having taste
body positivity and the new diet culture in fashion
dear soul,
*trigger warning: eating disorders
i am like soul food - i am a whole mood. to quote beyonce and enter the topic right away while i am on my third hot chocolate, spiced biscuit and gingerbread treat this week and it’s only tuesday. my first advent time in copenhagen? i am embracing it to the fullest. and for someone who followed diets for more that half of her life and having severe experiences with eating disorders that means a lot. getting rid of the implemented calorie calculator in my head was and is training. my muscle became so strong that i feel now safe enough to talk about it.
as the title already surmises we’re talking fashion today from an angle of food, eye candy, taste and - cause i am holistic style expert duh - how it affects us. just recently i saw a lot of tiktok’s entering my algorithm about the return of heroin-chic due to ozempic and diet culture in general (never really left the room, but ok) while at the same time i was confronted with another phenomenon: café pop-ups, food stylists, food experiences and collaborations from fashion brands with individual chefs, restaurants and snack brands. and THIS got me excited not only because of my regained appetite.
i started to wonder: maybe that’s the way to achieve body positivity in fashion? maybe that’s a way to heal the global wound of treating bodies differently and exclude people from (high) fashion? savoring fashion through the mouth in addition to eyes and skin. treat culture at it’s best if you ask me. a little snack, a little glimpse of prada or jacquemus or whoever right there - easy accessible, achievable and: affordable.
maybe a brand café does not only invite us to experience the brand as a world deeper but feeds our starving souls on a physical level? speaking of body, mind and soul. and if the body feels positive and content, the mind feels at ease and the soul feels at home. the interconnectedness of the three in one experience is not only great marketing but psychology: the more senses are involved in a situation that creates an e-motion (energy in motion thorough an external stimulus) the richer the feeling ( an emotion attached to narratives) - the richer a memory becomes.
speaking of wealth and finances - which obviously plays a big role for a brand and their food experiences: one of my best friends and i came up with our very own interpretation of the ETF acronym. in our world E stands for emotion, T stands for thought and F stands for faith. Means nothing less than: the moment you can feel it and put thought and faith in it it becomes reality. reality is experience. i am happily invested in these kind of ETFs (while quite honestly, i have zero idea of what this means in the finance world - i just know it exists because of a man that i had a date with).
back to fashion i might have given you enough food for thought already. nevertheless, i want to point out the ETF wholesomeness in the body, mind and soul experience and add onto it with some other factors. sustainability, body positivity, inclusivity of all kinds in fashion is possible if we put not only thought aka mind and faith aka soul to it but an emotion aka bodily experience. and i don’t mind getting the interconnected experience through a cute miumiu matcha or pastry prada (totally made this up because it sounded cute) scenario. and what makes this realization so powerful is:
a satisfied trinity is conscious.
a satisfied trinity might buy from a place of abundance instead of lack.
a satisfied trinity is safe and safety is a great memory to store and sustain in a wardrobe (for brands: people will continue to buy)
a satisfied trinity cures the never ending and always speeding up pace of fashion for good.
and that’s on holistic fashion and styling.
….maybe… (you know i am a optimist)
x
lea