Khans of Tarkir Fashion Week

Note: This article was meant to be published Fall of 2014. I couldn't come to a version I was happy with but am publishing it now anyway. I'll end up rewriting a similar version again this fall. "Magical Christmas Land" is a term I first heard used to describe the time of year leading up to the release of the big fall expansion for Magic the Gathering. The new card pool kicks out the old and the stagnant field format warps into fields of bright lights and jingle bells.

This is that time of year for Magic players: Khans of Tarkir goes tournament live September 26th. The season truly began when the first wave of spoilers came a few months back(spoilers meaning we get to see what we'll get spoiled with come Christmas time); then we got the true spoiler season leading up to the set release; then the pre-release events the weekend before the set release; then the release; and then, after about another month the Pro Tour where the pros show off the presents they've opened and what they've created with their new batch of Legos.
"Magical Christmas Land" is a self-explanatory term, and depending on your own interests and hobbies, you experience Magical Christmas Land too.
Football season just began. Every team is 0-0 and has a shot to make the playoffs and win the Superbowl. This also means your speculations on players for your fantasy draft team are finally being tested, and your bright new team is ready to show you what they got for Christmas.
The Magical Christmas Land that is more fascinating to me and one I am making efforts to better understand. I speak of New York Fashion Week.
I've always thought I have a decent sense of Fashion because I have a good sense of style and what looks good. I used to think that since I spent time actually looking at clothes and caring how they look, I could grasp what was fashionable. All of this was of course under the caveat that I had a good sense of Fashion- for a guy. The times here and there where my fashion input was dismissed as irrelevant because I was a guy, left me feeling misunderstood and rejected. But I chose to accept that there was just some side of fashion that I just couldn't understood. I accepted that it would always be some conversation I could observe, but never be a part of.
It was only when I went to read about this year's New York Fashion Week that I finally thought to think of why fashion was something I could never understand, never truly participate in. It was when Vanessa Friedman wrote this:

After all, "what women want" is, theoretically at least, one of the existential questions at the heart of fashion.

I paused for a while at that. I reread it. Then I read the rest of her article through that lens.
Ms. Friedman's articles are magnificent in writing quality and substance. Her articles mean something. Because she gets what fashion means.
What Ms. Friedman said is not the end all, be all statement defining fashion, of course. It's just "one of the existential questions at the heart of fashion." But it was enlightening for me. No wonder I could never understand fashion. I never was the kind of guy that ruled off fashion by saying "what matters is what looks good." I was at least, above that, I thought. I cared more about aesthetics and expression and finesse. So I thought I was in a good place at understanding fashion, since I was ahead of "the guys." But the man that thinks he knows it all is the man that knows nothing.
I still have close to no idea what fashion means. Or at least, how to appreciate it as an art form. But I feel that over time I am developing a painted understanding of it. I can think knowingly of it without ever being able to attach words to what I'm thinking. And that's okay.
I got to thinking how I was enjoying my Magical Christmas Land that stems from Magic the Gathering's card pool rotation. I thought of comparing it to the Magical Christmas Land that is fashion week. They're quite similar: though the pieces of the metaphor don't have perfect analogies.
Fashion Week presents to the fashion-minded peoples of the world the current designs and tools that will be available for the coming season. And, as more obviously seen in the more extravagant, avant-garde fashion exhibitions, the runway shows aren't there to present to you what you should be wearing for the season. It's a showing of the styles of the season ahead. Fashion Week is a presentation by the industry's influential designers of what is Fashion.
The fashion viewers then come away inspired by the times ahead. There's an air of optimism that they can do what they want with the art they've participated in. They come away thinking of how they will take what they've learned over the week into the coming season. They've been witness to the designer's views of what is fashion, but now it is time for them to make their statement on what is fashion now. It's time for the women to say, "yes, that is what we want." "This is what we want."
These feelings ring true to me for Magic's Magical Christmas Land. I've gotten to see glimpses of what the future looks like. I see the possibilities of the new. It's my time to take with it what I can.