My definition of the word “fashion” and particularly “fashion studies” has changed from the beginning of the semester from being focused on garments and dress practices solely, to ways of looking at culture (and sub-culture) and society through the lens of dress practices. When it comes down to it, fashion is ultimately dress practices. Okay, I know I’m forgetting “style” and “fashion”, but I believe dress practices encompass both of those more than the two encompass the other. Dress practice is the verb of fashion. It’s constant, it’s moving, it’s dynamic, it’s performed differently by everyone. By observing dress practices — of any culture, any time period or imagined time period (ie. the future), any religion, subject position, etc. — one can understand and empathise with the greater social and cultural meaning one’s garments perform while being worn on the body. Dress, as with style and fashion, are “in flux with time”. Susan B. Kaiser writes, “Fashion as a social process encompasses more than clothing style. It’s reach also spans food and furniture preferences, popular culture, language, technology, science, or any other dimensions of culture and change… Fashion matters in everyday life; it becomes embodied” (Kaiser, 2012, 6).
I will use this new definition of fashion in my future work as an artist by perceiving how people dress, and using that to tell stories. Fashion has the ability to communicate not only to others, but to ourselves, who we are and where we are. Kaiser also writes, “To the extent that resources allow, body fashioning articulate not only the intersection across our various subject positions, but across the interface between time and space. Personal style enables a sense of subjectivity in a visual way — representing to those around us, and to ourselves — some tentative idea about who we are and are becoming” (Kaiser, 2012, 172). Overall, this class has taught me that fashion is always functioning in the infinitive and constantly creating and responding in narratives, about cultures, societies, subject positions, and the self.
