Dagda Samildanc reports that if you want to get fashion designers to drop fur from their lines, the secret isn’t to tell them that it’s cruel, or that it clashes with red paint, but rather that it’s boring. That’s the message that Prada is now pushing, and their autumn 2007 line will be fur free. I know next to nothing about fancy pants fashion (which is a more literal term in this context, I suppose), but Prada’s announcement is expected to have ripples in the industry, because what is and isn’t boring isn’t, uh, boring to those who track such things.
So is boring the new cruel? Maybe. Whenever I’m at a restaurant and need to order off the menu, the table is usually interested (in more than a polite way) with whatever special unique dish I’ve managed to get from the kitchen (tip: call ahead and give them advance notice), and their chunk of flesh with a side of starch doesn’t seem as exciting. Yo know what else is boring? Lying in a hospital bed after eating too many big macs, which, really, stopped being exciting themselves around the time in your life that The Grimace went from fun to kinda creepy. So yeah, maybe “boring” has its uses. Remember, you didn’t go vegan to give things up, you did it to make more room for the good stuff.
