by Andrea Brandt

Fashion is circumstantial and the circumstantial is fashionable. (You said it yourself, Frank). It sounds circular and illogical I know. I know because I’m a journalist who operates in the circular and the illogical. There’s nothing logical or Zen-like about my life. I walk, hike, bike, ride, and drive in circles and within existing circumstances that have existential characteristics.

The direction and clothes of each day are localized. They are circumstantial. My clothes are the vernacular of my modus operandi. I wear them at work for etiquette and diplomacy, and at times it includes a head covering for safety and well-being. I call it place circumstance. Back at the hotel, as it were, looking in the mirror, I’m naked. I enjoy my nakedness. I’m my own eye candy, and the eye candy perhaps of the mature man or experienced woman in the room with me. Admittedly, the candy occasionally has a few dents, bruises, cuts, and blemishes.

I dress for the reality of the circumstance of the day. I record what appears to be a reality clothed in the circumstances of the moment. Does my recording of it alter the circumstance in any way through my writing about it? All I can do is stress the facts.

My clothes have to allow comfort, ease of movement and escape, and durability. What is work appropriate or not appropriate is connected to circumstance. The circumstance of culture, geography, climate, the day’s weather, the event and the people I’m reporting on. Bloodied alleys and streets and political conditions affect my fashion statement. My work requires astuteness of my role, the place, the people, and the circumstance. Most important of what I wear (carry) is my passport, associated documents, and a card that says I’m a journalist. (RSF: Reporters sans frontières/Reporters Without Borders)

I have collegial ties to reporters that write about clothes and fashion trends. They tell me humor is essential. Humor is the heart of survival. Personally, I find fashion trends, trite. Of course, the sheer covering and uncovering of breasts, penises, vaginas, and other physical attributes are to be appreciated within the artistical circumstance of the whole body and mind symbolism. I get it. I prefer adaptable bodies and minds with whatever fashion the person wishes.

I work, eat, drink, sleep, and periodically fuck. I have circumstance related expectations and pleasures.

Fashion is a circumstantial pleasure, policing that fashion is die Kuhscheiße.