The Cares of a Fashion Clerk

I've been working for Les Composantes in a clerical capacity for a while now and have been exposed to a set of people that really care about fashion. As Morgane delicately pointed out, I have an okay sense of style but an under-developed sense of fashion--or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, when you toss in the foreign language factor it might be easy to think I'm a bit out of my depth. To a certain extent that is true. During my day recording orders and checking emails there are often questions and problems I can't handle or don't know how to answer. However, since I'm a born again positivist, there are also many benefits to being an employee of Les Composantes. I get to work on my French in an applicable setting, help ensure/be a part of my girlfriend's success, and I get an insight into a completely foreign atmosphere (excuse the pun/double meaning).

I spent my teenage years living with two females so I've always felt I had a certain insight into women or at least a solid frame of reference when engaging them. All bets are off for the fashion crowd. They behave like my brother when it comes to Razorback football. There are countless message boards full of rumors, insults, secrets, sales, and scoops. Bloggers by the platoon. It's serious business.

My first instincts were laughter and incredulous disbelief. This is of course the same reaction these girls would have if they knew how much I cared about college football or MLB. Though from time to time I still derive smiles and stifled laughter from the fashionistas, I try to be objective about the situation. Of course the irony is that there is usually no objectivity when it comes to caring about something. The great Roger Angell summed up the "why" as best as anyone could when trying to answer how someone could affiliate themselves with something like a professional sports team:

"What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives."

His quote, though directed towards sports, is an apt summation of what people feel in Obama. For so long "caring" didn't matter in politics...apathy bubbled over the surface and infected those who should care most. Obama has struck a cord in those countless people. Caring is an affront to the jaded eyes of experience and discerning education, an affront to the mindset of a generation (one that is hopefully on its way out).

Whether it's spring fashion, the NL Central, or a positive political change, there is always something into which we put our hopes. Some passions, like politics, are more readily explainable to those people wondering why one cares. These explanations aren't necessary. Just be glad to have retained the ability to blindly care past childhood. Embrace the joys and heartbreaks.

"And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved."