I chose two aphorisms in Christopher Breward’s foreword to Fashion Studies to discuss and analyze in the following.

Fashion is intensely personal, in the same way that poetry is intensely personal. It is a medium through which personal stories can be told, memories re-lived and futures foretold.

Like any creation of art, designers move people with their own interpretations of the world. I totally agree that fashion creation starts out personal. Yet through the way it spreads out, everything goes public. This sharing process may influence lots of people, and one style can be duplicated in many ways. and fashion may seem no longer personal again. It never seems personal when I saw clothing appears in an underground store shares the design from an haute couture garment. Nonetheless, individuals have their unique understandings. Second reproduction can obtain with another artists’ first-hand incidence. And one same item could be styled differently. In this way, fashion gets personal again. 

Fashion does not define. It is a term that demands definition.

I could not agree more with this sentence. There is never a correct definition for fashion. Every time the world gives fashion a tag, it gets ripped off. Fashion can be powerful but also subtle. Fashion can be positive but also negative. Fashion makes people individualize but also unites people. No one can tell you there is one way to be fashion. A black dress won’t tell you who you are, yet you have the chance to give the black dress another possibility.