Stitched up? God & Clothes

I’m going to tell you a secret. It’s something I’ve never told anyone. I haven’t even told Helen what I’m about to tell you. Prepare yourselves for this revelation; here it comes –





I don’t dress fashionably.

Phew. It’s kind of nice to get that off my chest. I feel I can get on with my life now without having to constantly look over my shoulder to see who’s watching me.


I never have followed fashion– although in the early 90’s fashion caught up with me and my style of dress fitted in roughly with the grunge movement. Dressing fashionably always seemed kind of pointless to me, as long as I have clothes to keep me warm and hide my unmentionables – for your sake as much as mine – that’ll do me.
I don’t get the point of fashion. In April last year I wrote about how I don’t like the financial markets and the seriousness with which they’re reported when the whole system is man-made (it’s on the old MySpace blog site). I view fashion in the same way but with the view that the fashion world is a total folly. The fashion world stands for nothing and achieves nothing. It’s made simply to perpetuate itself and the way it’s treated with superimposed importance belies the fact that it has nothing of value to say or contribute to the world. I have one word to say – floccinaucinihilipilification. Look it up in a dictionary.
That’s alright for me to say. I am and have always been a scruffy little man. But that doesn’t mean I don’t take care in my appearance, I just choose to look different from how the fashionistas dictate.

What you wear demonstrates a part of your personality. It gives you an identity. You can use what you wear to demonstrate your introversion or extroversion, your mood, your tastes in music, your school or profession. So when the fashion police tell us what we should be wearing they’re denying a fundamental part of our humanity. We are all individual; we should all dress as individuals.
However hard we try though, we do make judgements about people by what they’re wearing. We label people according to what they look like and if that label is one we don’t like we often don’t give that person a fair chance to prove themselves. I once turned up to a Church to help lead the service and - despite the fact that I had preached there before - because I was unshaven, scruffy and long-haired the door stewards directed me towards the alcoholics anonymous meeting that was happening in a different room to the service.
Oscar Wilde said, "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” I think I know where he was coming from. The whole idea of changing your wardrobe every 6 months has very limited appeal to me. I do have winter clothes and summer clothes, but that’s for practical reasons – I don’t annually renew what I wear. I have clothes in my wardrobe that I wear quite regularly which I bought in the early 90s - my blog jumper was bought in 1997 and my oldest T-shirt which I wear regularly – although not in public – I got in 1989. And here’s another thing that I think is silly: fashion houses defend their high prices claiming that you’re paying for better quality fabrics and stitching so their clothes will last. I don’t buy expensive clothes and they last longer than the fashion houses would want you to wear things for, so by their argument, they could do things cheaper as it’ll last long enough anyway.


And this is all before we even begin looking beyond the actual clothes on our backs. I think our attitude to our clothes speaks a much about us as what we wear, but it’s a private statement, not one we make to the world. Do we consider whether our clothes have been sweat-shop produced or fairly traded? Do we recycle them when we’re done with them? How much consideration we put into these things demonstrates our attitude to the world around us. As with all our actions as consumers our choices have implications for other people and our planet - implications bigger than whether the colour suits us or if it makes our bums look big.