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Down is an orientation metaphor that reflects one of the basic experiences of spatial orientation. There is a cultural bias towards UP and the closely associated forward - representing GOOD in our society - and a bias against DOWN and backwards arising from the fundamental human experience that we are all upright in position, see and move frontward. (For more about this see Cooper and Ross World Order 1975 and the 'me-first orientation').
Despite this - in Sydney and Singapore it’s becoming more cool to be depressed. Depression is sweeping teens and now is aspirational – for some at least.
The Emo subculture (Emo is a slang term used to describe a range of fashion styles and attitudes somewhat affiliated with Emo music and its related scene. As an adejctive it describes a general state of unhappiness or melancholy - as in to 'feel emo') fits perfectly into INSIDE STORY’s ‘Still waters’ segment - a segment not as much targeted by marketers but showing increasing interest more recently. We are now seeing a lot of fashion spreads in magazines like Frankie and Russh (see the May Russh fashion spread – ‘Back in the USSR…go underground this summer’). Rip Curl experimented with the depressed and even played very subtly with the death wish for a while in their shop window in Sydney - though this seems to have disappeared.
The dark mood is reflected in a lot of the top designer ads for Prada and others who use the greyed out tones for their fashion shoots, only highlighting the product in colour. A smart way to maximise product impact but also a subtext which is a bulls eye to the emerging Emo target. Poses are almost always reclining – metaphorically symbolic of DOWN, PASSIVE, BACK. Many of the top designers featured reclining models in depressed states in windows in Singapore's Orchard Road in April.
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