A brilliant essay by my good friend Matt on his outside critic aimed at his choice of footwear. Genius.
Mr O’Sullivan,
Our conversations of the past week or so have thrown a new subject under the bright glare of your cynical gaze – a subject of, on the face of it, relatively minor significance: namely, attire. Before grappling with the questions and opinions thrown up by our debate, allow me first to elaborate my desire to continue our correspondence. First, I consider myself to be a man of ideas. That is, someone who constantly contemplates, assesses, and examines his own thoughts, his mode of life, and all of the concomitant decisions made therein. Such a critical approach to life should, in theory, lead to a state of being in which one has a reason for doing everything, a thorough understanding of that reason and, crucially, how it comes about. In short, the philosophical integrity of action.
Second, I consider you also to be a man of ideas. As a student of biology, and someone with a keen hunger for knowledge, your appreciation of intellect and healthy scepticism are two of the reasons we stumbled across this subject in the first place. It is only proper, therefore, that my respect for your opinion and thought process should result in an elaboration of the philosophy regarding attire, as I understand it.
This brings us, then, to the third and final reason for my writing this essay. Our discussion, and the differing opinions resulting from it, touches upon some extremely important philosophical issues, which belie the apparent superficiality of a comment made about a pair of white Paul Smith trainers. These issues, as I shall articulate below, touch on capitalism, labour, human nature, and the value of art. Thus I feel compelled to pen this essay, aided by a new abundance of leisure, and a penchant for intellectual jousting. It is a compulsion borne of a desire not to defend my personal choice of footwear per se, but to defend intellectual integrity and coherence of thought, and further, the very philosophy of attire itself.
Allow me to move, then, to the key parameters of our debate. At issue here are two separate, yet fundamentally inter-related opinions expressed by your good self. The first, and somewhat easier issue with which to contend, was your disagreement with, nay, rejection of, my personal choice in wearing a pair of Paul Smith trainers, which I pointed out had been spotted by the keen eye of my former colleague, a highly acclaimed clothing designer, whose attention to detail never ceases to astound me. But I digress! You mocked the rationale behind my purchase, namely an admiration for the aesthetics of that pair of trainers in particular, and the aesthetics of Paul Smith’s design in general. My understanding is that you consider such rationale to be superfluous, trivial, and, in short, unnecessary.
The other opinion you expressed concerned the idea of ‘fashion’ and – guilt by association – the stance which should be taken towards those who spend their lives involved with it. To summarise, you displayed contempt for the very idea that importance should be attached to clothing beyond its functional usefulness, as embodied by the attitudes and actions of ‘fashion’ and those in its employ.
Both are opinions not unfamiliar to someone engaged with, and critical of, modern society. However, both are also opinions which, if you will pardon me the use of words so often associated with subjective negativity in the interests of objective clarity and verbal accuracy, are hypocritical, flawed, contradictory, and lacking philosophical coherence. Discomforting though such a statement must sound, the rest of this essay will illustrate the sound basis of such claims.
Let us take each of your opinions in turn, then. The first is, much to the gratitude of my overworked pen, alarmingly simple to reject. I choose not to dismiss your opinion as many others would, by citing your Right to a personal standpoint different to my own. Rather, I will show how your opinion is in fact utterly hypocritical and as such cannot withstand the rigours of intellectual examination any more than a balsa wood outhouse would survive the mean indifference of a tornado.
We live, you will grant me, in a capitalist society, whose consumerist machinations are predicated on the logic of choice. This is but one of the aspects of the ‘freedom’ that we talk about when comparing the nature of a centrally-controlled economy as compared with a liberal economy. With cash in one’s pocket, one may choose to go into this shop rather than that, to buy a Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice-cream rather than a Calypso, or to send one’s child to Eton College rather than Woodham Community Technology College. For the purpose of our discussion we must diverge from the example of ice-cream here, however, for the simple reason that ice-cream may not be classed strictly as one of our human needs, whereas comfortable protection for the soles of our feet undoubtedly is one of those needs.
An accepted parameter of our debate, therefore, is the recognition that as humans in the societal context in which we currently find ourselves, we need clothes and footwear. My choice of the form by which that need is fulfilled is done according to the logic of a capitalist consumer, based upon personal preference. I will not delve too deeply here into the minutiae of my preference for that pair of Paul Smith trainers over any other option, other than to say that they met the functional demands of comfort, size, price, and the additional criteria set by my own aesthetic tastes. That is somewhat irrelevant, however, since we as thinking human beings all apply a system of criteria to any choice we make in the market place. That choice is, by nature, individual and personal, albeit always conditioned by our context. In short, if you have ever made a choice-based monetary transaction, and continue on a daily basis, as we all by needs must, to do so, then the rejection of another person’s choice is, by definition, hypocritical.
