September makes me think about fantasies. It makes me think about the difference between fantasy and reality. Mostly, I think of this in relation to fashion magazines.

As I begin to see the September issues of fashion magazine appear on the newsstands, I find myself drawn to their imagery. The more outrageous the photos are, the better. In fact, the more unwearable the more delicious they appear to be.

For me, the whole point of fashion has always been outrageousness. Otherwise, we’re just talking about clothing.  I love the eccentric, exotic, and over the top.

Linda Evangelista wearing a plasticized body suit topped off with a super hero style cape in this month’s W.  Well, that feels about right.

This won’t be what I’ll be wearing any time soon.  But that’s not the point.

The images serve another purpose. They set off a domino-like series of synapses inside me.

I think the writer Margaret Atwood sums it up best in her novel The Handmaid’s Tale:

I wanted it with a force that made the ends of my fingers ache. At the same time I saw this longing of mine as trivial and absurd, because I’d taken such magazines lightly enough once. I’d read them in dentists’ offices, and sometimes on planes…

After I’d leafed through them I would throw them away, for they were infinitely discardable, and a day or two later I wouldn’t be able to remember what had been in them.

Though, I remembered now. What was in them was promise. They dealt with transformations; they suggested an endless series of possibilities, extending like the reflections in two mirrors set facing one another, stretching on, replica after replica, to the vanishing point. They suggested one adventure after another, one man after another. They suggested rejuvenation, pain overcome and transcended, endless love. The real promise in them was immortality.