The Fabulous Forager

Men.style.com’s Fall 2007 Trend Reports includes—and I swear to God, I am not making this up—a feature called “Apocalypse Soon.” Apparently, post-apocalypticism is all the rage in New York City. Found via Penny Scout, who graces page 12 of the feature.

Is anyone else reminded of these little gems from Diesel’s Spring/Summer ‘07 collection? Of course, even Diesel was beaten by BMW, who re-imagined New York as a desert, London as a jungle, and Paris as tundra in a series of 2004 advertisements entitled “Mix your playgrounds.”

It would seem that the changing climate has at least gotten people’s attention. But what kind of attention is this? The worlds of fashion and advertising are not exactly known for their sensitivity, and though Diesel claimed that they were trying to shock people into paying attention to a real issue, would that really work for anyone? As the Washington Post pointed out,

The funny thing about the “Global Warming Ready” campaign is that Diesel gets to have it both ways. Its arch attitude represents the triumph of cleverness over meaning, of sarcasm over what’s sacred. It speaks to a culture of parody, in which the meta-news is invoked before the actual news is digested. (Or, as in the recent death of Anna Nicole Smith, the jokes begin before the body grows cold.) The photographic landscapes of Diesel’s print campaign are surreal, but certain conventions of the fashion world are secure: The models are still svelte, and stylishness still triumphs over all. You can’t be too well-dressed for the apocalypse.

In the spring and summer of 2001, “‘terrorist chic’ coursed merrily through the malls of America. The fashion flock fell deeply for camouflage prints and ammo belts. Hipsters slipped into combat boots and strapped on messenger bags, bandolier-style.” This fashion died earlier than expected when, on September 11th, terrorism and militarism suddenly became real to the sheltered, affluent New Yorkers responsible for setting the trends. Post-9/11 paranoia and the expanding government had an impact on the hipster-drenched Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. As Scissor Sisters’ Ana Matronic said in a 2002 New York Magazine article, “Williamsburg definitely has that feeling of ‘partying before the apocalypse.’ There’s a sense of reckless abandonment, with this sort of sinister undercurrent of war and destruction—partying while Big Brother takes a nap.” As Williamsburg takes pride in being on the cutting edge of culture, it seems inevitable that similar sentiments would have moved up into high fashion, especially given the mainstreaming of environmental issues like global warming.

Our generation faces a terrifying, uncertain future, and let’s face it, we’ve never been prepared for anything like it. We didn’t have a Great Depression or a Great War to teach us how to band together and make due. As Tyler Durden put it (that’s right, two posts in and already I’m quoting Fight Club), “Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives.” The generation that will have to deal with the aftermath of global warming, peak oil, mass extinction, and ultimately, the collapse of civilization, has spent its entire existence being told what to think, want, buy, by ad agencies, its only mode of rebellion being irony. Certainly, resistance has been futile for some time now—just look at what happened to the hippies.

So this is the best we can come up with: partying before the apocalypse, imagining ourselves stretched out on brand-new beaches after the apocalypse, and envisioning the desert canyons of a future New York City as a “playground” for our BMWs. It’s an ironic nod to our very real fearful realization that we’ll have to give up our lavish, consumerist lifestyles? And you know what? I don’t have a problem with that. I think it really does reflect genuine concern, or at least as much genuine concern as my generation is capable of mustering. The only thing left to do now is spread the word that resistance isn’t futile, and you can do more to create a better world than joke bitterly about the one we have now.