment a few years ago, when brands decided they were losing out on market share considering consumers just could not await for whatever appeared on said runway or on said celebrity to hit the shop floor.
And it is what fabricated fast style into such a phenomenon (it started out equally affordable style for all, a laudable goal, just was quickly transformed into quick-hitting purchasing addiction).
It is what is powering the rental market, which allows the experience of a new dress without the guilt, and what is causing the sudden trend amid our favorite clotheshorses, including Kendall Jenner, Kardashian Co. and Chloë Sevigny, to sell off chunks of their closets.
It'due south all spun equally entertainment: visual candy, a celebration of blueprint, an case for united states of america all to get ideas about how to dress. Innocent fun. Just it is also creating a glut of overstock (H&M's $4.iii billion of unsold clothes, anyone?) and undermining the local industry of countries swamped by secondhand donations made to abate the guilt of purchase. And it is skewing our value organization in a manner that isn't good for anyone.
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At that place's some talk virtually "men get to wear the aforementioned tux over and over once more, why shouldn't we." Michelle Obama fabricated that point at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in 2017, when she said her husband had worn one tuxedo all eight years he was in the White House, but she couldn't do the aforementioned thing because "people take pictures of the shoes I article of clothing, the bracelets, the necklace."
That'south truthful, merely I as well recollect the issue is well-nigh more than gender equality.
Ms. Haddish may have joked almost it on "South.N.L.," when she said, "I feel similar I should be able to wearable what I desire, when I want, still many times I desire, as long every bit I Febreze it," simply the point is a serious one.
It'south well-nigh valuing an investment.
It'south virtually the fact, equally Ms. Haddish told Westward magazine, that her approximately $four,000 dress was the equivalent of "a downward payment on a auto, that'southward a medical beak. So, even though everyone says I shouldn't wear the dress in public again, I'g wearing information technology."
It's nearly the fact she actually bought her dress herself, equally opposed to borrowing information technology, or being contractually obliged to wear it, equally and so many celebrities exercise and are on the red carpet. I think the last time I remember an actress copping to purchasing her ain dress was in 2016 when Bryce Dallas Howard announced she had bought her Golden Globes Jenny Packham (size 6!) from Neiman Marcus.
And when you buy something yourself, peculiarly when it is an expensive something, it has value information technology doesn't necessarily have when it isn't direct linked to your own labor and bank balance. Yous accept usually weighed the pros and cons, sacrificed a flake, had an internal debate, and and then fabricated a decision.
In celebrating her buy and how information technology makes her experience, and in wearing it over and over, Ms. Haddish (and the Duchess of Cambridge, for that affair) is modeling a different kind of value organisation — 1 nosotros used to have but seem to have forgotten. One that appreciates the work that goes into a really wonderful garment, says it is worth the investment, especially if yous amortize it over many wears and aren't afraid to admit information technology.
And it'southward well-nigh time.
Because this kind of revisionist (or old-fashioned) thinking is in anybody'due south interest, brand and consumer alike. It says one well-considered garment is worth 10 here-today-recycled tomorrow equivalents, and can be priced accordingly. It puts a premium on fourth dimension and quality. Information technology holds both sides of the equation to a college standard.
We should value our clothes. They are part of our identity. We should think almost them. We should take intendance of them. They should protect us. They should brand us feel secure. They should incorporate memories. Non all of them, to be fair. But a lot of them.
Perchance that sounds like a load of sanctimonious hooey, merely information technology seems to me that the adulation greeting Ms. Haddish's choices should be a sign. Wear it over again, Sam.
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