Exorcising This Fashion Demon

Ayuku na ng distractions kaya isosolat ko na sya.

Last Monday, I met up with a friend, who also happens to be the daughter of an activist friend. She grew up in Holland making her upbringing and taste for clothes very Dutch. We met in Times Square, a place where the word Giordano would be unheard of unless you brazenly clutch someone else's back and see if the shirt was bought from Giordano Concepts or at least one of those on sale.

I was surprised to see myself talking about fashion with her for two hours straight as if it were my cup of tea, my bread and butter, my life - when I could not even bring myself to Times Square and walk with bags of newly bought clothes. All I could do was reach orgasm just by looking at Camper shoes and Muji clothes, nothing more. And then I would wipe my drool away and wake up to reality.

During that two-hour chat, I was lambasting Hong Kong for its horrendous sense of fashion while applauding Japanese people for their great contemporary taste. My friend retorted that Filipinos don't have any sense of fashion at all. There is no such thing as a trend in the country.

I gave her the dead malice and went on to rant about Hong Kong: colored Intifada scarves that do not look normal on someone else's neck given it's 35 degrees hot here; kurtina laces turned into dresses, tops and what have you; pants that cost like a domestic helper's monthly wage yet look so normal, so ordinary; brands that do not really matter.

What has Britain turned the Hong Kong people into? Brand-hungry animals who look no less than the equally horrendous, unwearable fashion that they are. I read reviews of last London's Winter Collection and I felt relieved. I was proven right.

Of course, the roricon influence on the Japanese is still very much alive. The hiphop sense that remains senseless, almost non sequitur in warm, tropical Philippines. The individuality driven in the heads of Hong Kong young adults (as in other countries, perhaps) that being different is the way to go. YET, being and dressing so differently in what seems like a chaos has turned them all to look drably, sadly, much to my very chagrin, the same.

Imperialism has turned our city kids into mindless freaks of fashion, of pop, of anything so jejunely different. Imperialism wants city kids to love capitalism and to believe that it is the end of history through this almost anarchic sense of trendisms and individualist style that soon enough will lose meaning in the wake of the food crisis.

And hell with eco-friendisms. Their clothes remain expensive. And hell with fashion magazines who have nothing else in mind but follow their Western counterparts and showcase local fashion gods and goddesses most of whom have nothing in between their brains except seamed medulla oblongatas (okay, some do.) And hell with all these new fashion products when after a few years they will all go back to the most natural, most organic that is water, eating good food and exercising every day.

The ones setting this trend are the Marie Antoinettes of our time who know nothing about poverty, except getting sad for those poor thin people with flies fluttering like death around them. Or maybe they are aware and they would all like to be Princess Dianas. Or KCs.

Ask them about the rice crisis and a quick, prompt reply would be nothing more than: "Yeah... (and another five seconds of)...."

Enough. I have ranted enough. No rationalizing. Back to work.