For your last LP Post of the semester, I would like you to reflect on the question “what is fashion?” which you were originally asked to answer in Week One. How has your understanding of fashion changed since the beginning of the semester? Give one or two specific examples to explain your answer. Your example(s) can come from anywhere, but support them with at least one quote from a class reading.
Fashion is a big word that has to tie with all kinds of factors in the world, time, space, culture, gender, history, etc. At the beginning of the semester, I simply think fashion is just styles of dressing the body with fabrics. However, approaching the end of the course, fashion became a more profound and interesting thing for me to study in the future. Culturally speaking, people style and dress differently according to their intersectionalities among subject positions; nation, gender, sexuality, class, place and race, etc, makes individuals differs from one and another. By daily practice of dressing the body with those subject formations, people form styles, Susan B. Kaiser wrote in her book Fashion and Cultural Studies, “Styling, dressing, adorning, or fashioning the body is a fundamental part of subject formation (shaping, sustaining, and shifting): and ongoing sense of self and identity in a changing worlding” (30) People shows identity to themselves and others in such a big world by styling themselves through daily dressing practices. Time and Space is also a big part in fashion, “Intersecting, embodied subject positions are not just about who we are becoming; they are also about when and where we are becoming.” (172) Kaiser wrote this in Chapter 8 in the book argues that time and space are important and significant in what forms and contributes fashion. It is necessary for people to know the past and place we live to fully understand what in the world has made us special. Incorporating with such saying, me as a designer from China, has always remember the time and place of where I was from, the cultural background and knowledge of the situation from back then makes me think differently on things; I have seen the most traditional meals, events and fashion from China, and also experienced what fashion is like in the United States of America, my subject position then differs from lots of people that are not like me. When it comes to design and aesthetics, this cultural background and experiences I had in different place and knowledge, I am slowly forming my very own sense of styling and fashioning my work and myself. What’s more, fashion can also be political by using fashion stating a discourse ; sexual and nonsexual; etc.
