Manufactured Desire

The thing about New York...is fashion. It's not really an industry in Austin or Swarthmore- both of these places share a sort of anti-consumerist green fashion. But NYC is home to Project Runway and the Bryant Park fashion shows, SoHo and Chelsea. There is an Uptown style and a Downtown style and of course the Williamsburg hipster scene.

And what this does to me is make me want things that I don't really want. Like a Chanel purse or (another) Coach purse. A Tiffany necklace. An entirely black wardrobe. A UWS apartment. Four inch heels. Huge chunky necklaces. It's just that the women you walking down the street are so in tune! The majority of female New Yorkers pay attention to fashion and try to stay on the ball or even ahead of the curve. And it seems like such hard work!

The subtext to all this fashion is status. Like peacocks, fashion is way of displaying fine plumage. There are two kinds of status that are the most obvious for me to read on the streets: "cool" punkness or wealth. Those who want to be read as cool have a sort of Olsen Twins grunge look but it's still incredibly expensive grunge. Then their are the clean, manicure females who have obnoxious ugly Louis Vuitton bags.

And then there are things I find myself wanting despite every brain cell in my head. Like a Chanel purse, the trademark of the ultimate clique girl, Lauren Conrad. I pretty much hate everything she stands for but I want her purse? Some part of me wants the "look at me" aspect of owning such a status symbol. Maybe its like having six pack abs for a guy. But I don't want the Vuitton purse, which I associate with Jessica Simpson (hello, chicken of the sea). Whatever. Right now I'll just poke around and see if their are any good fakes. Now that's a fashion statement I can live with.