Learning Portfolio Post #3

In the dress practice interview, I interviewed Michael Gladkey, my best friend in high school. He is currently enrolled in digital design program in Capilano University, and he is a Canadian who has lived in Russia, Ukraine and United States previously.

The main theme was subject position; specifically, I focus on how my interviewee’s dress practice was affected by his age, gender, family heritage, and occupation. These four factors are connected and impact his preference in clothing; in other words, these aspects do not stand on their own and bring him completely different influences.

Age and gender are the least-mentioned factors, since my interviewee always dressed up as typical young straight man over the world. I asked him more questions about how his university major influenced his dress practice. He mentioned how he chose his clothes based on the texture he felt comfortable with, and how he prepared clothes for the next day for saving time. Another important element was his East-European heritage. In his words, he barely dressed casually because of the traditional way of dressing up in East Europe, and I saw few T-shirts with round neck during the video interview, which matched his interpretation. Overall, his daily dress style was in-between casual and formal, which was influenced by his occupation and heritage.

My interviewee’s dress preference did not have significant change from three years ago when we were in high school. The only thing that was worth mentioning was that he wore shirts in bright color more often, which was brought by him shaping himself as a smart mature digital engineer. Even though we had completely different aesthetic preferences, our occupations (as a fashion design student and as a digital design student) deeply influence our dress practice. In my case, I started to wear more fashionable clothes. Another similarity we shared in our daily dress practice was that we preferred a same style of clothes, and we bought clothes based on the variations of the style. In the reading Why I Wear the Exact Same Thing to Work Every Day by Matilda Kahl, she addressed: “We have been given the opportunity to reflect our true personalities in everything we wear, every day—to extol our ‘creative spirits’ in everything we do.” From the perspective of subject position, we both tried to reflect our occupations through our daily dress practice.

To conclude, the interview made me reconsider the relation between clothes, body, and thoughts. Clothes reflect mental world which shape people to who they want to become; body is a tool to hang up the clothes and transform abstract concepts to visual presentation.

 

 

 

Work Cited:

Kahl, Matilda. “Why I Wear the Exact Same Thing to Work Every Day”. HARPERSBAZAAR.com

 

 

 

 

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