Well We Are Living In a Material World

Where do we spend the most time? Where are we free to relax, let our guard down, and do things our way?  After a long day at school or the office, or even after a long vacation, we come home and we are comfortable, relaxed, and safe in our surroundings. We are familiar with our homes, we have had experiences in them and we hold all of our personal belongings within them. Every person has a different life, and no two homes are exactly the same. When we choose our homes, we choose them to fit our lives; close to other locations we see as important, fitting to our own personal budgets and habits. Our homes reflect our lifestyles because we build our living spaces to best accommodate our lives. Personally, I love my new apartment that is close to school, close to food, and close to friends. I have painted the space with my style; with colors, patterns, and useful objects surrounding me. This is my home, it is eclectic, convenient, open but cozy, and it is where I relax, where I create, where I am me.
But in the modern world people's lifestyles have become busy, focused, and without time for true personality or style. Uniform, popularity, and convenience become good reasons to follow a style, to take the easy way out. These people present the underlying disease in the relationship between home and resident. These people furnish and choose their homes not for aesthetics and without putting in much thought or energy. The result is a home. Liveable of course, but not living. The home is merely a place to eat, sleep, and shower. Yet, these people value their drab possessions thinking of them as all they have and all that they have worked for and accomplished in their uniform lives. So, though their homes do not reflect these people's lives or personalities at all, these are the people who become most attached to their material possessions and are hence chained to their material lives.
On the one hand, owning a home, owning objects to fill that home in a way suiting to your life, is exciting, it is luxurious and seems necessary. Yet on the other side there is the lust for adventure, the desire to owe nothing to anyone or anything else and to take off to merely exist, no attachments and nothing dragging you down. There are those who never settle down, who roam the globe or stay in their mother's basement even in their attempts to remain free of responsibility. Without possessions, homes, or home-owning bills, these people are free spirits, able to go and do as they wish. Yet, they are then left without a permanent place of safety and comfort with oneself.
Whether one is a resident of a sparse, convenient, and boring home, or an adventurous globe trotter (or the geek in mom's basement), one is lacking of a true home. Home is where your heart is, home is a place of warmth and comfort, of style and use. So instead of going without possessions, we can only remember that they must represent us, not define us.

A New View

In fashion, appeal lies greatly in the supposed message of clothing. A good designer tends to have a vision of the ideal wearer and their perfect attitude to fit and display their art. The girl who is "geek chic" or the Ralph Lauren country club man. In this way designers are able to display themselves and their values in their clothing, making it their art. Even before a contemporary fashion industry, the fashions of men and women were used to show status or occupation in society. Clothing is no different now in that it still shows one's place in society, however with many more categories, more specific categories. Our occupations still direct our clothing, yet more and more our individual attitude and lifestyle shine through our garb. The comfortable and average look, the business/sophisticate attire, laid back and outgoing is even a style. But don't think we can now judge a book by its cover, there are so many different mixtures of clothing which has created even more categories; more styles. That's the word, style. Then, in fashion, a combination of your society status, your lifestyle, and your unique attitude creates your very own style. We buy clothing to match our styles, and in turn, designers create clothing to match a certain style. Many designers are known for one style, a targeted market of consumers. Just like certain artists or genres have a select following among their supporters. No artist of any sort can truly be said to lack a style of their own. In fact, it is those without style who have no message and no appeal that do not survive the world of the arts. So instead of art, why don't we just call it style?