02. The Fabric of Film - Does the World Really Get Better When We Shop? Fashion as a Vice in Confessions of a Shopaholic.
"Because when I shop, the world gets better, and the world is better, but then it’s not, and I need to do it again."
Rebecca Bloomwood in Confessions of a Shopaholic 2009
Confessions of a Shopaholic feels like laying in the lap of your future self, being stroked on the head and told that everything will be okay - at least for those who have ever felt as though they can never think as fast as they spend. However this is not before it consumes them with the debilitating dread that they, along with shopaholic Rebecca Bloomwood, are preordained to hit rock-bottom, with only the forbidden fruits of their binge spending and credit card bills to keep them company. Rebecca’s style is intrinsic to the development of her character, and the clothes that she wears and sees are harmonious with her stages of obsession.
Rebecca Bloomwood is a journalist in the pursuit of one final goal - happiness. She believes that this lies in a career in fashion with Alette Magazine, but her conscious mind fails to alert her of the more pressing concerns in her life - she is inundated with debt induced by her compulsive need to shop. In her bedroom she is surrounded by cascading racks of designer clothing, lace, silk, every holy grail the 2009 metropolitan woman could possibly desire - chunky heeled shoes, business casual dresses and various beaded articles of every type of clothing - however leaving the confines of this paradise even to steal a glance at the letterbox and the pink illusion is shattered by the flood of last notices and unpaid bills.
As she takes her slow descent into fashion-induced ruin, it feels congruous to side with Rebecca, to support her every lie and wrong-doing. In her first appearance on screen she wears pink fur trim boots, orange gloves, a purple metallic puffer jacket and a logo-embellished Gucci Joy Boston bag - it is already abundantly clear that her style is defined by excess. As she walks by the notorious storefronts of New York, the inanimate mannequins are imbued with the life-force of her shopaholic mind and begin to communicate with her. They whisper sweet nothings of a life in their shoes, adorned in fine fabrics, constantly gazed upon with envy by the public. Although coated in a lacquer of saturated colours and designer garments here the notion of fashion here becomes somewhat sinister; Rebecca’s urge to possess beautiful clothes has evolved to a hallucinatory stage where her personality has split into two to reinforce her own consumer impulse. The blanched figures of the mannequins serve as a blank canvas for Rebecca to project her agenda onto; figures that ordinarily serve as a silhouette to drape the silvery fabrics of luxury clothing metamorphose into a breeding ground for obsession.
As she battles her spending addiction, Rebecca joins a shopaholics anonymous support group where her group leader donates two of Bloomwood’s freshly purchased dresses to a second-hand store - a hot pink rainbow taffeta-gilded bridesmaid dress for her best friend Suze’s (Krysten Ritter) wedding and a purple, ruffled minidress from Bendel’s . It is at this point that Rebecca is given an ultimatum - buy back the garish bridesmaid dress or the Bendel’s dress for her television appearance so that she may embody the height of 2009 fashion in chromatic fabric and a chunky belt. Her choice fits her punishment, and she suffers the loss of her friendship with Suze; her experience shapes her view of fashion and she finds herself valuing the, albeit hideous, bridesmaid dress the most, trading her own clothing with a woman who has procured the dress from the charity store. The over-petticoated gown brings her more good fortune than the Bendel’s dress and serves as a token of her promise of change to Suze.
Rebecca ultimately sells her entire wardrobe in order to pay off her debts in a raucous yard sale, calling out to the shopaholic women of New York to pour through the doors and buy her extensive collection. However, at this conclusive moment in the film the question begins to arise of whether the clutches of fashion are more cyclical than final; Rebecca Bloomwood is fast-tracked to her happy ending, she finds love, success and pays her dues but what of the shopaholic stories that are not followed? What of the other fashion-obsessed women who stood beside Rebecca in lines for sample sales, physically fought with her for a pair of Pucci knee high boots, and likely used their own credit cards to buy her clothes in her yard sale? Rebecca Bloomwood’s trajectory is a cautionary tale of how comfortable we have all become flying too close to the sun when it comes to fashion. The women who exist in the circle of fashion around Rebecca are still on the warpath to self destruction, and serve as a reminder of what a relationship with fashion should not look like. The plight of the fashion shopaholic has only become more apparent and socially acceptable with the rise of overconsumption and fast fashion - perhaps we are not meant to buy every item we want, and the sense of entitlement towards this idea is meandering us along a path to the ruin of fashion as we know it.
Confessions of a Shopaholic is a reminder of what fashion should mean; beautiful things mean nothing if the price is our own essence. I have seen the film at least 50 times, and each time it grounds me in the knowledge that the subconscious is penetrable, and that the urge to buy that dress in the window is at times just the mannequins talking.
Written by Maaya Karrupiah, Column Writer
Edited by Daisy Packwood, Fashion Editor
Commentaires