Overall Reflections

I interviewed my roommate Eddie Kim last week. He is a sophomore Communication Design student in Parsons. I chose him because we live together and we are really good friend. After this interview I got some his interesting “closet secrets” about Eddie. In my dress practice interview, I included certain elements, for instance, color, comfortableness, brands, dressing equations, and his closet organization skills. I basically know what Eddie owns in his closet because we live together, but I never actually closely look at his closet before this project. I know he wears t-shirts, straight bootcut jeans and sneakers all the time, but the thing that I don’t know is Eddie actually has his dressing and matching equations. He has few equations in his mind for matching, for instance, the white jean can only match with these two t-shirts but not others, and this pair of shoe only match with this jacket. Therefore, he starts with picking a pant, and then he knows what t-shirt and shoe he should wear for the day, and then he knows which jacket he is going to wear. I was so shocked by his “dressing equation” method because it saved so much time for him, on the opposite, I usually spend so much time on matching clothes in the morning with drives me crazy usually. But I think my method also has its own advantages, which is I got more ideas and dressing options while I matching my clothes, which Eddie probably doesn’t get. Douglas says “Dress is the way in which individuals learn to live in their bodies and feel at home in them. Wearing the right clothes and looking our best, we feel at ease ease with our body right, and the opposite is true also: turning up for a situation inappropriately dressed, we feel ill at ease in our bodies, out of place and vulnerable.” Based on my interview of Eddie, I think he is an example to explain Douglas’ quote, because as a student, he wears loose and comfortable t-shirts instead of tight suit or some halloween costume because people dress differently in different situation. After the interview, I think clothing could represent a body (a person), because the brand, comfortableness, color of the clothes could all define the person directly. For example, Eddie loves to wear loose t-shirts because he is not confident about his body and he can hide himself in loose clothes; he also likes comfortable clothes because that’s always a good choice for students. Beside these two elements, I think the brands of clothes are also an important elements on define a body, like Eddie, most of his sneakers are from Vans, which is a really big fashion sneaker brands. He choses to wear Vans instead of some luxury leather shoe brand like Salvatore Ferragamo Italia, because he is the type of person who likes street fashion instead of other styles. That’s an important element that makes Eddie Eddie. I noticed that everyone is not confident in certain area, Eddie trying to use loose clothes to hide his weight from the public because he is not confident about his body, probably he got laughed in the young age. Or he was influenced by the social judgment from the Korean society, which related our class subject about “Nationality”, different nation has their own aesthetic rules and judgmental environment. I actually share the same feeling with Eddie, I don’t really wear short top at all because I am not confident about my body ether. But I change my mind after I came to America because everyone deserves freedom and everyone can wear whatever they want.

Citation:

Entwistle, Joanne. “The Dressed Body.” Real Bodies, 2002, 139. doi:10.1007/978-0-230-62974-5_9.