Followers Of Fashion

Quite when “fashion” began is hard to tell. Perhaps when a female hominid a million years ago decided to put some flowers together and put them in her hair or round her neck. Perhaps it was a male who enjoyed painting his face to frighten the neighbours.

As soon as others began to copy then it all began especially when one adornment or means of covering the anatomy came to be replaced by others. Doubtless there was soon a hierarchy when those who wore the skins of major or ferocious beasts looked down on those clothed by squirrels or rats.

Fashion almost always comes at a cost. To be a beaver when beaver pelts became the must have thing for some river dwellers was not good news. The ladies of the highest classes who used white lead to paint their faces in the 18th Century paid a terrible price for keeping up with the peer group.

The link below is just another step along a well trodden and usually dirty highway. There is nothing new in toxic products used in clothing, the mad hatters of Luton knew all too well what could happen.

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/1053117/stop_making_china_suffer_toxic_pollution_for_western_fashion.html

The trouble now is that the globalization of clothing production and the ratcheting up of the marketing and media campaigns to increase turnover and encourage a throwaway short term fashion centred consumer society is now costing us all a great deal.

And we don’t know the real price we are paying.