Dear God,

I need your help with a matter concerning the ethics of fashion.

For much of the last decade, flared pants and bellbottoms were considered high fashion. Now, they’re out of fashion, and pants with tapered ankles are in. So, I’ve got a lot of pants now with unfashionable flappy ankles. I want to get rid of them, so as not to be wasteful, and so I’m considering donating them to a non-profit that will redistribute my bellbottoms to those who are too poor to buy their own pants.

I’m concerned, though, that wearing bellbottoms years after they were in style could stigmatize the poor, and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. What’s the right thing to do?

- Danata

Danata,

Keep the bellbottoms for yourself as an investment, storing them in your attic until they’re fashionable again. Then, to help the poor, find an organization that provides trendy clothes to poor people, to help their self-esteem. In Los Angeles, there’s a group called Poor Couture. Good luck.

- God

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 3:56 pm and is filed under All God's Advice, Ethics, Fashion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.