The Fashion World -- Can You Find Perspecitve There?

Reese Witherspoon has famously -- infamously? -- suggested in an interview in the May issue of Vogue magazine that people who love fashion often lack perspective. The blogosphere is in an uproar over this; Ms. Witherspoon has been denounced by some as an ingrate. You say this in a Vogue interview? When they're putting you on the cover? But the fact is that she's right. And the fashionistas aren't alone in this. Almost everybody lacks perspective nowadays.

Last week I stumbled onto a long discussion on a West Coast guy's blog about building things. He invited people to comment on what they were building. Not one of them boasted about building anything the country needs, or the world needs, unless you count the families some of them said they were building, or their gardens, or new parts of their houses. One young woman said she was building her brand. Her brand. The world holds its breath.

I like fashion. I'm pretty sure I lack perspective, although I'm also pretty sure I know the difference between my navel and the universe. Fashion -- pretty people in pretty clothes -- is one of those things, like music, that can distract the mind from the grimmer realities of life. And who doesn't need something like that? Who can bear, after all, to have perfectly clear perspective?