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My View: How fashion enriches the fabric of life and innovation
Ugly Betty is back on TV tonight after far too long an absence. Set in the offices of glossy Mode magazine, this US drama pokes fun at the fashion world and its inhabitants, with their outlandish and expensive clothes, shoes and bags, their obsession with thinness, what's cool and what it takes to move up the sleazy pole in the fashion world.
Betty, of course, is not ugly at all. She's normal – normal looks, weight, height and a normal, healthy attitude towards what she wears and eats. She stands like a beacon of sanity amid the unholy chaos, like the little boy who pointed out that the emperor was nude. The show is not anti-fashion, however. Ugly Betty exposes the avarice, corruption and stupidity of the fashion world, but it also celebrates its passion, energy, flair and humour. It pays homage to the creative spirit of the human race which, probably since the dawn of time, has used clothes as a means of expression. In the 21st century, fashion is still a dirty word in some quarters, seen as shallow and inconsequential, the obsession of empty-headed women and gay men, controlled by shrewd business mercenaries, who make fools of us all, whether we flock to buy High Street tat or 1,000 designer shoes.
There are those who pretend they don't understand fashion, claiming they don't care what they wear, while inferring that those who do are somehow deficient in the moral and intellectual departments. And yet fashion is not a game, like football. It does actually serve a concrete purpose, providing clothes to keep us warm, and bags to carry our stuff in. More than this, it is an art form, a medium, a means of expression and commentary – the very fabric of civilisation and culture.
Last week, I went to a fashion show presented by the Leeds College of Art at the Royal Armouries. The clothes were astounding, many wearable and beautiful, some wacky and challenging, and all shining with such ingenuity, such cleverness, that it brought a lump to my throat, particularly when the student designers dotted throughout the audience stood up to take a bow, in all their outlandish glory.
With our technical aptitude, and our pioneering and unconventional nature, we British are brilliant at fashion. Yorkshire colleges send out students across the globe and the fashion and textiles industry in Yorkshire contributes almost 900m a year to the UK economy and employs around 7,000 people in the region. With the launch of the first Yorkshire Fashion Week this week, hopefully those figures will increase and Yorkshire will proudly assume its rightful place at the hub and heart of a flourishing British fashion industry.
There is still much to deplore in fashion – the exploitation of workers in developing countries, of young models, of our psychologically damaging pursuit of thinness, youth and perfection. Fashion must change, and it can – the solution lies in those young designers and makers whose work is being celebrated now as part of Yorkshire Fashion Week.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
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Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 23 C
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