Suspension of disbelief

You know how, in say an action hero movie or a great fantasy novel you accept you are entering into a parallel universe where things that are not possible in this world are perfectly normal (flying up into the stratosphere to "cool down", being posessed by a ring, kissing a frog into a prince)? Well fashion magazine reading also requires a certain level of suspension of disbelief.

Most notably, you must forget about this world's salaries and treat real money as lightheartedly as you do Monopoly money. Assume that you can really only be "chic" if you are rail thin and spend thousands each season on the same "key designer items" every other woman in your circle and beyond is suppose to be aching to place in their black hole of a closet (after all, it must accomodate the proceeds of endless shopping trips). In this particular fantasy world, the wardrobe does not open onto a perpetually frozen winter landscape, but rather onto a collection of high fashion that is being patiently curated by its owner with an eye to a future donation to her local museum. An enduring legacy that will remind the generations to come of just how incredibly chic and wonderful she was.

But here's the problem. We're not all Nan Kempner. And, even more importantly, we don't even necessarily WANT to be like Nan Kempner.

Now, this is a fairly obvious distinction. Right?

Well, I've always thought so, but beginning in about 2001 I began to notice, as I wrote up the price tags of the items selected and photographed in the magazines, that were skyrocketing beyond the stratosphere like Superman himself, that many within the fashion industry seemed to believe that this "absolutely fabulous" parallel universe was, in fact, reality itself. It was like the fashion crowd closed ranks and glued itself onto the jet setting superrich and could see no further than their rhinoplasties.

And then the big crisis arrived and, now hedgefund fortuneless, the fashion industry went into shock. Like with Spain's government, it went through a long denial phase, when instead of analyzing its own actions it bemoaned the lack of respect for their work. But then, for F/W 2009- 10, the fashion crowd got wind of a new, exiting trend: cutting back the prices to size. And, what do you know? It turns out that a cotton twill cargo pant can be just as chic, wearable and, yes, even just as covetable if its price tag is 295 €, or even a highstreet friendly 29, 95 € than if its over 1.000 € (sorry Christophe Decarnin). And if its already waiting inside your narnian wardrobe - even better!!!