Confesional fashion stories

Today I'm plowing through a folder full of what I like to call "confesional fashion stories". Lately these have been my favourite sort of fashion articles. What you may ask am I referring to? Well those stories in which both professional and non professional writers or journalists tell of their own fashion related obsessions / "deficiencies" / adventures / likes and dislikes. What I find fascinating is how they open a window into someone else's psyche through their relationship with something so apparently innocuous as their clothing and shopping habits and manias...

There is, however, something I hadn't really paid much attention to until reading so many in quick succession. They all name / shop at very high end designer boutiques, for clothes who's price tags easily go into the thousands. Some quite gleefully confess that some of these pieces were paid for with maxed out credit cards while bills lay unpaid over the freezer. This gives me pause to think.

Is it generally assumed that the current generations of working women with independent salaries are capable of leading highly rewarding professional and personal lifes but totally incapable of balancing their own books?? Or is that only a problem for those of us, (yes, I include myself, though I swear I've never spent anywhere close to a thousand euros on any piece of clothing, or even over any single seasonal wardrobe shift!!!) with a fashion sweet tooth?

Also curious is how, starting in early 2009, the first signs of "mea culpa" appear in these stories. Before that, few show any remorse about their shopping habits. Rather there' s a subtext that makes one feel that somehow, these women see this compulsion as a loveably quirky part of their character, a la Bridget Jones. It's a part of their life that brings them joy, a certain sense of "one up manship" and sometimes even underscores a need to be loved. Maybe I'm reading way too much into them...

Those stories that tell the life story and relationship that binds the writer to a particular item ( be it inherited, gifted or self bought) are much more enjoyable than those that describe their shopping sprees and the season's prize buys. Still, they all reflect just how deeply the image we have of ourselves is linked to how we present ourselves to others through our clothing.

Which leads me to wonder: Wouldn't it be interesting to read similar stories about shopping and clothing, but written by guys? Would that even be possible?