“reciting the Lauren motto for the decade: ‘fashion is a function of lifestyle’ – a tautological slogan which could easily and more appropriately be reversed to ‘lifestyle is a function of fashion’ ”.
It is this exact quote that makes me question the society that we are living in today, the values that we look up to and essentially the ulterior motives in which control our everyday existence. I think our postmodern consumerist society has not only begun to dictate the products we buy, the clothes we wear, the architecture we aspire, but basically the entire status quo that we thrive to achieve. In this instance I am particularly drawn to the notion of individuality, which essentially poses a question; does individuality honestly exist in our ideal society, or even better has it ever existed at all? Referencing back to the film “Blast from the Past” which is staged in the 1950’s era, it was apparent that the notion of the ideal American lifestyle significantly begin to dictate what society was intended to value. The picture perfect family in front of the house with a white picket fence and nice car in the driveway begin to establish the ideals that all families aspired to attain, which essentially snowballed into the modernistic version of that picturesque appeal today. This ad by Ralph Lauren not only is trying to promote his individual line of commodities, but rather is trying to see a lifestyle in which using these products will create. Essentially this is the element that distracts individuals from their personal uniqueness, in order to take on the newest, latest fad so that one could achieve the amazing lifestyle that advertisements portray it to be. The notion of image is created through these designers in the means of fashion, so by simply sporting their name one is to assume that they live a particular lifestyle in which that label creates. So is achieving individuality a disillusion that is unattainable, or is it a forgotten entity, which isn’t even thrived in the first place?
No comments:
Post a Comment