Features
Dedicated hallower of fashion
Is it all transient glitz and conspicuous consumption, or can our passion for glad rags reflect the creativity of the ultimate Designer? JOANNA JEPSON, Chaplain at the London College of Fashion, plots a course between pulpit and catwalk.
NOT long ago I found some unlikely companions to accompany me through the weekly toil of sermon-writing: the Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse. The DVD Into Great Silence - a nearly three hour-long documentary revealing their life of silent simplicity in work and prayer - runs on loop as I gather my thoughts. I draw comfort and succour from these men because they not only know what is of ultimate worth but have had the guts to go after it, living out what the rich young man of Matthew 19 apparently could not when he went away full of sorrow, unable to take on Jesus’ word and give up all his attachments. Their silent days, months, years are lived to the rhythm of prayer, contemplation and worship - a sacramental symbol before God. Could anything be further away from the voracious consumer-led existence of 21st century western life?
Clothed only in rough habits and sandals, these men have somehow become ascetic signposts for me as I negotiate my way through life in a world that turns on ceaseless desire and the belief that more will satisfy. Their prophetic contentment undergirds me as I try to work out the complexities of what it means to be a parish priest while venturing into pioneering ministry as a chaplain in the fashion industry.
THE CYNICAL VIEW
The irony of my appointment in 2006 wasn’t lost on cynical media commentators:
This weekend, it was revealed that His plan for Joanna has seen her leave her parish to take up a position as chaplain for the London College of Fashion, where she will no doubt be drawn into important debates as to how a benevolent God could permit suffering or the latest Roberto Cavalli collection 1.
One can see that there is more to the business than mere clothes - there’s the cocaine, the parties and the sex for a start - but when Dr Corner [head of LCF] suggests that it is, above all, about feeling good, that spirituality should play its part, she loses me 2
I’ve often found it mildly irritating to be lambasted by a non-Christian for not conforming to their version of Christianity, in much the same way that the London College of Fashion is understandably irritated when outsiders make ignorant and dismissive suggestions about the shallow, gaudy, and profligate nature of the fashion business.
Admittedly for those within elite circles the world of high fashion is an art form doubling as a lavish way of portraying status within society, and it has been so for centuries. However, for most of us our encounter with fashion comes in the more accessible form of glossy, brightly lit shop windows parading mannequins draped in a brand new season’s shapes, colours, fit and form. It is enticing and fascinating and, as Trinny and Susannah have demonstrated, does much to spur women and men on to have greater expectations for life as new clothes leads to new image, new esteem, and new confidence.
FASHION JUNKIES
But here - before we know it - perhaps we find ourselves beginning to probe the underside of fashion. For while it is playful and enthralling, and full of promise fashion reflects a society where it can seem one’s most valuable assets are to be found in physical appearance. We are arguably a country of addicted consumers, hungry for the celebrity idols, who are set up for us to emulate in image and appearance and lifestyle. We are bombarded with suggestive images of what success and happiness look like yet often fail to question whether the new handbag, new diet, or new kitchen is really going to deliver it. We consume a whopping £23 billion worth of clothing a year and yet we remain discontented3.
Fashion is just one of the tools used to keep us in such a state, and our insatiable appetite for that latest dress, pair of shoes (or insert your own latest object of craving), is leading the UK into an unprecedented level of debt. By the end of June 2007 consumer credit was £214 billion4. The blame for consumer addiction may not entirely rest at fashion’s door but its fast-paced strides through the catwalk seasons are certainly failproof ways to keep an enchanted following breathlessly attempting to keep up.
Fashion is a complex entity, a means of communication and a force that influences and impacts us whether we want it to or not. Even if we choose not be influenced by it the act of evading fashion becomes a statement in itself. Yet we can’t get caught in the trap of dismissing it altogether, as some have tried to persuade me, suggesting that it is merely corrupt and vacuous, for to do so is to negate the spiritual vocation of fashion.
Yes, I did just place those words in the same sentence. Fashion is a spiritual vocation. It has to be.
UNFETTERED CREATIVITY
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep […] Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness […] So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them.5
When artists design, create and produce they are moving in the likeness and character of God. Our creativity is a gesture that reflects the spiritual DNA that we inherit from the Creator God. The God whose resemblance we bear. Along with a multitude of other avenues fashion design is a discipline through which human beings can participate in the divine creativity. It is a gift that connects us with God, allowing those in possession of it to feel the pleasure that pours forth from this Uncontainable Creativity. This may cause us to rethink our haranguing of the fashion industry per se and the pejorative labels with which we might too hastily stamp it.
