"
People of Walmart" is a website I think pretty much everyone has seen, and let's be honest, it's really funny. Mostly it has people at
Walmart, either dressed trashy or looking completely insane. The things people are wearing go beyond the territory of
faux-pas, and straight into ridiculous
mockability. However, when surfing the site I can't help but notice that the majority of those presented do not look well off. In fact many of them appear dirty, unkempt, or to be wearing extremely old garments. Which begs the question, is it OK to mock the poor for bad clothing? I would hope the answer is no, but that brings us back to the website, which apparently says it is.
This in turn got me thinking about the problem that many people have with the fashion industry, which is that it is an elitist institution. Not only are the clothes expensive, but they change every season, meaning one has to toss out the old and buy buy buy the new. Not only does that make the lower class (and even the middle) exempt from current style, it's also completely unsustainable. One can always shop vintage or try one of these
eco-friendly fashion groups, but the point still stands. I like to argue that fashion is an art form, and art has always been superfluous and ridiculous. However, I'm not sure if that still applies. Is fashion an art and thus exempt from our usual judgements? Is it an elitist
intuition? And, is people of
Walmart a hilarious blog or a cruel way to mock the less fortunate?
For those of you who are not familiar with Deborah Lippmann, she is an expert fashion manicurist who has her own nail polish line. What's so cool is that her nail polish isn't simply nail polish. I mean she gets to work with celebrities for new colors, and comes out with some really cool collections. And of course, as true with most nail polishes, the colors have very clever names. Here are a few of my favorite shades:
