Is Consumption Still A Virtue?

This is the text of a letter I sent to an edtior at Vogue Magazine

Ms. Sally Singer
Fashion News and Features Director
Vogue Magazine
4 Times Square12th Floor
New York, NY10036-6518

Dear Ms Singer:

I listened with great interest your interview with Ari Shapiro that aired on Morning Edition on Thursday 19 February 2009 on my local National Public Radio station, WBEZ.
I thought the interview was very worth listening to until you made the following statement:

Fashion is an enormously important industry, not just in New York City, but across the country. And there are a lot of people in America who make clothes, who sell clothes, and we want to keep those people working. Not shopping is not a moral act at this time. So many people think that their frugality is somehow a new moral front. Now that might be true if they were kind of excessive and bizarre in the years before. But when people don’t shop, other people lose their jobs. That’s a fact.

I have to admit that I was absolutely appalled by this comment. Not only does it show a marked misunderstanding of where the clothes that most people come from but also does a disservice to those people who are attempting to spend less in these hard economic times.
You above all must realize that the clothes that most people wear everyday are not made in the United States. They are cut and sewn together in countries such as India, China and Indonesia where labor is much cheaper.

Statements like yours may work well in the design houses of Paris, the runways of New York Fashion Week or the shops on Rodeo Drive but fall absolutely flat in Middle America, the so-called flyover states. I also feel that your statement continues to perpetuate an image of your industry as trivial and in no way connected to the lives of everyday Americans, many of who are struggling to stay in their homes. You statement also sends a message that the rest of the American population in some way owes people in the fashion industry a living. Nothing could be further from the truth. American workers, whether in the office or factory floor, must prove their value to their respective employers every day. Maybe it’s time that the fashion industry consider doing the same by designing clothes that can be worn by people who may not have a perfect shape and who need clothes that can stand the rigor of everyday use. I’m sorry to say that much of what passes for fashion in this country fails on both accounts.

I would like you to consider what a lack of saving has done to this country. More and more individuals are looking to the government to save them from their economic and financial folly and your statement about not spending not being a moral act continues to propagate the myth that happiness or at least economic salvation can be found in continued conspicuous consumption.

I truly wish more people in your industry would really try to see how most Americans live. I believe you will find the exercise both eye opening and helpful in your work.

Sincerely yours



Eugene Michael Giudice