“What is fashion?” It is a very critical question for all people who live in this fast and well-operating society, especially for us, as fashion students. Throughout this semester, after 14 weeks studied in Intro to Fashion Studies, some of my thoughts about what fashion is had changed. For example, one of the reading that we had which impressed me the most is an article by Julia Twigg, called: “Fashion, the Body, and Age.” “Significant changes have also occurred in relation to the social position of order people.”1 This article converted my idea of how age against with beauty and interacts with fashion. It discusses what happens to our sense of fashion as we reach later life. A range of questions about how we negotiate fashion as we get older is talked about. There are questions for the majority of the population who on a daily basis confront the question: “What to wear?”, “What is fashion?” The author, Twigg, makes a strong case for age as a master identity comparable to gender, class, and race. The most alarming idea that I have never thought before is “Youth is prized above all else and that we are judged not by how old we are but rather by how young we are not.”
Other than that, the visual communication is critical that can be shown in this society. Media is a very influential communication in our days. For instance, when you think about models, the first image comes up in your mind would be a young and skinny person (at least most of the time to most of the people.) It is how modern visual communication influences us, like magazines, Tumblr, Instagram, TV programs, and etc.
Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006.
- Twigg, Julia. “Fashion, the Body, and Age” in The Handbook of Fashion Studies. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 82.
