What is fashion? (week 14)
To me fashion is a certain way of self-expression, influenced by different factors. Throughout the semester I kept my definition same as before I came in to intro to fashion class, however, the class lectures and discussions have expanded my perspectives on that term. It made me think of fashion as something that could not only just be applied to an individual but also that could sum up the whole society. Whenever I get the chance to go to new places I noticed from not a long time ago how besides observing people one by one, I tend to find some similarities in the particular group’s style of wearing clothes. It is truly incredible also how adaptive people are to certain changes in fashion; since it is such a fast-moving industry these days, the way the society adapts to new trends can bring in new changes to develop something new out of already existing clothes and styles (example is current streetstyle emerging these days, along with Vetements brand leading). The never ending circle of society reflection on new changes is actually the main factor of new discoveries in fashion. The way people respond and show it really matters, I never thought of fashion as something beyond the style – it is definitely more than wearing clothes. Sometimes, it is about merging into the environment, and sometimes, it is about being different than others – any of the two ways works as long as the person approaching it feels confident about himself/herself.
Here is one of my most inspirational quotes from the readings that made me think of fashion as a never ending cycle of responses to changes:
“Retrospective spreads, filled with images drawn only from the magazine’s own archives, are an enormous part of how certain styles become fixed to a given period in the collective memory. Their creation is something like stepping back from a pointillist canvas, identifying where there is some coherence or evidence of an evolution, and then harnessing the authority of the timeline format to shape the reader’s own memory of the decade.”
– Laura Snelgrove “Taking us into 2000: Vogue’s struggle with time in the 1990s”