The Bloggomist: Acorn & Oak Tree
Fashion Opinion

What started as a movement to rethink the way Americans mass-produce and mass-consume food seems to be inspiring an even closer-to-home slow movement. For years we’ve all been buzzing over the vast internet’s triumph over quaint print media. Meanwhile, multitasking was made easier with the help of 43 folders, women’s magazines, as shrill as ever, insist we can do it all (so long as we organize it correctly) and Apple trumpets in on a daily basis yeah, there’s an app for that.

via coolhunting.net

Fashion, of course, is one of those consumption-driven industries (perhaps more like the food industry than any other) that requires a constant fount of new material and ideas. Take the random appearance, for instance of a new “pre-fall” season — as if three collections per year, plus whatever pop-up/collab/capsule collection designers are required to churn out, isn’t work enough. And on the other side of the looking glass, bloggers and internet celebrities skip the whole career-building process, occupying front rows with the old dogs who’ve worked decades to be there.

Is it just me or does the whole thing feel really 1990s in a hyper-competent, democratized, tech-bubble kind of way?  It feels like the fast food and the fast fashion and the internet wunderkinds and the meaningless parade of information down an RSS feed is beginning to buckle. We’re finding more value in local produce than big business bulk, handmade and vintage items over fast-fashion replicas and an artfully considered opinion over a newcomer’s musings.

courtesy jeremyscott.com

We were all really psyched about H&M, for instance, because the looks we craved were suddenly affordable — until we began to suffer from bulging closet syndrome. Value did not valuable make. Like the local farmers markets popping up all the time (and which are notoriously expensive), sites like Etsy.com, which sells only handmade and vintage wares, are also flourishing.

Ultimately, the meaninglessness inherent in the fast was the straw that broke (or will break) the camel’s back. In this month’s GOOD Magazine, themed the Slow Issue, Jamais Cascio says that “recognizing that humans can’t compete with the processing speed of computerized systems, the slow movement is a catalyst for rules that support greater reflection and consideration.” As people we happen to be endowed with a unique ability to reflect, consider, deliberate and opine. There’s no reason we should force ourselves to be second-rate computers.

It doesn’t seem like I’m alone here either. The recent Allstate commercials (yeah, lame I know, but I do get moved by commercials now and again) claim this recession may have made us great. I would claim (well, hope) it made us slow. The commercial shows images of growing backyard produce, refinishing a chair, sewing a garment, biking to work. I’m not sure if it was financial ruin or one too many 4-star Yelp restaurants that turned out to be shitty, but I’m excited that right now, this year, we’re going to start doing things the old fashioned way.

courtesy nytimes.com

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To see more from Zinzi Edmundson, visit: http://evilmonito.com/author/zinzi/

Published on 9 February 2010 | |