In his book, Silence and Honey Cakes, Rowan Williams refers to the Welsh poet, Islwyn, who said, ‘Everything is consecrated.’ Williams goes on to say, ‘Sometimes we see the sacred and the profane as if they were territories lying side by side. But the image I prefer is more of a layered one. At root everything is consecrated, touched by God… Profanity is what happens when the crust of fantasy hardens over this interwoven, living reality.’ 6
SACRED AND PROFANE
The world of fashion is one which to a large extent cultivates, and indeed invests in, fantasy, and our society is aware of at least some of the corruptions that can ensue: heroine chic and size zero scandals accompany fashion week headlines on an annual basis. Yet by pronouncing a dichotomy between the sacred and profane in the fashion world we lose the opportunity to participate in the divine vocation, and at the same time avoid our duty to preserve it from sacrilege. All this may seem a long way off from most people’s high street experiences but for those at the forefront of the industry there is an increasing sense of the responsibilities inherent to the expression of their creativity.
Many would define the spiritual as, ‘having to do with deep, often religious, feelings and beliefs, including a person’s sense of peace, purpose, connection to others, nature and God or Other’ and if we run with this understanding then it allows space for us to acknowledge the depths to which fashion is rooted in a world hallowed by God. For artists and designers their craft of bringing something of beauty and meaning into being is indeed a way of connecting with an innate and undeniable vocation: a vocation which expresses what it is to be human, created in the image of the Creator God. It is gift to be enjoyed and expressed as part of the creation mandate to steward, develop, and enjoy the world.
Often the students I talk to at the London College of Fashion freely speak in terms of an aspiration to follow through design in order to alter the systems of practice that have detrimentally affected the environment and workers. Together with the London based ‘Centre for Sustainable Fashion’ and ‘Label Behind the Label’, these young designers are forging new patterns of practice with integrity in an industry that has understandably caused consternation from onlookers for decades, if not centuries.
The question is what do we, the consumers, do to take responsibility for our practice?
RESPONSIBLE CONSUMERS
The global trail left by our clothes impacts everything on the supply chain from the raw materials and the farmers who harvest it, to textile processing, garment construction and the frequent exploitation of the labourers who do this, to shipping and final arrival on the high street. And that’s before we get to the disposal stage, where in 2005 the UK alone saw a staggering 1.2 million tons of clothes emptied into landfills. Far from being able to turn one’s back on the excesses of the industry it is incumbent upon us all to redeem the catastrophic global trail it leaves. And this might well mean sacrificing the spend-easy habits facilitated by the likes of Primark!
Future Laboratory’s Brand Personality Register highlights how the pressure from consumers is necessary bringing about concerted effort from the industry to produce clothes ethically. They report, ‘We are seeing a rise in the number of consumers who aim to combine their need for value with conscious consumption. These are the middle path realists, and they are the biggest section of consumers in Britain today: These realists make up a massive 45% of British consumers and represent a newly emerging pragmatic idealism.’ 7
There is no doubt that the insatiable appetite for more has become an epidemic especially since the emergence of bargain fashion from value retailers like Tesco, Primark, George at Asda and Matalan. The impact of this shift in consumer purchasing habits has had an immense impact on the environment not to mention our ability to know when we’ve had enough. The industry responds to consumer demand and uncomfortable though it is I am the only one who can take control of the demands I make.
RECOVERING JOY
Writing in The Times Janice Turner holds a mirror up to these distorted desires, which have enslaved us, as she writes, ‘Debt and obesity are products of the same problem: a modern inability to know when we have consumed enough. Appetites distorted, palates jaded, we eat and spend with joyless greed.’8
Recovering the delight of fashion and its use in expressing something of who I am may well start with a gentle stroll amongst the lilies of the fields instead of the battle ground of the high street sales. When Christ points out those lilies to his disciples he’s making clear that they are simply being what they were created to be, not striving to be anything other. Two thousand years later such a vision strikes to the heart of our restless consumerism. Fashion, clothing, creativity and style are part of the apparatus by which we express who God has made us to be, but the moment we get lost in the wrappings we are in danger of losing sight of that essence, our identity.
Perhaps this is why I hold fast to those monks and their unimaginable freedom. They hold a mirror up, reflecting back at us all that threatens to smother and distort the truth of who we are. And as we try to plot a course somewhere between the catwalk and the monastery, they remind us just how deeply extraordinary a life could be when it’s fashioned by the ultimate Designer.
NOTES
1 Marina Hyde, the Guardian, 18 July 2006
2 Terence Blacker, the Independent, 18 July 2006
3 DEFRA, 287/07, 5 September 2007
4 www.grant-thornton.
co.uk/press_room/
amount_of_uk_consumer_debt_exc.aspx
5 Genesis 1:1-2; 26-28 NRSV
6 Williams, R. Silence and Honey Cakes, Lion: Oxford, 2003, p.111
7 Brand Personality Register, Future Laboratory, October 2007
8 Janice Turner, The Times, 29 December 2007
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