A Manifesto For Recessionistas: The People’s Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution.

A friend of mine from college – lets call him Captain Burns - supplemented the minimum wage he earn as a burger-flipper at Maccas by pirating. DVD’s, CD’s, anything you wanted burnt, slashed, or ripped in breach of copyright, could be supplied by Captain Burns with a couple of day’s notice and an extra large parcel of hot chips with chicken salt – the standard fare of modern day Pirates, I was lead to believe. Confronting the captain one day with my ethical reservations about the stack of pirated CD’s he’s burnt for me, Captain Burns turned my newly minted lefie politics against me:

Captain Burns (munching on soggy chicken salt chip): ‘Peg-Leg you’re a socialist, aren’t you? And you think that capitalism is wrong, morally, socially, and spiritually?’

Peggy (accepting offered chip from packet): ‘Of course’

Captain Burns (washing chip down with bourbon and cola, sneakily hidden in regular cola bottle so as to escape detection): ‘Well, it’s simple really. The capitalist social structure commercialises resources – ie music – when music should be free - for and of the people. All I’m doing is giving these resources back to the people who rightly own them. Redistributing the wealth of the state, if you will. And I will. Now, how about some Smashing Pumpkins to go with your Cranberries?’

Peggy (worries about morality of cd’s negated): ‘Yes please!’

Clearly, I was into 90s revival before it was cool.

Years after the fact though, my friend’s rather cynical interpretation of adolescent socialism sticks in my mind, as an example of how we should always look for ways of making our everyday lives less indebted to the capitalist system. In light of the fact that capitalism as we know it is crumbling, or at least flaking at the corners, perhaps it’s time to revolutionise and adopt a utopian position of a new sartorially socialist state…

What’s Mine Is Yours, What’s Yours Is Mine: Here’s a simple five stage plan for implementing your very own Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution.

Stage One of Implementation: Buy clothes. See prior posts for handy hints on this, but I think that if you like clothes enough to bother with this blog, you’ve probably fairly well along with stage one. Moving right along to…

Stage Two of Implementation: Wear clothes. Again, see prior posts, but I think you’ve got that bit worked out too…

Stage Three of Implementation: Decide you don’t like clothes on you. Whether it’s because you put on/loose weight, or change your hair colour, or decide that it’s time to grow up and get an office job and abandon your cowboy boots and floral dresses look (it’s never time for that in my book but if you’re comfortable with that then go right ahead). It’s a fact that for many reasons, happy and sad, we sometimes have to get rid of clothes. Putting aside the emotionality of the decision, you are now faced with the dilemma of what to do with them: rubbish bin, Vinnies bin, or…

Stage Four of Implementation: Share your clothes with various friends and admirers. Seems like a simple enough idea, right? You bought the dress, you wore the dress, you’re over the dress and it’s time to move on, you give the dress to your friend.

Surprisingly enough, it took me a good several years to cotton onto this. Whilst I could never bring myself to throw perfectly wearable clothes in the bin, I still didn’t think there were many other options than Vinnies for my cast-offs. Until my dear friends MiMi Goss and Rosie Bon Jovi gave me bundles of their respective hand-me-downs. Being of a larger size, I’d never really received hand me downs from fabulously stylish friends before – but having done so, I found that my wardrobe was reaping the benefits. MiMi Goss had undergone a change in aesthetic, moving from boho to refined chick one summer, and generously put her florals and paisleys out to pasture in my welcoming closet. Rosie Bon Jovi, being of a similar size but different colouring to me, found that some of her most flattering dresses didn’t do her beautiful hazel eyes justice – but they would work a treat with my brown ones. Thus, the path to the glorious revolution was lit for me by these venerated prophets of style. I consequentially did my half yearly wardrobe cull with a new ‘friends’ pile along with my standard ‘bin’, ‘vinnies’, and ‘mending’.

Like all socialist projects, though, there is potential for calamity in undertaking a Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution. As you’re swapping and casting off clothes amongst your friends, there’s a lot at stake. Here are a few guidelines to give you an idea of what can go wrong, and ways around these problems to ensure that your revolution is most glorious. Not that I’ve ever encountered any problems, but, being the responsible revolutionary I am, I can’t help but feel compelled to warn my comrades of potential threats.

• Always, always, always have an open door policy when receiving shared clothes. And, always always always don’t expect to be able to ask for clothes that you’ve given away to come back. Paradoxical though this may seem, if both parties have these expectations at the beginning of the arrangement, things will go smoothly. If you are the recipient of a bundle, you should make sure that the original owner of the clothes knows that they are welcome to ask for the clothes back if they change their mind. See, that’s the beauty of sharing. If you give something which you later realise is fabulous to vinnies, you can’t exactly ask for it back…so there goes that fabulous denim jacket and French navy wrap dress I threw out in a fit of pique two years ago. Whereas if I’d given them to a friend, there may be a slim possibility of getting them back. Although, I would caution against giving clothes away with the idea that you may be able to recall them in any situation other than a dire one. When you give clothes that you’re out of love with away, you need to fully expect that the recipient will fall IN love with them, and may not want to relinquish. Or she may have modified it, or damaged it, or passed it on to another friend. It may be a little bit tricky negotiating at first, but it’s well worth establishing this understanding before you share clothes.

• Be open to the idea that people will not like what you want to give them – and let them know that it’s okay if they don’t want to use a particular garment, and that you won’t be offended. Likewise, if you are a recipient, be honest about what you would and would not like to take – tactfully, of course, but honestly. After all, if you don’t want to use it, maybe another friend of the giver’s might like it.

• Tell the recipient of your clothes about any ‘issues’ the particular garment has. For instance, if you are giving your friend a skirt that rides up, tell her about it. Forewarned is forearmed, and she will thank you for it when she realises you’ve saved her from the dreaded crotch creep – you know, that thing that happens when you get dressed, run for the bus, then realise as you’re walking through the interchange that there’s a strange creeping going on about your nether regions – that’s the crotch creep. The recipient may happily take the garment with ‘issues’ – perhaps she may know a trick to fix gaping buttons, or sticky zips – or she may gracefully decline. Either way, full disclosure is necessary.

• Lastly, and most importantly, never swap anything that comes with an ‘eeewww’. By this I mean any garment that is just a bit gross. Imagine you were a friend of Ms Lweinski’s in the mid 90s. She gave you this neat little navy shift dress that she’d got too porky for. You wear the navy dress about town, and grow to love it. And then you realise that the very dress you’ve now taken under your wing as your own has a history that is rather infamous, icky, and just a wee bit sticky…I don’t think you’d feel too good, to put it mildly. That’s why it’s a bad idea to swap or share any item of clothing that has come into contact with nefarious bodily fluids. Even if it has been thoroughly cleaned, you don’t want your friend to show up at a party wearing your old Vomity Veronika Maine.

Comrades, there you have it. Most great revolutions are born out of the suffering of the people, and the Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution is no different. In times of financial difficulty, the solidarity of Recessionistas is our style’s greatest strength. Swap with your sisters in style and viva la revolution!