Fashion is a communicator. It’s a way of sending information and receiving information. For the most essential need, people use clothing to keep warm and safe. And then people using fashion to shape their body, either hide or reveal. And people use fashion to fit in certain environments. Fashion has tons of signifier that, with human impulse to make sense, makes people find their kind and other kinds. For example, the same garment in different subcultures could mean different things. The term “bricolage” is used to describe such a situation. Dick Hebdige states that: “Together, object and meaning constitute a Sign, and within anyone culture, such signs are assembled, repeatedly, into characteristic forms of discourse.” (Style, page 258) Fashion helps people deliver subject formations to people who they think need to see. All the actions made in fashion is sending the information to the outside world that how that person wants to be perceived, and when we interpret others’ fashion decisions, we are also receiving information. Fashion helps people analyze themselves in the daily bases and keep them self-conscious. Fashion is special and powerful because people present themselves without words, the delivery of information could be vague and misunderstood, but it also gives fashion a certain level of freedom for self-expressing. For me, I used to think that fashion speaks for me about what I like and what I don’t like, but after studied this course, I could look at fashion in a bigger picture about how it relates to all different perspectives in culture. Fashion never stands alone, it’s a communicator of culture that everyone involved in.
