That said, I TOTALLY, 100% disagree with you about fashion. I think a lot of people wear it for labels and vanity and whatnot, and the industry troubles me with beauty standards. But I think a lot of people disregard fashion as an art form, which it absolutely is. And even more, it’s wearable art! Art you can take around with you and express yourself with!

I would never pay $400 for a pair of shoes (so Jimmy Choos are out for me) or that much money for any kind of clothing, but I will scour the internet looking for heavily discounted Alexander McQueen, because I think he was a great artist.

And so the problem with knock-offs is this – people are taking other people’s art, copying it, and selling it as if that artist made it. It would be like if I bought a reproduced Kahlo piece, signed by the artist, and passed it off as authentic. It’s not cool in any other industry to steal like that, so why should it be in fashion?

And to be even more longwinded – I think fashion as an industry has an interesting push/pull. No one in the patriarchy takes it seriously as art because it’s primarily focused on women, in the only industry where women are often paid more than men. But then, feminists don’t take it seriously because of the body standard issue (which I take umbrage to as well!) and say it harms women. So it’s difficult to defend. But not liking fashion doesn’t make anyone cooler or non-feminist than someone who likes it.

Wonderful sentence. What a concise definition of “the global wealth machine” as you call it. I will use it, often, with attribution! Thanks.

I kinda want to get it tattooed on my forehead.

Thanks for throwing yourself on this particular hand grenade. Your sacrifice has not been in vain.

Hipster. :p

I will note that, in my (hazy) recollection of the TV series – which I watched, what, a decade ago? holy hell – , the fashion and decadence were a lot more subtle. It was always there, of course: the cosmotinis and the Blahniks and the dresses, etc. But there weren’t these sopping montages of dresses and diamonds and the like.

I think (as you said) this is a function of trying to pad a 60-minute episode into a 2-hour movie. They can shovel more shitty dialogue in the boilers and make it go faster, or they can do lots of weird camera tricks.

Also: it says something of the writers’ cultural outlook that they thought, “Hmm – let’s shake things up by sending Carrie and the girls some place where women are objectified, praised for adherence to male-imposed virtues and have nothing useful to contribute,” and then didn’t set the movie in America.