Commodification

This is not my first time taking outfit pictures in a supermarket, although it is the first time I set out to intentionally do so and believe it or not I was inspired by Chanel. In college I worked as a cashier in a convenience store and outfit pictures were quick snaps with a small digital camera--I took some in my shop during a slow shift and friends helped me snap others on late night ice cream cake runs. The convenience store back drop was merely convenient. This time it was also a late night candy run, but with a mission: to get pictures as well to exorcise some of the A/W 2014 thoughts running through my head. Lagerfeld's runways are always the most extravagant--transporting models and guests to icebergs one season and personal art museums the next--but this year his transmuted his space into a Chanel grocery store finding inspiration in the banal, telling a story through the ordinary. In a world where Coco Chanel quotes would near-Biblical reverence to a number of women and Chanel is the couture house, Chanel itself has become a grocery. Is this collection a way of saying "fashion should be present during your most hackneyed tasks" or "true wealth is expressed not in ballgowns but in extreme casual wear of priceless Chanel." I remember an article where Lagerfeld expressed that the only way to wear expensive items is as if they have no value--locked in a vault and only brought out for special occasions rendered the item worthless, it was through wear and casualness that you expressed your ease with the trappings of wealth; that to treat your items as expendable was what made wearing them valuable. Another side to the supermarket gimmick is the idea of fashion as a commodity--dresses are products to be sold by Lagerfeld, what really separates them from bottles of milk or boxes of cereal? Or perhaps the clothes are as necessary as the groceries you buy to nourish yourself and your family. Like I said, so many thoughts are running through my head and in that regard it was an incredibly successful presentation since I don't usually pay that much attention to Chanel and I didn't even like the ripped sweatpants and neon crop tops. So yeah, products.