Fluid replenishment is another of the needs which nature, in her infinite wisdom, has imposed upon our species. Conditioned by the culture in which we were raised, one part of that need is met, for both of us, by tea. You may choose the rich smoothness of PG Tips over my choice – the imposing strength of Yorkshire Tea. We may, in turn, disagree with one another’s choice of tea, based on our own experience and opinions regarding taste. However, you, no less than I, would undoubtedly reject such an opinion as would claim that taste is of no relevance to one’s choice of tea, and that the only concern should be with whether or not it is tea. If that be the case, then similarly, there is no logical basis for rejecting the equivalent of taste when purchasing clothes or shoes. In the interests of intellectual coherence, there can be no inconsistency. The same logic must be applied to both examples.
Need any more be said on this matter? It may be worthwhile to furnish my point with one more illustrative example of how criticising the rationale behind someone’s choice of shoe based purely on the notion that such a rationale need not exist is disingenuous at best, and ignorant at worst. A parent who chooses a certain school for their child based on considerations of, amongst others, cost, prospects, strength of curriculum, and proximity to home, cannot be criticised for that choice, unless – and this is the key point – the criticizer takes issue with the details of one of those criterion. That, for example, in his opinion, the school’s curriculum is not as strong as it seems, or the school does not have a talented enough pool of teachers to get the best from such an ambitious curriculum. To return to the shoes, then, you may criticise my choice based on your own aesthetic concerns or your opinion that the shoes cost more than their worth, but it would be counter-intuitive to maintain that a criticism may be made that is based on a rejection of the fact such criteria must, by nature, exist.
We come now to the issue of your contempt for fashion and the tendency to attach an undue amount of attention to the rudimentary need for clothing. This is the opinion which provided the foundation for your first standpoint. The points I will make, and an exploration of the contingent nature of your opinion, will show how your views, when taken to their logical conclusion, result in a bland utilitarianism, a rejection of the trappings of civilization, and a wanton disregard for an immensely interesting area of human behaviour.
What, then, are the key terms of this question? Fashion and utilitarianism. For the purposes of our discussion, I propose that we define ‘fashion’ as the dominant mode of dress particular to society at a certain moment in time, and which adheres to social conventions. The reason I choose this definition rather than one which relegates ‘Fashion’ to a mere label for the complex industry whose highly visible representatives are Prada, Gucci, H&M, River Island, and of course Paul Smith, is that such a definition is too narrow to fully address the implications of your opinions. I shall, however, refer to both, and the latter shall be capitalised (‘Fashion’) while the former shall not (‘fashion’).
A the risk of over-simplification, utilitarianism here refers to one of the most important currents in recent human civilization, namely the notion that things should be seen and valued only in so far as they are useful and that there is no need to be concerned with any criteria of judgement over and above those of function. This dogma, can be, and is, applied likewise to humans, and we see in the logic and organisation of both liberal capitalism and Soviet Communism a strong strain of utilitarianism. Thus, according to the tenets of utilitarianism, a pair of shoes must meet the criteria of function (a cover for the feet), comfort, and suitability of price. Beyond that, further criteria are superfluous and unnecessary. The parallels with your own opinion regarding clothing are, needless to say, obvious.
Let us first consider your utilitarian attitude towards ‘fashion’ (small ‘f’). If we were to disregard all considerations over and above pure functionality, where would it lead us? I contend that it would lead us backwards to the cloth sack and yet further to the animal furs of our cave dwelling ancestors. Why wear, for example, mass-produced leather sandals when home-made straw slippers achieve the same ends? Why wear t-shirts and jeans when a single piece of cloth would suffice? Indeed, in the climate with which we are blessed on this beautiful island, and the evolutionary residue in the shape of body hair, of which you are endowed with an abundance, why wear anything at all? In the words of Bob Dylan: “There is something happening here, Mr. [O’Sullivan] – and you don’t know what it is, do you?”
