This is an archived blog from when I ran Conscious Public Relations Inc. from 2008-2018. Excuse the potential outdated-ness!
I read an uber interesting interview in the S/S issue of The Block Magazine over the past long weekend with Stacy London of the hit TLC makeover show, What Not to Wear. There was an interesting thing she said:
I don’t know when it became as in style as, say Haider Ackermann to be like, “Love! Love everybody! Kabbalah! Light and love and love and light.” It makes me want to puke. Not because I don’t believe in those things, but because it’s become such a trend. “Be kind to other,” and “Everyone is fighting their own battle” – well, I’m sorry, I don’t have that kind of patience for everybody. And you can’t practice that until you’ve practiced this on yourself. I don’t know if it’s Demi and Ashton or the red string bracelet but it’s the commercialization of compassion.
She goes onto say how she couldn’t be super-critical of how people dress on WNTW if she had not understood style herself, and why being authentic is so important on her show.
I couldn’t help but hate the part about her calling positivity a trend. A style trend, even. And I completely agree! Everything comes in waves. Veganism. Yoga. Superfoods. Small acts of kindness. And I completely agree too, that it’s hard to practice 24/7. But it’s so funny that it comes from someone who’s in the media 24/7, and has to convince people that the outside must match the person they are inside…well, in order for a person to be a good candidate for a WNTW makeover, shouldn’t they be practicing self-love all the time so they have some idea of the person they want to project?
Shouldn’t we have self-love or wellness or compassion classes from Kindergarten way up to when we’re in retirement homes? Isn’t it a 24/7 practice, not a style trend? If it is a trend, well, I’ll sport it as long as goths want to wear black.
It’s so funny because every e-mail I send out from Conscious PR has “With love and light” in the signature – and I know it sounds so hippie, but I have to believe in it. My emails have to be well-meaning to the person I’m sending it to, otherwise it goes against what my brand believes in. Is it overkill?
Do you think compassion is too commercialized?
Side note: The Block Magazine’s newly appointed Editor-in-Chief, James Worthington Demolet, announced that their future issues will still be focused on fashion and art but “through the lens of social awareness and the hope for change.” Good for them!
