"I Hate Fashion."

Twitter, the blogosphere and all the other places where fashion, culture and boredom intersect are fashionably ablaze in times like these, the week of the Berlin Fashion Week. I must admit, these days bring along a few interesting styles and interviews that are brilliant in text yet a bit ambiguous in picture (German link to an interview with Stefan Eckert ) I have, like so many others, a guilty pleasure in casually subscribing to The Satorialist. And while I do think that personal fashion and style can (but must not) be a tool of self-expression (and fun), I also agree with this article by Tanya Gold in the Guardian. When she describes the experience of having the extensive, expensive siren cry of fashion (or rather: the pressure of the Fashion Industry) as grueling soundtrack of growing up: 

Can't you ignore it, you may ask? Can't you squeeze yourself into a ­library and have an inner life instead? Ha! Anyone who thinks that has never been a young woman staring into the window of Topshop. Sophisticated weapons are employed to make us need the rubbish. And so we do.

Or relates the story of meeting a 16 year old model: 

She was a sweet, utterly ordinary girl with an astonishing face. She ­exuded gloom. She showed me a photograph of herself. It had ­appeared on the cover of Vogue. "I don't think it looks like me at all," she said. She was right. It didn't. It was a non-existent woman.

Or even mentions the fashionable shoe related death of a 16 year old who fell under a train: 

This was different from the usual Fashion Death, where a model has a heart attack on the catwalk, because she lives on grapes. This was an ordinary girl – a bystander. And why was she wearing high-heeled shoes on an icy night? Because fashion, the whispering monster, told her to.

 I can't stop nodding my head - and shaking it at the same time. Nodding in agreement. Shaking at the stories - and being surprised at how little I am surprised by these stories. So even though I did not suffer as badly under the cry of fashion as a dude, there is a lot not to like about Fashion.  Don't agree? Go read articles like this one.