:: Electric Psychedelic Pussycat Swinger's Club ::

:: Sunday, August 01, 2004 ::

post-cold war fashion

Oh, how I long for the days of Kruschev and John F., or, Gorby and The Big Gipper, when all we had to fear was the escalation of tensions to nuclear proportions and not the escalation of prices in blue jeans to astronomical proportions.

I find it ironic that we once enjoyed the envy of many non-western countries in being able to buy a pair of 501's at a fair price. The dismay felt by those less fortunate, particularly those behind the Iron Curtain and in the Soviet blocs, is liken to the angst of girls who never got asked to their senior prom - on the outside looking in.

Back then, jeans were a symbol of' western decadence' to those on the outside and were very hard to get. The youth wanted their blue jeans and rock 'n roll. Nowadays the situation has changed. Instead of the line being drawn between those with jeans and without, the separation is between those who can afford $170 designer jeans and those who cannot.

One hundred and seventy dollars. FOR A PAIR OF JEANS?!

I mean, didn't jeans represent (historically at least) the original themes emphasized by its inventors - the frontier movement, hard work, and utilitarianism? Even among the more recent images that are conjured by jeans are that of the rebel, youth vs. age, and casualness. Since when did paying nearly $200 for jeans represent utilitarianism? How did paying nearly half a month's rent in most cities for stone-washed cotton equate to being a rebel?

It's all enough to make you wish communism (well, at least the ideology of socialism) had won.

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