Fashion And Its Advantages & Disadvantages

A particular make, a shape, a style, or a pattern followed by most of the people may be called a fashion. It includes clothing, hairstyles furniture literature, jewellery and many other things.

“Style is the man, “claims Sainte-Beuve, one of Matthew Arnold’s heroes.

The above cited quote is one of Matthew Arnold’s intellectual stances. Some people believe that life is not worth-living without fashion. Everybody wants to appear fashionable and stylish, and he spends lots of money on his hairstyle, beauty products, dress designing and shoes. Fashions go on changing. One fashion that is in today may be outdated tomorrow. Fashions have been in the world since the beginning of human civilization. The fashion industry is not a new thing in today’s world. Thousands and millions of people depend upon changing passions for their livelihood.

“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love”. (Johann Wolfgang)

Fashions usually take their origin in the west. In Pakistan also, there are parties and social gatherings in which people try to outdo one another by their fashions and styles. From the west, these fashions reach the third-world countries. By the time people of the poor countries adopt these fashions, the westerns discard them and move on to the others, and thus the fashion industry goes on flourishing. Media has also contributed a lot towards fashions and fads. There are fashion shows, beauty contests and dress designing competitions in the form of catwalk shows. TV dramas especially soap serials on different channels like Star Plus. Movies and music shows have also triggered the fashion craze among the different classes of people which is a negative trend.

Fashions and styles make us look attractive and different from other people but, according to Aldous Huxley, it is our inner-self or soul that makes us beautiful or ugly. If we are bored, depressed or morally decayed, our outward appearance will do nothing but reflect our soul. It is actually the purity and beauty of our soul that makes our skin glow and our eyes shine. Fashions are then only a disguise or a cover that hides our reality and make us look attractive outwardly.

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months”. (Oscar Wilde)

The craze of fashions is mostly found among women and youngsters. A visit to the college of today would indeed be an interesting experiment for those who wish to know something about the influence of fashion on men. Boys, as well as girls, spend much of their time on the toilet. Female students go two steps further. Fashion they regard as their special right. Girls have a natural and inborn love of pretty dresses and in college, they get a real opportunity. Girls spend a great deal of their money on powder, cream and lipsticks. Scents and perfumes are used by these Juilets to excite and stir their Romeos. Evidently, such boys and girls do not take their studies seriously. They may forget the formulas of mathematics but they don’t forget the names of the films. It is quite natural with women to beautify themselves. They should, however, give more importance to the purity of their soul than to their outward appearance. Beauty products, parlours, costly costumes and dandy shoes will not add to our attractiveness as much as do our peace of mind, contentment of our soul and spiritual happiness.

We should not, therefore, imitate the westerns or other people because the western culture and civilization are hollow and the people there are spiritually dead. I recall here the saying by a famous writer who says we may have a fashion of our own if we retain our naturalness, innocence, and purity of heart and soul.