A Spiritual Approach to Connecting With Fashion

Something that has been brought to my attention, that I would have never noticed otherwise (and an example of how societal programming works), is that models no longer smile in advertisements. I even saw an image of a scowling child for a hospital campaign in the mall the other week, an appeal to "Join the fight". It is an age of anger, confusion, uncertainty, and bullying, and this is now being expressed, or possibly perpetrated, in fashion advertising. While the public might have been growing tired of the images of fake smiles and strange enthusiasm of people in posters, this new direction is indicative of even more strange times to come. A time of complete falseness - a new breed of "false advertising". In my research I found studies have shown that while broad smiles show friendliness, they also depict less competency.  One article explains that in fashion or retail, it's okay to have less competency, whereas for a medical advertisement, it's more ...

"They say couture is dead. Maybe for them, but not for us." - Karl Lagerfeld I've been meditating on the concept of impermanence, on progress, on endings and beginnings. A big reason has been inspired by a challenge presented: change now or be stifled. After personally feeling the crunch from retail jobs being taken over by computers (such as cashiers being  replaced with kiosks , live agents with  chatboxes  and sales associates with online shopping ), I have woken up to the fact that my job too might be on thin ice. But I recall what my yoga teacher said to us well over a decade ago, before the 2008 recession and before a time when our communities really started to feel the heat of job performance being outdone by AI - Figure out what it is that you can bring to a job, that a computer can't. Fortunately I have the privilege of in fact being in a position to offer a service that a machine can't, and that is establishing human connection by selling somethi...