Some Tangled Thoughts, regarding Haute Couture, Liturgy, and My Skinflintedness

Very interesting.
Turning to my shallowest obsession (and oh, the competition it has! even my worthwhile interests are approached with the dilettante's outlook, and my saucer-like depth of knowledge is woeful -- talk a good game, throw in a few buzz words, and refer people to treatises one has only skimmed, and URLs with links on has never followed, to bolster half-remembered, and quarter-comprehended concepts -- I ought finish a few things, no?)
Anyway, back to the subject that should allow me to turn a more indulgent eye on Himself's fascination with the Ratpack -- "You think this is really 'low rent,' of me don't you?" he asked once, and I could truthfully respond, not with the pipes Sammy had -- fashion.

Thoughtful piece by Cathy Horyn in the NYTimes, about Paris fashion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/fashion/05COUTURE.html?ref=fashion

What caught my attention was neither description nor review of the costumes shown by Messrs. Galliano, Lagerfeld, et al. (although a companion slide show, focusing mainly on the LaCroix atelier intrigued me -- serious question now, has beading ever been employed in liturgical vestments? Hard as it may perhaps be to think this way, consider beaded garments divorced from the context of beauty pageants, disco and drag queens; it is a splendid medium, not inherently feminine or effeminate -- think American Indian -- labor intensive but not otherwise expensive, remarkably flexible both literally and aesthetically, wonderfully durable.... but I digress.)

No, what interested me was the almost throw-away acknowledgement of what couture (and really therefore, all of fashion, and further all western attitudes toward beauty, and ultimately our approach to the aesthetics of virtually everything.) accomplishes.

"[E]veryone knows that couture is an elaborate marketing tool. Profit is beside the point and given that Dior can spend $2 million on a show — before you add gypsies, fire eaters and caterers — it isn’t even remotely attainable."

The Big Question, what's in it for me? governs all the World's activities.
(And this reality is what makes the Church so deeply counter-cultural -- because our mission should be to ask instead, what's in it for God?)
Beauty is so seldom created for its own sake, even in the rarefied milieu of Couture that seems to be about beauty -- no, if the House of Dior under that madman creates the most exquisite garment imaginable, (and it does sometimes -- literally breathtaking, items that make one gasp aloud to gaze upon them,) its value is really in how much expensive brandy the resulting attention will cause to be sold.

I know many look down their noses at High Fashion as Art, but no one who has seen, for instance, the exhibits at the MMA can do so.

It IS Art, or can be, from it's conception to its execution to its effect on the beholder.

And the motives of its creators are no less pure than that of many other artists who might seem to labor for pure aesthetics, or for the glory of the Almighty.

If not for perks, than for vanity...

Only the mad (and a John Galliano, for instance, is not really insane,) labor with no thought but the artistic end.
But my point, and I do have one, is that while one cannot fault, or rather one cannot stop the World from having money, money and ever more money as its one and only goal WE DON'T HAVE TO PLAY ALONG.
We don't have to buy into the Liturgical Industrial complex, for instance.

There was another piece in the Style pages on the faux frugality of Green Chic that points to a lot of the same conclusions drawn from Horyn's piece.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/fashion/01green.html?ref=fashion&pagewanted=all

A few, if you'll excuse the expression, money quotes:
The issue of green shopping is highlighting a division in the environmental movement: “the old-school environmentalism of self-abnegation versus this camp of buying your way into heaven,” said Chip Giller... “there is more concern growing within the traditional camp about the Cosmo-izing of the green movement — ‘55 great ways to look eco-sexy,’ ” he said. “Among traditional greens, there is concern that too much of the population thinks there’s an easy way out.”
“green is the new black,” ...is, a fashion trend, ... “eco-narcissism.”
Paul Hawken...said the current boom in earth-friendly products offers a false promise. “Green consumerism is an oxymoronic phrase,” he said. He blamed the news media and marketers for turning environmentalism into fashion and distracting from serious issues.
“We turn toward the consumption part because that’s where the money is,” .... So you get these anomalies like 10,000-foot ‘green’ homes being built by a hedge fund manager in Aspen. Or ‘green’ fashion shows. Fashion is the deliberate inculcation of obsolescence.”

Now. where does that leave me and my yen for a completely unnecessary off-white shrug?

Well, I used the word frugality advisedly; I did not mean stinginess, my own ugly feature (though the two are related, which is why I can lie to myself so successfully.)

I mean frugality that is of a piece with the good stewardship that we are called to as Catholic Christians.

I think a great deal of what has gone wrong in the Church liturgically over the past 40 years, (and NO, I am not saying all was rosy before, merely that we found a new and pretty widespread way to be awful,) has to do with a consumerist mindset that is antithetical to frugality and stewardship.

Yes, I agree with Fr X who insists that much of the degradation was agenda-driven by People In Positions Of Authority In The Church Who Do Not Believe What The Church Holds To Be True. ( Is Pipoaitcwdnbwtchtbt too long for an anacronym? Ah well, CINO will have to do....)

But most of us were Useful Idiots: the prosperous 1st world, with our love of throwing money at situations, our feckless squandering of treasures and obsessively chasing after the deliberately disposable.

Oh.
Look.
All this actually DID relate.

And in the spirit of Chesterton, what's wrong with the Church/World/my Marriage?
I am.

(Yes, I sometimes believe I can make it all better by just reading the right book.... that I am willing to buy it secondhand only mitigates my guilt slightly.)

Now, on a different but related topic -- can we get the anti-life pseudo-Malthusians to admit that large families actually leave a smaller footprint?