If looks could feel
HAVE YOU HEARD the phrase: ‘I shop therefore I am’? American artist Barbara Kruger borrowed it from French philosopher René Descartes for a 1987 artwork, appropriating his philosophy: ‘I think, therefore I am’. Descartes held that the only truth he knew for certain was that our minds shaped meaning into existence; he believed our thoughts were a defining characteristic of human nature. Replacing ‘think’ with ‘shop’, Kruger reclaimed his words ironically to suggest something else. Critiquing the breakneck speed at which consumerism was accelerating at that time, infiltrating day-today life, she prompted the question: in our pursuit to own so much stuff, had we lost sight of ourselves?
Even as some of us are lucky enough to dust off our finery and emerge from months shut inside, time in lockdown has led us to contemplate fashion’s relevance. We’ve traded trousers for tracksuits, and held Zoom meetings in
