| Choose any two of Christopher Breward’s aphorisms from his foreword to Fashion Studies, which you read in Week 1. Explain what each of the two aphorisms means (in your own words) and discuss which aspects of the aphorisms you agree and disagree with (and why). |
Response:
The first aphorism is that “Fashion is not necessarily spectacular, it can also be demotic, ordinary, mundane, routine, and humble. It is the stuff of the ethnographer and anthropologist.”
Based on my own understanding, what he tried to say is that there is no a fixed form or present of fashion because fashion means differently based on different culture background and people who are living in that culture. I strongly agree with a part of this sentence that “Fashion is not necessarily spectacular.” I do believe that everyone’s fashion should not be exactly the same as others because we are not absolutely identical but unique human beings. We are not like chips or soda that can be put into same packaging without any changes. However, I do not agree with the words he uses to describe fashion, such as mundane, humble etc. Those words are prone to negative meanings rather than neutral, which can be misleading for someone and give them a pre-impression when they see something that does not belong to the region of fashion that they already know.
The second aphorism is that “Fashion moves in space and time. It shares in the complexity of physics and mathematics, making patterns and networks, forming mazes and constellations. Through its form we have an opportunity to re-write art and science and to heal the rift of the two cultures.” I agree with that “Fashion moves in space and time.” Fashion for me is like a moving wheel that seeing forward but somehow will go back to the point where it starts or has been through. In other words, it will reoccur previous ideas, add new ideas, and mix them in varied ways so that something new will show up. The part I do not agree with is that “Through its form we have an opportunity to re-write art and science and to heal the rift of the two cultures.” Based on my own experience, fashion is like a double-edged sword that can be beneficial for cultural fixing but also can be harmful for it. There are many cases that designers’ fashion attitude involves other cultures in a bad way and therefore cause serious problem between two cultures.
