The first aphorism I chose is – “Fashion is gossip. Never underestimate the power of gossip. Semiologists are driven into ecstasies of supposition by its whispers.” I agree with this as it immediately reminded me of Gabrielle Chanel and her fashion empire. Chanel was born into poverty in the French countryside. However, she “sold” herself as someone expensive, exclusive and rich, and people believed that. Fashion is often a fantasy, perhaps it is a business trade of stories and perceptions. From the way Breward puts it, it seems like he was throwing some sort of shade on the Fashion industry and used “semiologists” as a metaphor for a certain people in the industry.
The second aphorism I chose is – “Fashion does not define. It is instead a term that demands definition.” I like this sentence as it emphasizes once again the malleability of fashion. We live in a generation of information explosion. Fashion can no longer stand alone as something purely aesthetically pleasing and plainly practical. Fashion has the powerful ability to convey information and redefine what it can be. And to support my first choice of aphorism, fashion can be anything you say it to be. And perhaps, it can be both a truth and a lie at the same time.
