IS IT FAUX OR FAKE?
by Charlie "Chuck" Odessa

I begin my gripping by taking a snipe at the fashion world. As Hans Christian Anderson began his story, "Once upon a time there lived a vain Emperor whose only worry in life was to dress in elegant clothes changing them almost every hour. He loved showing off to his people.

"Word of the Emperor's refined habits spread over his kingdom and beyond," as the story goes. "Two scoundrels who had heard of the Emperor's vanity decided to take advantage of it. They introduced themselves at the gates of the palace with a scheme in mind."

Fond as I am of using this story to illustrate the gullibility of the masses, we still laugh at the stupidity of the crowd watching with admiration as the Emperor strolls by, choosing to ignore the child pulling on his mother's kimono and saying, "Mama, the Emperor's naked!"

So now let's change the word "Emperor" to "woman;" the word "scoundrels" to "fashion designers," and the words "gates of the palace" to "haute couture," the high fashion establishments around the world. Now I ask you, 'How did you women allow this to happen? Why are we wearing frayed and torn jeans; shrunken, faded t-shirts with Abercrombie and Fitch spelled out across your chest, sporting hairdos that must have been cut with blunt hedge clippers? Why you dress to look like the least common denominator of society instead of dressing to look "nice."

No question about it, clothes do not make u. Yet, there is something in the make up of most of us that keeps us marching to everyone's drummer but our own. This is particularly true in the teenage years. In 1947, Christian Dior revolutionized the fashion industry with what he called "Carolle Line" but women the world over took to it and called it "The New Look." No more Joan Crawford shoulder pads of power. Now it was cinched waist, rounded shoulders and bell skirts. It looked best with ballet slippers -- so thousands of schoolgirls took to wearing thin leather shoes offering no protection from the rock-candy ice and snow left from the blizzard that year.

We all know where designer Dior was coming from. He was lifting the world's newly emancipated woman out of the "manly and depraved look that had emerged from the war," and boosting them into luxurious fabrics. But, where are today's designers coming from? They're coming from us, that's where. Oh, wouldn't we like to spare the time to walk along the coastline, shoes in hand, waves lapping against the bottom of our jeans, sand fraying the thread until the hem comes down? Oh, yes. And those jeans are the most comfortable ones we own so we keep on wearing them. Then along comes Ralph, Calvin, Tommy, even old Levi and Wrangler -- all ready to give us another new look. Spending $200 on our lunch hour is actually cheaper now days than spending a weekend at a beach. And, you can't wear new Fruit-of-the-Loom t-shirts, three for $10 everywhere, with a $200 pair of jeans. So, we run to Abercrombie & Fitch (I have a clock from there -- When did they go into t-shirts?) for a pre-washed, pre-shrunk, sun faded, top. You can also buy them at Hollister's, owned by Abercrombie and Fitch, and if the shirt has a number, it must be "22." Oh, the lures of the life of a beach bum!

It used to be enough for someone to say, "You look like a million bucks." It's not enough anymore to look like you have money. You have to prove it. You must have that designer scoundrel's name on the jeans. When this fashion trend began, Joan Rivers commented that Gloria Vanderbilt got even with the Vanderbilts who turned her into the poor little rich girl by "Putting their name on every ass in America!"

Now, I can't tell you why we follow fashion trends, but I have theories about how those trends began. In order to justify the ends, I've created the means, sort of out of whole cloth, you might say. When Isabel was little, her parents couldn't afford to go to a Beauty Parlor so her mother cut her hair with her sewing shears, and not very trim at that. Now, Isabel owns an exclusive beauty parlor and spa. The customers want clips "just like the ones in the pictures featured in your advertisements." (They mean the ones she took from her family album.) Perhaps she designed Meg Ryan's hairstyle for "You Got Mail."

When Tommy was little, he had to wear his big brother's hand-me-down pants -- always too roomy and never a belt. "I see London, I see France, I see Tommy's underpants," they chanted. Now they buy his baggy, low cut, pants for their own kids -- but only the ones with "Tommy" on the pocket. And they buy special boxers to wear underneath -- for show. I loved polyester for the children when they were little. Rinse in the sink, dry on the rack, ready to wear in 10 minutes without ironing, it was a miracle fabric for the busy mothers of the world. At my house, though, my kids rebel. "Don't you dare make me wear polyester," they yell at me. Soon polyester gave way to a resurgence of cotton as the fabric of choice. I'm sure the steam iron department of General Electric promoted that.

However, since mothers were used to never having to iron again, the wrinkled look came in. Without fanfare, black pants suits were fashionable. Could it be? Were they made of polyester? 'Oh, no, Mom. They are 'microfibre.' No ironing, no snagging, no wrinkles...' No comment. But 60% polyester and 40% polymer is close enough for me. I wonder which child forced to wear polyester in the 70s is designing suits now. And which child who once wore a striped shirt with plaid pants only to be ridiculed, is insisting polka dots, stripes and plaid go together. I insist that they do not! They jar the optic nerve. And red and yellow do not go together either, unless you're Ronald McDonald. Suede has always been a popular fabric and now man can make it every bit as useful as the bald hide of a cow. You can't tell the difference without very close scrutiny and then the only giveaway is a scar the cow might wear after a brush with a barbed wire fence. That's not built into "Ultra Suede." It's cheaper to mass produce the man-made fabric than to skin a cow, raise the nap on the surface of the leather, and bring it to the point of workable cloth. But, do we buy it? No, because it's sold at Walmart, not Neiman-Marcus or Bloomingdale's.

So I ask you, "What is the matter with us? Why can't we see it? Why, I even find myself wondering if the emperor's new clothes come in size 10!