Check our my dressing practice log here: tianlan-dressing-log

Besides the 7 photos that I had provided in my Dressing Practice Log. There are another 2 photos from my closet where I dress myself everyday.

To conclude what I had chosen to wear for the past week, I noticed that I chose a lot of grey and navy garments for my mundane life. I like grey and navy as I have told in my intersectionality maps about my aesthetic subject position. And I have bought tons of grey or navy clothes since they are easy to match and are always the safe choices for most occasions. In other way to say, most of clothes in my closet are navy or grey, so I can only choose from them. It’s like what Susan Kaiser mentioned in her article that most of the time, people create their own “fashion statement” but are ultimately constrained by what is available in the marketplace (Kaiser, 2012: 31), to me, it’s that is available in my wardrobe.

But I was not defined by the color of navy or grey. I admit that, sometimes, they are boring and conservative colors, and when I wore them on the Wall street and compared myself with others, I felt uncomfortable of being underdressed by only just wearing basic sweaters and pants among all these perfect fit suites and sharp cut dresses. Our consciousness of dress is heightened when something is out of place when either our clothes do not fit, or they do not match the situation, for example, when we find ourselves dressed too casually at a formal situation or too formally at a casual situation (Enteistle, 2002: 133-134). So I mixed myself with red cute dress on weekends to liberate the spirit. Also, it can be explained as I was dressing up for the occasions. For instance, if I was going out with friends or go clubbing. I dressed for social purpose. It is as Enteistle had said that our dress does not belong to our bodies but to the social world as well. So all the factors entangled together to act my dressing behavior since self-other relations also emerge as entangled, rather than binary.

However, it’s inevitable to find that my whole week dressing documentations are lack of colors, since most of the time, I picked random things in my closet that were available for me since I was running out of time for school. Like Woodward concluded in her publications, that when women are dressing in a hurry, one of the most important factors in deciding what she wear is ease of access (Woodward, 2007: 44) which for me, the clothes in navy or grey.

Bibliography

Enteistle, Joanne, 2002, “The Dressed Body”, Real Bodies: a Sociological Introduction, New York: Palgrave.

Kaiser, Susan.B., 2012, “Intersectional, Transnational Fashion Subjects”, Fashion and Cultural Studies, New York: Bloomsbury.

Woodward, Sophie, 2007, “Hanging Out in the Home and the Bedroom”, Why Women Wear What They Wear, New York: Berg.

Though Vanessa Friedman concluded Jaden Smith wearing women’s wear for Louis Vuitton saying that we are entering the age of wear what you like, clothing norms and traditions have held on to the mass consumers. In the A/W 2015 campaign, Dolce & Gabbana paid tribute to mothers with its signature theme. The ads feature not one or two, but several generations of couture-wearing models – from Grandparents to the newest born babies, entirely dedicated to celebrating motherhood and the love of family by depicting natural scenes at a family gathering. As Susan Kaiser concluded in her book, clothes are public signals about how to read individuals, the A/W 2015 Dolce & Gabbana displayed full skirts and cinched waists with abundant of lace and florals to emphasize the ultra- feminine shapes. And on the textile design, many garments were emblazoned with words in French or Italian “I love you, Mom!” or had children drawings printed on.

However, fashion ads never escapes the criticisms from feminists that advertisement dehumanizes and demeans women- turning them into sexualized objects and proffering unattainable images of beauty that most often, young, white, thin women’s bodies are represented and consumed in hegemonic cultural disclosure. And unfortunately, this campaign partially fits into the definition that were mentioned in Kaiser’s book. For what it worth appreciating, this campaign paid endorsement of women, stated the indispensable position of women in the family and the fashion, truly beautiful with detailed gender coded symbols but not sexually seductive or cheap.

Maybe critics may considers this a little traditional, the campaign is undeniably fun and cheerful. Surely most consumers would notice first and found their engagement to this modern family portrait full of love and unity.