Fashion Schizophrenia

Oj, nu får jag lite smått ångest för att det var så länge sedan jag bloggade och många dagar att sammanfatta. Jag avslutade med att berätta kort om förra tisdagen. Delar upp inläggen/dagarna lite så det inte blir en enda stor smörja. Under resten av förra tisdagen och onsdagen jobbade jag på mitt första uppdrag för tidningen. Jag hade egentligen deadline till förra fredagen, men eftersom Camilla kom hit på torsdag lunch så ville jag vara färdigjobbad med den då. Krönika har det engelska arbetsnamnet Fashion Schizophrenia och publicerades igår i pappers- och nätupplagan! Jag är nöjd inte bara med texten utan att här är jag i andras ögon halvestnisk och journalist. Jag struntar i att modifiera den sanningen ;)

FASHION SCHIZOPHRENIA

If I had grown up in Estonia during the 1990´s and up until now I think I would still be in a state of shock. In shock because of how fast the urban parts of Estonia have developed materialistically over the recent years. When I was younger I used to spend my summer vacations with relatives in Tallinn. I can still remember the grocery store’s grey, tiled floors, the half empty meat and fish counters, the smell of dust, sourdough bread and pickles. Today when I go to the store I still look for that smell but what surrounds me instead is the scent of fresh-baked pizza, exotic fruits and vegetables, glistering pieces of red meat and cakes that look like artwork. But still, while old rotting wooden houses are left behind to the ghosts, old ladies get robbed outside their apartments because of poor street lightning and the students, the future of Estonia, have to cramp up in small student corridors like sewer rats, it seems to me that Hugo Boss and Emporio Armani entered Tallinn way too soon.

When did all this happen?

Just by looking at how Estonians dress you can tell that this kind of modernisation conflict exists. There seem to be three types of wardrobes. Starting at the top there are women who dress like they were born in a fashion house and support the killing of innocent animals. They are often loud and even if it would be three meters of snow outside they would still insist on wearing lacquer stilettos.
Next up are the sweet and natural, but curious Estonian girls who can’t decide weather to go mad with their credit card or to be reactionary and subscribe to grandmothers knitting for the rest of their lives. The really great thing about this schizophrenia is that nobody looks the same. Even though this might not always be a conscious choice of style, these girls express a very strong feeling of individualism that is very unusual in countries that are sensitive to trends. Like Sweden, where I come from, people see themselves as modern and adaptive of everything that’s new. Sadly this way of thinking makes everybody dress in a very conform way, saying that people are slaves to superficiality and can’t think by themselves.
Last but not least you can find people who just wear clothes only because wearing animal skin does not count as civilized any longer. Scientists speculate that there is life on other planets than the earth, probably in form of bacteria. But that is not true. You will find them here in flesh and bone, walking around in Tallinn. They care just as little about clothes as an Estonian would about a drowning Russian.

I don’t mean to leave all men out of this observation. It’s just hard to see that Russian guys who still have got the leather jacket and jump suite thing going on, have anything to do with fashion. They are not even making people turn in their graves. Humanity needs them to make sure that we don’t forget about the 80´s.