As I reconsider the question “What is fashion?,” I realize I have come to think of fashion as a system on its own, operating worldwide with everyone participating whether they want to or not and I see that there is a great amount of layers to be discovered in this realm that I would not have thought of before.
To start with, one important change in my perspective happened during the weeks that we talked about everyday clothing and its almost hidden significance. As I was taking pictures for the dress log assignment and reflecting back on them and thinking about my choices rather than just wearing them and reflecting on the many issues that has led me to that choice, which include but not limited to, geography, age, location, race and religion. This discussion has led me to recognize the bigger picture here, as Hazel Clark and Cheryl Buckley comment in their book, Fashion and Everyday Life: London and New York, “As we will demonstrate, the role of fashion in everyday life is not just determined by the ‘fashion system’, which evolved as a gradually more global and commodity-driven set of processes. Fashion must also be recognized as a cultural phenomenon that facilitates embodied identity, in other words, how individuals and groups of people present themselves in and for the world.” Even as a student in a fashion school, I did not see the real depth and meaning of fashion as I see now.