To reiterate my point, imagine, for a moment, the results of a similarly utilitarian logic when applied to other of our human needs - in this instance, the need for shelter. The world would be devoid of great buildings, of those masterpieces of architecture which motivate great swathes of humanity to make pilgrimages half way across the earth in order to pay their respects. The architectural icons of civilization – the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Forbidden City, and the Palace of Westminster – would crumble into dust, leaving behind them mere cave dwellings, and brick boxes with slate lids. Utilitarian architecture, moreover, is responsible for the uniform ugliness of China’s urban landscapes, and the destruction of many of her architectural gems. But again, I digress. The point is only to further highlight the catastrophe and hideous uniformity which results when utilitarianism is practiced with reference only to our animal, rather than our peculiarly human, needs.
Strict utilitarianism, in short, is a logical dead-end, leading backwards to our pre-historic ancestors, or back to the future into the brutally bland dystopia of uniformity and the ‘Mao Jacket’. Something is happening here, and we all of us, consciously or unconsciously, reject bare utilitarianism in the way we dress. We reject it, due to our irrepressible humanity, our desire to express ourselves as individuals within the collective, to exercise our faculties of thought and reason, to explore our aesthetic preferences within the confines of social convention, and to differentiate ourselves as a species from the rest of the fauna which inhabit the earth, for which such things are impossible
Having thus dealt with your rejection – based on a redundant utilitarianism – of the importance of ‘fashion’, let us consider, next, your pretentious contempt for ‘Fashion’ and those who spend their lives in its employ. Allow me to begin by saying that it is easy to denigrate and trivialise something about which one knows little, and cares less. Indeed, on the face of it, such a contempt is in many respects understandable, particularly with regard to the Fashion industry, which devotes so much time and resources to relentless self-promotion, and which takes as its figureheads such arrogant and materialistic figures who, surrounding themselves with the cult of ‘celebrity’, only succeed in thinly disguising the void which lies beneath their surface appearance. But when the pretentiousness of ‘Fashion’ creates pretence as a reaction, the only result is invariably ignorance, misunderstanding, and obfuscation.
Those people who spend their working lives (let us not forget, after all, that we cannot judge people merely on their occupation) in the employ of ‘Fashion’, and for whom you claim to have no respect as a result, are a fundamentally necessary part of modern civilization. They service our need for clothing above and beyond the concerns of pure function, as discussed earlier. What those people do for our need, is what the architect – as opposed to the bricklayer – does for our demand for shelter: They turn it into an art form which utilises the key intellectual faculties with which humans are bestowed, and service our fundamentally human desire for beauty. Indeed, the parallels with architecture are not as tenuous as they may at first appear: Both are three-dimensional art forms, which take the human person as their object of reference, engaging with it in a tangible way that other art forms, such as painting, literature, and sculpture, lack.
Further, is it not disingenuous and contradictory to suggest that you attach no importance to, or respect for, some of those people upon whom your own livelihood depends? Apart from the obvious fact that some of the children at your school are the offspring of people involved with ‘Fashion’, consider also those children whose parents earn their livelihood as a result of the supply and distribution of ‘Fashion’. The ripples radiating outwards from the industry which attends to, and elevates to art, one of our most basic needs have a far wider impact than mere surface impressions might suggest.
At this point it is worth bringing ‘fashion’ (small ‘f’) back into our discussion. The dictates of current ‘fashion’ are predicated upon a number of factors, however one of the most significant is perhaps the design and original creative processes of ‘Fashion’, or at least of the pioneers within that industry. In short, in our highly commercial and media-driven society, we wear what ‘fashion’ tells us we can wear, which has in turn been mediated through, and in dialogue with, those ideas emanating from ‘Fashion’. Within these dictates – which are nowhere explicitly written, but permeate every aspect of culture, be it in magazines, music, film, or sport – we have a certain, small degree of freedom to experiment and wear what we want, as long as we do not stray too far from the norm. The reason why, when we discussed these questions in person, we both wore t-shirts, jeans, and trainers, is because we are both, nay, all, fashion slaves. Some of us, who consider our clothing to be worthy of thought and examination are conscious of our slavery. Those others, who consider fashion to be trivial, unimportant, and ‘beneath’ them, are unwitting slaves – a state which is far more degrading and dangerous. There is a difference, of course, between a ‘fashion’ slave and a ‘Fashion’ slave, and the latter would describe neither of us. Yet I am certain that a sudden awareness that you are, like everyone else not above, but a slave to, ‘fashion’, must be slightly shocking.
