"Fashion may chatter about many things, but the conversation is mainly about sex and status. That fashion is about sex is obvious and even the designers of the fashion vanguard agree. "Men and women both, to an extent, get dressed to get laid," said British designer Katherine Hammett. "Fashion is all about mating...Think about an 18-year-old. And that energy trying on twenty different T-shirts before going out - to them it's so important... True fashion obsession is something to do with sex," said Gucci designer Tom Ford."
"Sex is only part of the fashion story. Fashions are as much product of social competition as the finest bird feathers or the sweetest bird song. They reflect people trying to outdo one another in a game of "Watch me!" and driving each other to excess. They show the restless, shifting rules of people always raising a bar between themselves and those clamoring to take their places at the top. This is what can turn fashion into a snobbish, exclusionary business. Only through an elaborate code of rules can those at the top defend their position. To be truly in the know, one needs dedication and discernment, as we as time and money. Lapses expose the arrivistes and posers. A fashion faux pas is not an aesthetic gaffe so much as a social and moral one. The code makes people care tremendously about tiny details o f cut, color, and material, and make them abandon an article of clothing once the style becomes passe, though it may be in mint condition and has cost a fortune.
A fashion that is in one season and out the next shows us what pure status effects look like. Stripped of social meaning, the garment looks worthless, even ridiculous. Competition may drive fashion to excess and ignite fashion crazes, but the pursuit of fashion is not frivolous of silly. The game may be frenzied but the players are operating rationally. They know that clothes are valuable currency in the social arena. They show that we are ahead of the pack or, at the very least, not left behind." - Survival of the Prettiest
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