The Perfect Gentleman Issue 1 - March 2016 | Page 6

STYLISH GENTLEMAN

FASHION
VS

STYLE
by James Marwood
Coco Chanel once said that while “Fashion
fades, only style remains the same”. This is true.
Whilst fast fashion brands like Zara change their
stocks fortnightly, the basic principles of men's
style remain unchanged from their birth in the
18th and 19th centuries.
By contrast, fashion is based on novelty and
driving sales. Fashion salespeople do not care if
*you* look good in something, or if it is in
proportion to your body. Nor do ‘This season’s
colours’ take account of your own tones. Rather
they have a product to sell, and they’ll ram it
down your throat whether you want it or not.
Part of this is the difficulty of protecting
clothing designs from copying. Unlike other
products, clothing designs cannot be
copyrighted. This makes it difficult for brands to
build a unique and recognisable product. Logos,
however can be. This is why we see simple
t-shirts being sold for high prices, on the basis of
a logo. To quote Macklemore this is “Being
swindled by a business”.

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To support this fast rotation of clothes, some
major retailers have worked hard to lower the
price of items. At the opposite end of the fashion
market to the £90 t-shirts we find clothes so
cheap as to be disposable. It seems easy to wear
them a couple of times, and then donate them to
a charity shop or goodwill. All very good.
Perhaps not, according to Andrew Brooks, a
lecturer in Development Geography at London’s
Kings College. In his book Clothing Poverty he
shows that only 30% of the clothing donated to
such shops ends up on display. The poorer
quality, fast fashion items are instead sold on to
textile agents and sold for low prices in
developing countries. For these countries,
primarily in sub-saharan Africa, this has
decimated local clothing industries. Nigeria,
Ghana and Zambia are among those he
describes as particularly affected.
Perhaps not, according to Andrew Brooks, a
lecturer in Development Geography at London’s
Kings College. In his book Clothing Poverty,