Concrete Playground

This Wednesday night, the Australian Centre for Photography on fashion-happy Oxford Street hosts Tea with the Fashionistas, a panel event populated by industry insiders poised to debate the eternal question: does fashion merely play into our consumer cravings, or does it represent a more significant role? Panellists include photographers, designers and fashionistas and before you let them do all the deciding, consider both sides of the argument.

For the consumer-driven fashion market side, we have money-driven crimes of fashion like the seriously questionable Texas Tuxedo from Levis', which in its two tones of denim demonstrates all that is wrong with too much of a good thing; the blatantly populist Material Girl range from the inimitable Mads and her pre-pubescent daughter Lourdes, fronted by Gossip Girl star and serial-badass Taylor Momsen, which seems all the more about celebrity than clothes. And if you're not convinced that current fashion reeks of consumerism, think CanCan by Paris, Fantasy by Britney and Lovely by Sarah Jessica, the tritely-named troupe of celebrity fragrances.

However, you may believe fashion is more than a fleeting trend, the view I think the panel may well be advocating at TWF. Cementing your argument in this corner is the continuing ability of fashion to transgress borders (follow pyjamas as they drift from the East's opium dens via Coco Chanel in the West, then onto the Antipodes to become the staple of an Australian label), eras and classes (those low-slung panted, lace-less shoed boys you see roaming the streets mean more than they seem, with fashion borrowed from inmates of the US prison system). Also, the fact that fashion is the sole creative outlet engaged with by everyone, everyday in some way, and the close link between fashion and the world’s political history — if lace-makers were being killed in Revolutionary France for their product’s association with the royalist ancient regime, how then can fashion be meaningless to society?

So, armed with all you need to know to make an informed decision, make haste to ACP. Seats may sell out and they make no promises for latecomers.

Image: After Guy, The Birthday Suit 2009