Saturday, January 22, 2011

SHOPPING

shopping Via Senato, Milano by the Sartorialist !!!!


Shopping and watching sports are the worst things I can think of having to do. Shopping for food is unpleasant to me, I sense, because it is an experience pretending to be a community event. After shopping in the markets in Africa it is painfully clear how profoundly disconnected American shoppers are from the fabric of intimacy, the little secrets of relationships between the mineral, plant, animal lives, and the pleasure of touching people in the sun who have labored to bring food from the earth. Trading for food was meant to continue after the hunt or the harvest or the exchange with other tribes with rejoicing, and ceremony. Anything less discredits the relationships that bring food to the table, and removes modern shoppers from the real concepts of exchange, empowerment, enlightenment, and family ties.



Shopping for clothes is equally painful. Without a connection with a person who understands me, who is capable of listening to my story around clothes, or able to discern my spirit and translate it to the art of making clothes? What is left is pretense. Identity is masked, no, it is lost to the tradition of modern clothes making, and purchasing. The buyer, typically, is persuaded to lose his/her name and accept someone else’s name. For many men, and I mean men, not a semblance of a man: men need clothes made by women or men who respect and understand the nuances of manhood, and its expression. Without it what is a man wearing? – Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

 

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