Today’s modern generation are becoming fashionistas. Media has also played a significant role in reaching out to the target audience with latest fashion trends and the younger generation is quick to adopt the trend very quickly. Internet, movies and TV seems to be selling the idea of what it means to be cool. At the same time, what goes viral is quite unpredictable. Here is a student’s perspective of what defines fashion.

What is your Fashion Statement?

“UNIFORM is the best clothing in this world because it doesn’t subscribe to the well-established notions of class, standards, status, boundaries but only RESPECT”

These days as fashion stores take their positions and manufacturing units increase rapidly without a sense of direction, youngsters are becoming more desperate with only one intention which is to acquire what is out there. They crave to taste the latest fashion trends from the new fashion stores. It is absurd and astonishing to see that even children are caught up in it. The times when children used to play marbles and Barbie dolls are being replaced by playing with fashion trends. Teenagers are savvy for branded clothes and shoes even without a single knowledge about the background of the brand, the owner or CEO, the company’s policy of the brand or the causes of extreme fashion consciousness. It is truly said by Alessandro Michele, “Fashion is the most beautiful illusion you can have”.

Numerous fashions has been transformed and adopted as a culture by the youngsters. Colouring hair is the most common adoption. I am not against hair dyeing but many times instead of adding beauty to the concerned person, the appearance becomes a mighty disaster. Keren Dominguez, PharD, Certified Specialist in Poison information Found that even when hair dyes are used as directed, harmful health effects are possible. Up to 25 different ingredients in hair dyes can cause harmful skin effects. Contact with skin can cause irritation including redness, sores, itching, and burning. Occasionally allergic reactions occur and involve swelling of the face and neck that causes difficulty in breathing. These toxic effects can occur immediately or up to a day after contact with the skin.

Some youngsters who are obsessed with fashions, change their clothes in a day more than the times they flip pages of their book. They are so conscious about their looks, up to the extent of making other people uncomfortable. There are numerous situations where clothes have built boundaries among friends, among countries and cultures. We are on a verge of mass cultural suicide.

Fashion! The thing which has awakened the world into another standard of living, of being an individual, the thing which is supposed to make our lives more beautiful has ironically turned us upside down. Any comfortable outfit that you and I wear is a style or fashion. Beauty lies where confidence is. Many times we use fashionable clothes and make up as a mask of confidence and once those clothes are off, the confidence disappears as well. According to how I see, fashion is not imitating what comes and goes but instead, simplicity is a fashion in itself. It is funny how their confidence is like Kohima’s weather. Unpredictable.
The fluctuation of confidence and happiness is merely based on the branded clothes.
The other day a chubby beautiful girl, shared me that she is skipping dinner and snacks to make herself physically fit. It saddens me to realise that we have come so far as to starve ourselves for beauty and I pray that she is reading my dutiful article, because beauty lies where confidence is.

And now even smoking accompanies fashion. Like a cup needs a spoon it is as if branded clothes need cigarettes for some people. We can see in many Pop music videos that cigarettes, drinks and many other unmentionable things are used as if it is a mandatory ritual. I am not against their songs either. I listen, and it’s refreshing. It can also be motivating sometimes. But I am against the way they project unsubstantial culture. How our youngsters easily adopt all these is still a mystery.
Coming to gadgets as a part of fashion, I see iPhone in mirrors more than in any other places.
Without electricity we are the living-dead and without gadgets we are paralysed. I believe that fashion changes according to the season but our youngsters does not realise the ravages made by these fleeting seasons.

They say, “we are born free, we aren’t born to be ruled by, and we are our own master.’
But it seems like we are ruled by the false notion of beauty. Even a piece of cloth symbolizes the slavery that we are subjected to. Beauty is to be adorned without costing us dearly and definitely not ruled by it. In contemporary times, the true meaning of beauty is disseminated, and we return back lost in the process of finding it.
There is nothing more beautiful than a person in his/her most natural form.

Degree of Thought is a weekly community column initiated by Tetso College in partnership with The Morung Express. Degree of Thought will delve into the social, cultural, political and educational issues around us. The views expressed here do not reflect the opinion of the institution. Tetso College is a NAAC Accredited UGC recognised Commerce and Arts College. The editors are Dr Hewasa Lorin, Dr. Aniruddha Babar, Noyingbeni T. Erui, Meren and Kvulo Lorin.
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