In the beginning of class, I chose to explain the two aphorisms: “Fashion is gossip. Never underestimate the power of gossip. Semiologists are driven into ecstasies of supposition by its whispers” and “Fashion is not necessarily spectacular (though it often conforms to the theory of the society of the spectacle), it can also be demotic, ordinary, mundane, routine and humble. It is the stuff of the ethnographer and the anthropologist.” I still fully agree with how fashion is fueled through celebrity and trends, but now I see fashion as a concept that goes further than just what people see from street style or magazine trend pages.
Fashion is never a concrete subject, instead it “is never finished, and it crosses all kinds of boundaries” as stated by Susan Kaiser in “Fashion Culture, Cultural Studies, Fashion Studies”. Fashion can further reveal and provide a better insight on gender roles, race, sexuality, class distinctions, age, and place. So although many can claim that fashion is something that is “materialistic” or just something to be used for others to perceive us, fashion really provides an additional form of context to further one’s understanding of the time and space people live thus further giving information on the societal and political standpoints of the time. Fashion can be related to many other complex aspects of the world since it connects the visual, the material, with personal choice.
