Spend it Like You Have It

In college, I had a girlfriend who, upon learning that she was being overcharged for her apartment, packed her books and chose to sleep for two weeks on a D.C.-area park bench while, in a suburb three metro stops away, her parents kept her bedroom lovingly preserved. She smoked American Spirits, dyed her carpets the same custom shade as her walls, and labeled anything she liked tres chic. Eventually, she broke into my house, and, after draining a twelve-pack of wine coolers and throwing up on the toilet, refused to leave. The fashion industry reminds me of that girl.

Why else would fashion writers be pushing the idea of “Recession chic” at us with such enthusiastic force?

If you haven’t heard already, a “recessionista” is the younger, hipper Skipper doll to Madison Avenue’s designer-clad Barbie, and she isn’t “letting a little thing like falling stock prices and rising gas bills get in the way of [her] wardrobe.” Of course, as the New York Times’ Natasha Singer points out, "Recession chic" is a self-serving message, really just “another in a long line of terms created by fashion writers who have an affinity for the suffix 'chic': hippie chic, Seventies chic, tribal chic, military chic, geek chic, Camilla chic, rehab chic, eco chic.” But that doesn’t stop fashion addicts and magazine writers everywhere from using the term as another way to promote the same old money-saving tips. Short on cash? Spoil yourself with Isaac Mizrahi’s lower-priced line from Target. In fact, according to Andre Leon Talley, Vogue editor-at-large, shopping at Wal-Mart or Sam's Club is one of the most therapeutic things you can do! This scrappy, pleased-to-go-retro tone being taken by writers, editors, and reformed fashionistas in both print and Web is irresponsible, if unsurprising.

Lest you think that the phenomenon is limited to fashion magazines, this post to the LA Times style blog proclaims the discovery of a $450 “‘it’ bag that won't rival your mortgage payment!” And in a recent feature on how to survive the recession, New York magazine listed J.Crew as a lower-priced alternative. While one could argue that these sources are aimed at a higher-income audience, I would argue that they certainly are read by more than the top one percent of taxpayers. I think that with the evolution of our economy, there will also be a corresponding evolution in the way we talk about ourselves and to ourselves.

Additionally, I’m concerned that the ubiquitous, much-hyped “middle class” Baby Boomers (whose salaries are still comparatively impressive) will not comprehend what their aging parents, debt-ridden children, and poorer neighbors have before them until they are affected in a way that is tangible to them. Perhaps this means that falling gas prices are not necessarily a positive thing. Or that the retail collapse is an entirely negative thing. For example: yesterday I found that the price of coffee at my grocery store had risen nearly three dollars a pound. Instead of whining about food prices with my coworkers, I put the coffee back on the shelf, bought three pounds of pork chops on sale, and hid them in the back of my freezer. (Coupons don’t work for me. I only end up with something I don’t really want or need, because it comes with a free manicure set.)

No matter what you call it, shopping will always like the friend who you loved to go out with because she was fun, but who was never really that great for you to begin with--who, if you don't kick her out when the fun is over, will eventually destroy your home out of whimsy. And when you're clicking around the Web at three AM, worried about whether or not you will be layed off, you don't even remember that she's gone. The party's over, Vogue.