Desire Can’t Be Democratic
Fashion’s power has never been in reflecting who we are, but in giving us something larger, stranger, and more magnetic to climb toward.
Fashion withers when it bends toward relatability. Relatability is the consolation prize of culture, a soft mirror that reflects us back to ourselves without distortion, without distance, without ache. It is comforting, yes, but comfort is not what moves people to climb.
Aspiration is the real currency of fashion. It creates altitude. It makes desire vertical rather than horizontal. To aspire is to feel the magnetic pull of something beyond reach, an elegance, a severity, a poise, a world. Aspiration is not about wealth alone; it is about transcendence, about staging the possibility of becoming someone other than the ordinary self you already know.
When brands chase relatability, they mistake visibility for devotion. They flatten their myth into lifestyle wallpaper, pleasant, consumable, endlessly “liked,” and immediately forgotten. Relatability gives you an audience, aspiration gives you believers.
The task of fashion is not to reassure us of who we are. The world already does that, mirrors, selfies, timelines, every algorithm reflecting our own image back to us. The task of fashion is to seduce us toward who we might become. To provide a ladder cloaked in myth, a ritual of becoming disguised as a garment, a promise that life can be more than it presently is.
Relatability keeps us grounded, aspiration teaches us to climb. The difference is the difference between clothing and culture, between product and myth, between a brand that sells and a brand that endures.