Great gray world
I was taking a walk today when I saw a beautiful dress through the glass of a shop. It had an amazing design, and it was clearly made with recycled fabrics. And the colors… Misfits green mixed with black, and a Sex Pistols yellow.
While observing this striking piece — because it felt more like a piece of art than a dress — I remembered a video of a woman, an influencer probably, talking about how people nowadays mostly wear white, black, and neutral tones. She argued that we are becoming neutral in a way: we don’t dress in colors anymore. That got me thinking: is that really the situation? That we were told to be neutral?
From my perspective, what’s happening is not truly bad. Many people might be realizing how silly it is to spend thousands on dresses you can only wear once, or clothes that are difficult to combine. Like it happens to me: I want to be comfortable, and I want most of my clothes to match easily, without too much effort, and even less to use things we can only wear once, because things also cost money, and the economy… well, we all know it is not working as well for the middle class as it used to.
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As I was thinking about this, I started imagining what it would be like to be a super-rich person, and what they are doing right now. I imagine this couple. Are they going to a party? -Come on, darling, hurry up!- an old woman wearing stunning clothes and very expensive jewelry. I wonder: who are these people? And why do they need all these things? Is it really a matter of taste? Sounds more like trying to impress others -Oh, look at me in my Christian Dior amazing dress- going to have a very expensive dinner in the size of what I’d call a dessert. Four different plates in one dinner, all diminutive, so you can keep them coming, one after another, like a ritual. But why do they have this kind of food, while we eat just one or two different things, and many times in a bit of a hurry, because, of course, we work?
Yes, I like to dress nicely too, but nicely in a minimalistic way, because I’d never understand the point of the amount of waste, the insane amounts of money also for things that last the same for thousands in a currency while others cost only two digits. Not to mention the big amount of poverty in the world. I mean, what on earth is going on today with the rich? What’s going on with the world…?
And the “don’t show yourself doing charity” thing -well, I don’t think it is bad if needed. And there are many ways of giving good examples with it. Of course, if the richest don’t do charity as a kind of normal thing (goverments should thake care of this tho), why would you? I’m starting to think that there is actually a connection among all of these things.
It’s not about giving for free, but come on. There are also many of the rich who didn’t do anything to get their initial capital — they were born with that money. I keep losing my point because my head is giving me so many options, so many questions, but the principal idea, like I said from the beginning, is that people are not only losing colors; they are actually not getting enough money to risk buying a bunch of colors they cannot even match. And many people get them from very poor countries’ production. Recently, there was a very crazy thing happening with China and expensive label brands — remember? Anyway…
To close this matter, there is a Marilyn Manson song I would like to quote, and I also recommend everyone reading this to go listen to it. It says:
“Cause it’s a great big white world
and we are drained of our colors
we used to love ourselves
we used to love one another”.
The song is Great Big White World from the album Mechanical Animals (1997). Hope you like it too. It’s such a beautiful piece, just like that dress. And yes, we will talk about the lack of love in another post :)
