With the statist response to the economic collapse, it has proved no great surprise that the name Ayn Rand has peppered populist responses. Who better to animate the entrepreneurial spirit and spark individualist outrage but the creator of Howard Roark and John Galt?
Now Ms. Rand has inspired fashion, too, at least according to this from the Daily Beast:
Designers Shipley & Halmos drew inspiration from Rand’s philosophy for their fall 2009 collection, which they called The Individual as an homage. They quoted The Fountainhead in their show’s invitation (“Life must be a straight line of motion from goal to further goal.”) and sent models marching down a zigzagged runway to emphasize their unwillingness to be swayed. …
Ralph Lauren declared Rand his favorite writer (along with Ernest Hemingway) in a recent interview with Vanity Fair and a host of Indian designers have avowed their admiration as well. One, Ritu Beri, told an Indian newspaper that as of September, she’d read The Fountainhead “almost 50 times.” Another, Krishnu Mehta, also counts the book as her favorite, saying it was “written brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly.” This summer, a photo assistant for Elle urged readers to pick up a copy of Rand’s Anthem, a dystopian novella written from the perspective of fictional narrator “Equality 7-2521,” a citizen in some future socialist hellscape. “It’s a short read,” she wrote, “perfect for an end-of-summer day at the beach exercising your free will.”
A “short read.” Rand would be so flattered …
I eagerly await the advent of the “Virtue of Selfishness” china-and-flatware collection (one setting), not to mention the Objectivist smart-phone app, complete with epistemologically sound diet-point calculator.
