Warrick Do
Int. Fashion Studies
12 September 2017
Week 1 Assignment
“Fashion is intensely personal, in the same way that poetry is intensely personal. It is a medium through which personal stories can be told, memories re-lived and futures foretold.”
As a way to express oneself, fashion serves a role in which defines one’s characteristics. The aphorism above describes the fashion as an eloquent tool to grasp the ideal paradigm of one’s mind, while it also implies the artistic standpoint of fashion in terms of personal identity as poetry does. I strongly agree with aphorism as a student learning about fashion design and developing the my own philosophical view point on fashion, because the depth of making fashion extends beyond the appearance, to not only filling in the needs of targeted customers but also an autobiographical narrative that a garment might embrace or will embrace.
“Fashion studies has always thrived, as many disciplines do, by positioning itself between borders and at the periphery. Its apparent lack of respectability provided energy. Now there are many journals and conferences to serve its purposes. They give more space for multiple points of view, but the field must strive to avoid co-option and exhaustion.”
The fashion studies might have thrived due to its ambiguous and obscure viewpoint on social or personal statements; however, the fashion industry had always been an attraction for people and was at the verge of social issues. The fashion studies is not just limited by its purpose but enlarges perspective of disparate groups and fields. Instead of lack of respectability as the aphorism states, I believe the power within the society’s imperishable favoritism to fashion heavily supports the success of fashion studies. From my standpoint, it rather needs the exhaustion to bring in radical refinement to analyze its current dilemma.
