I am strongly of the opinion that fashion has gone too far in its efforts to bring young moneyed buyers into the orbit of designer labels. Though Southern Cross has never indulged in a Fashion Page I think it’s time for us to carry at least one column of comment about the world of fashion and in particular, fashion advertising.

I’m not sure how many of our readers are devotees of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and other monthly glossies. I admit that I occasionally dip into them, even apart from quick reads in the doctor’s surgery, though everyone will recognise that I’m hardly to be touted as a style icon.’

In March I read Vogue Australia. Flipping through the first few pages, past Louis Vuitton, then Estee Lauder, I found the two-page Gucci ad leaping out before my gaze. Two figures on the page, one of them a slender female figure with the brand label G shaved in the pubic hair on her body. It was salacious, bordering on pornographic. This kind of raunchy style advertising is part of the present fashion industry’s flirtation with X-rated areas. Posing as high fashion, it’s actually soft porn masquerading as quality. I’m certain I wasted my $6.95 and I assure the Vogue editors I won’t be going their way again for some time.

I agree with the fashion writer in The Age who said “Open any high glossy international magazine, or count the bare breasts and buttocks at any major fashion show, and you quickly realise there’s more being marketed here than mere thread and cloth.” (Age 19/3/03) We see signs of this emphasis on sexuality translated into fashion on our streets every day on young women dressed in hipster pants and low cleavage, short tops with inches of flesh between them, even in winter.

But there is more to shock. We are used to fashion’s exploitation of religious symbols, especially crosses, for gaudy fashion jewellery, but now we can see evidence of the manipulation of deeper Christian spirituality.

I wonder if any Southern Cross readers know about the New York fashion label IOC. That’s the shortened name, now it’s taken off with certain style devotees. IOC stands for Imitation of Christ, a label launched in September 2000 by two art-school drop outs turned designers, Tara Subkoff and Matt Damhove. They presented their first fashion show for IOC in a Manhattan Jewish funeral parlour in 2000.

When the London store Harvey Nichols added IOC designs this year to their contemporary fashions, a writer for the UK Telegraph wrote, “The clothes – all of them one-off originals costing hundreds of pounds – are bizarre examples of recycling: cast-offs and charity shop bargains are ‘crucified’, slashed and ripped, before being ‘resurrected’ with embroidery, patchwork and hand painted detail.” (filed 20/01/03).

I’m outraged by the name they’ve chosen for the label. They claim they found it in a song from a contemporary group, Psychedelic Furs. But like many readers, I know the name comes originally from a work of classic Christian spirituality, The Imitation of Christ written by Thomas a Kempis, a brother of the Brethren of the Common Life who died in 1471. I’ve always found much to profit from in Thomas a Kempis’ work, though I disagree thoroughly with his sacramental theology. I’ve found great comfort, for example in these words: “Hath it ever been well with me without thee? When have I suffered ill when Thou wert with me? Where Thou art, there is Heaven: and where Thou art not, there is death and hell” (Bk 3,59).

What connection does this have with a New York fashion label? When the label was first launched a Roman Catholic group protested but I don’t know of any other Christian protests about this label’s name. We Christians are too easily inured to the consumer world in which we live, too caught up in it all, too accepting without discriminating or protesting.

We even take some aspects of the fashion world and make it our own. A professional colleague in the course of her work attended one morning of the Hillsong Women’s Conference last month. She told me with a laugh about the Pamper Tent there, where the Christian women could have their nails or hair done or have a massage. I hope our clergy wives’ or Mother Union meetings never go that way.

How easily do we all absorb the consumer ethos and dismiss Paul’s teaching that Christians “dress modestly, with decency and propriety not with braided hair or gold or pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good deeds.” It is Christian character, not appearance, that adorns the gospel.