Fast Fashion

In Narcissa Balenciaga, Promo by Narcissa Balenciaga

Do you know the saying I know it like the palm of my hand?

Yeah, I can’t relate.

Every morning, my hands sport a new detail.

Where the calluses end, the broken skin begins. Too many pricks of a needle to count riddle the tips of my fingers.

I’m lucky if they’re not shriveled from dehydration, once I start working, I don’t get up until the work is finished.

Whether it be blood, sweat, or tears, my DNA is embedded in every garment I create.

This is why I am disgusted whenever I hear the word fast fashion.

Like fast food, it is cheap trash created for the masses without a single thought about the human being who interacts with it.

No thought or care is put behind it, in the best case scenario, it is created by a machine. In the worst case scenario, it is made by a child who has to do the same painstaking process I do without any of the passion.

Regardless of how it’s made, it always uses cheap material that doesn’t look great on anyone except for the models who make it trendy.

Even more insulting is that once shown to the public, they practically start to fall apart with every passing moment.

Trend for one fleeting moment, become irrelevant the next.

Worn today, thrown in a black bag tomorrow. 

My fellow designers scoffed at fast fashion at first, a hollow imitation of us.

The laughing soon stopped when the masses stopped buying their product.

I stayed ahead of the curve, I focused on wardrobes that would last a lifetime, it was expensive but the quality was worth every penny.

While fast fashion followed trends, I set them.

Fast fashion made people blend in, I made them stand out.

I care about what I can do for people, that’s what makes me an artist. Fast fashion only cares about what people can do for them, it makes them imposters.

When you look at art through those lens, can you really call yourself an artist, Jasper?

You don’t care about people, if you did, you would choose a different medium.

Just like fast food, you destroy the human body and just like fast fashion, you give the world trash and call it art.

Just like cheap fabric, a deceased body only has a certain shelf life before it starts falling apart.

I’ll give it to you, it’s striking, sometimes stunning but just like those cheap clothes, it gets thrown in a black bag after the intended audience sees it.

Why don’t you make yourself a true artist?

Learn about people, make something for them not with them.

Make the people stand out, not forgotten for their parts.

You have a beautiful mind, creative yet chaotic, don’t waste it on something that will be forgotten once shock value goes away.

Make something new, make the world remember you, not just your art. Put yourself into the art, not someone else.

Make yourself bleed.

That’s when you can call yourself an artist.