Fancy Timing

Couture is coming, couture is coming! That's the battle cry of the economically downturned. The custom-made, hand-sewn-by-French-ladies, high-cost, luxury-wear Spring 2009 Season is here. How strange, right? Yesterday 75,000 people lost their jobs and today there are slideshows up of outfits that sell for easily more than what a good portion of the population brings home in a year. Part of me wants to resist looking at it, thinking about it, writing about it. Part of me wants to yell at the designers with the nerve to go on with their frivolous, overdone ideas, their gaudy shows of spectacle and wealth. Then I got to thinking: I could never afford couture, couldn't have before and definitely can't now, and there will always be someone who can afford it. That is the way of our capitalist world. So, rather than sit and stew in resentment or throw eye darts at the stomping models catwalking down my computer screen, I'm going to focus on the beauty of it all, the fantasy, the escape, just like I always have. Things themselves don't make me happy, but looking at things, appreciating them, admiring their craft, their aesthetics, their shape, color, size, that all makes me happy. Super happy, in fact. So, on with the show. Just like old times.