I was looking over the glossy magazine in my weekend paper today (the paper I have to do a 60km round trip to collect via my bicycle) and noticed a fashion advertising piece. Now I don’t usually notice these paeans to the consumerist urban curb crawling culture except a subliminal note to observe that the ‘male model’ turkeys all dressed up like fops wouldn’t last 1km on a bike…or in a garage, or, really, anywhere where there is work to be done. But this particular spread seemed to have the prices for all the gear so displayed in a larger font than usual; so I noticed the amounts involved. Pants (tighter than any lycra shorts), $750, Shirt, $510, Gucci Blazer (who would or could ever wear such a thing with a straight face), $1755, loafers (that means shoes, I think), $690 and, believe it or not, belt (by some bloke called Ralph Lauren), $249. That adds up to $3954. $3954! And for that you get to look like one of those more dodgy extras in Brideshead Revisited.

Now I’ve been reeling in guilt for a few weeks now over spending too much on a pair of Sidi Ergo2 cycling shoes. Now I feel way way better! My shoes were hand made by someone with a purpose to hand: to build a tool to improve the efficiency with which we cyclists use our feet. My blessed Italian racing shoes were made to achieve something. The poncy shoes in that fashion spread were designed only for, well, loafing. Why would you want to pay more for shoes to loaf with than you would or could pay for shoes to win races with? Beats me.

You see, class, this is why I think we are now in a Global Financial Crisis. I reckon that foppish loafing gear is the uniform of the culture of the uber banker set; the set that has thrown global markets and the livelihoods of we, the more earthly citizens, into total chaos. The clothes match the personality and character of the job they did (now, fortunately, many of them are now looking for real work instead). Loafers?! Who could ever conscience a purchase of that magnitude just to help you loaf with? And if loafing is what the banker set did with all our money, it’s no wonder the markets collapsed.

OK, so my neck is all red from my ride today, but I am not a gun toting, gum chewing hillbilly moaning about the neighbours kids on my lawn, the price of gasoline and the virtues of Sarah Palin as the next US President. Though I was no doubt disowned as a dweller on the fringes of the academic circus, I was a professor and my area was, and still is, ecological economics. Which I admit to here only to assert the point that this caper of spending obscene amounts of money on a uniform that does nothing but attest to an intent to loaf around explains quite a bit about the way that section of society to which this advert is pitched – including, I propose, those in the financial sector – actually works. There’s some deep pathologies at work in the business of money. One of them is a culture of playboy-casino, coke-sniffing, consumerist exhibitionism. That’s a culture that sustains ego over toil and sweat, a culture of appearances and deception rather than one that realises gain through the transparency of talent and skill. No wonder the world is all in a mess.

I have long advocated the need for transforming the world through cultures which connect toil and gains in more obvious ways. Like cycling, farming, road mending and taxidermy. You can’t hide lack of talent in those games. You can’t cover up the excesses of a lavish life wearing your $1755 Gucci toy coat when out for a ride (even if you ARE a cycling Fred). Even ‘latte cyclists’ can’t hide their excesses while swilling at the coffee shop with their Colnagos propped against the table. Actually, I’ll put this straight; I can’t comprehend a culture that would encourage anyone to dress in such a way as to proclaim the vision of spendthrift loafishness to which this advertisment is pitched. That this advertisment exists indicates that there is indeed a market for dysfunctionality of that kind. The scary crazy fallout has indeed hit the fan and we, the citizens of the rest-of-the-world are left to bail them out. Even if the loafer Gucci wearing set are not all in the banking game, the excesses of their puffed lifestyles are hitting us through that even bigger crisis seemingly forgotten now that finance is front page news: the crisis of a planet more stretched than this guy’s $1755 replica school boy coat. Remember global warming? Our prancing pony model depicted here is modelling a lifestyle that projectile vomits contempt at the vastly more reasoned, environmentally resilient lifestyles to which we all should and must aspire.

So, bless the more earthly cultures out there; the salt of the earth will indeed prevail. I am not shedding any tears over the eviction of the Wall Street crowd from their loafing-lounge inner city apartments. But I would suggest that the persistence of both the demand and the supply side of a market devoted to ‘loafing’ fops is an indicator of a world not yet quite right.

But there is good news from all of this. All my cyclist bruthas – go ahead – buy that top end bike. Buy those serious shoes, and related gear. Because the metric of extravagance is a higher bar than we could ever meet when you look into the fashion pages of weekend magazines…Plus anything at all to do with cycling (except maybe the support caravan to the Tour de France) is vastly more environmentally tuned than the BMW/Mercedes/Porsche/Ferari prancing ponce culture that’s ired my rage on this otherwise fine Spring post-ride day.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.