Coming back to our original issue – contempt for ‘Fashion’ – one must also consider one of the things integral to our clothing, namely who designs and produces it, and the part that labour plays in their lives. When we purchase a pair of shoes, or a t-shirt, we are obtaining the fruits of someone’s, indeed most often of many people’s, labour, and in the process we are furnishing them with some sense of dignity and value in their work. Now, the key thing to consider here is whether we want to treat that labour as the action of a human being, with emotions, aspirations, stories, and needs, or as the act of a machine, an automaton, who remains faceless, nameless, and unvalued. If we see our clothing as a subject of little or no importance, then by extension we treat the labour, in which a large portion of humanity is engaged, as also being of no importance. As someone who attempts to understand the world and society around me, I reject that view absolutely. Labour must be valued and given due thought and consideration, in order to prevent one segment of human kind from subjecting another to a life of unrecognised, unvalued drudgery and slavery.
At this point, we must bring design and aesthetics into the debate, as this was ostensibly one of the reasons for our initial disagreement. How we view a product – a shoe – is of importance, as mentioned above, not only to the consumer, but also to the producer and designer. As William Morris, with characteristic eloquence, put it in his treatise on ‘The Decorative Arts’:
“To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is the great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it.”
The importance of decoration, of attempting to make things look beautiful without regard for mere functionality – one of the objectives of ‘Fashion’ – is of the utmost importance, and is one of the key sources of dignity in human labour. Thus the chef takes pride in his cooking skills, but also those of presentation. Thus the writer searches for original poetic analogy in communicating with his reader. Thus the designer, creating a new pair of shoes, incorporates a pattern inspired by the shadows cast by stark branches in winter sunlight. To reject such things as trivial, for one must by necessity and in the interests of logic reject all or none, is to deny our abilities and motivations as humans, and advocate a regression to the mere servicing of our animal needs: cave; fire; fur; spear. Morris again: “These works of art are man’s expression of the value of life, and also the production of them makes his life of value.”
A further, and no less important point worth making with regard to design and aesthetics in clothing, as in any other area of human creativity, is that inherent in such value is an engagement with the history of human civilization. Clothing today is the result – for better or worse – of a development over centuries, indeed millennia, in materials, concepts of ‘beauty’, social mores, taboo, methods of production, and function. Allowing the latter to blinker one’s perspective is to block off avenues of immense interest and sources of learning about human and societal behaviour past and present. Clothing may not be the most important of consideration in our lives, but one would hope that the points made above show with abundant clarity that it cannot, nor should it, be neglected.
Allow me to draw this essay to a close then, by summarising my arguments and then making a few comments about my own preferences regarding attire. We have considered, and duly exposed as hypocritical, a refusal to accept a particular rationale behind the purchase of a pair of shoes. As discussed, this rationale may be challenged on its own terms, but cannot be rejected altogether in a capitalist society where the default mode is choice predicated on reason. We then moved on to explore a utilitarian attitude toward attire and the logical conclusion of such a standpoint, namely regression, uniformity, and a rejection of the things which make us sentient beings. Following that, we examined contempt for ‘Fashion’, which was apparently based on an ignorance of the subject. Surely this contempt withers and dies when one sees with clarity one’s own position as a subject of ‘fashion’. This subject was then further analysed, and its meaning for humanity and those involved in its production was briefly contemplated, revealing the variety of levels of importance within ‘fashion’ and ‘Fashion’, and the part they play in our own lives, and the lives of others.
In conclusion then, it appears that a disagreement about a pair of Paul Smith shoes is not quite as trivial as at first it may seem. Human activity is rarely, if ever, simple, and the servicing of one of humanity’s most basic needs is no less simple than any other social behaviour. A dismissal of the aesthetics of attire as trivial is to leave oneself with a vast and unnecessary blind spot when examining the human species.
It has been a delightful pleasure to have held forth on a subject which I only really began to explore in any great depth following our conversations, and as such I have found it a vastly illuminating process. I have never, nor will ever, consider attire to be chief among my priorities. However, I recognise that it is a subject which deserves time, consideration, and contemplation, both in the abstract and the physical. My key personal concern is not necessarily what I wear, but why I wear it. Hence my pleasure in wearing a flat cap, not only because of functional or aesthetic considerations, but because of the feeling of kinship that comes with the knowledge that my father wears one, just as his father did, and his father before him. Hence, also, my pleasure in wearing a pair of trainers that are not only comfortable, functional, and aesthetically pleasing, but also designed with pleasure by a tailor and fellow man of ideas from Nottingham, named Paul Smith.
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