iPods, blogs, and knitting.
That’s how our world keeps itself on an even keel. Do it yourself is becoming the next part of America’s complacent counterculture to become prepackaged and mass-produced.
I went through the mall recently, not to shop (I’m an unemployed writer, which puts me several tax brackets away from anything new, yet alone retail) but to see how out of touch I am with paycheck earning and debt accumulating America. What I saw I half-expected to see, but not with such heavy a price tag, or with such widespread dissemination. Almost all of the clothing hanging on the stoic mannequins with perfectly nonchalant posture and ever-erect nipples (so the clothes hang better I suppose) appears to come from the closet of a cute girl who’s studio apartment is furnished with a Swinger on one side and an ironically stenciled silkscreen tucked away in a corner.
Individuality has always been quickly adopted and marked up, but seventy dollars for a T-shirt? It’s a fuckin T-shirt people. A T-shirt with an original looking design other fools with seventy-dollars-worth of irony to prove will also have.
Beside the ubiquitously ‘hand-altered’ T-shirt (elegant presented under a slick sport coat of course), there were a wide assortment of sack-like dresses with shinny cinching belts, and even simple cloth tunics with bright patterns to hide the eddies formed by the tumescent nipples (I swear they’re everywhere and they aren’t to scale).
It’s in every store from Saks to H&M to Urban Outfitters. For just a few hundred dollars you too can look like you know how to manufacture charming garments in your personal bedroom sweatshop. Now, I applaud the simplification of style. It’s a herald of prosperous things to come. The economy seems tied to fashion. In with bellbottoms and large albatross wing rayon collars, and in with deficit and lines at the gas pump. In with flannel shirts and doc martens and dot com bubble here we come. And I honestly believe it’s a direct result of famous people knitting. Bored rich people, too young to have arthritis, and too busy to have a hobby that can’t be shoved into a Jack Spade bag along with their Sidekick at a moments notice are single handedly saving our economy. “God Save The Pop Queens” indeed.
These trendsetters might have started the most profitable fashion trend in decades––Simple materials, simple designs, and huge prices. I’m not a Harvard educated economic professor, (in fact I can’t remember anything more than laize fare, which I always had a slacker’s affection for.) but it seems to me a trend like this can’t possibly hurt the economy. But that’s all beside the point, because what I really want is freshly baked bread and easily accessible humus.
So, in my infinite wisdom in all things hip and cool, I suggest that baking become the next big celebrity trend. What better way to give a big ‘fuck you’ to all the companies that scrambled to jump onto the low-carb band wagon than to come out and become pro-bread? I mean, even KFC tried to say you could lose weight by eating fried chicken…oh that is IF you remove the batter-covered flavor-filled skin That’s how crazy companies are to latch on the latest trend. Logic means nothing to these people. So it will make perfect sense to them if Demi Moore and Madonna suddenly got together and made scones and pumpernickel on the Sabath.
And as for the whole humus thing. I implore someone to finance my venture to create the Starbucks of humus chains. Humus Yumus. Warm, fresh pitas and a varied assortment of gourmet humuses (or is it humi?) available on every street corner in America. That’s my dream and it smells comforting.
So, get to it all you famous people. Put down your Sidekicks and knitting needles and make me some fucking pita.
