What is fashion?
At the beginning of this semester, I defined fashion as “the style of people’s dressing in different time period. It can be influenced by their culture, aesthetics, and time. It includes multiple elements such as clothes, makeups, jewelry, etc. It also refers to the design languages and messages they convey.”
After studying it for this semester, I realized fashion can be anything, and it is everything. It can be a story, an attitude or emotion, a form of expression. It fluctuates with time. Every single day, it is expressed and interpreted in a new way.
In Fashion and Cultural Studies written by Susan Kaiser, she mentions the definition of fashion, “a prevailing custom, a current usage; esp. one characteristic of a particular place or period of time” or, more specifically, “the mode of dress, etiquette, furniture, style of speech, etc., adopted in society for the time being.” (12). Fashion is a reflection of the current society in terms of its cultural, political, and economic stances within a certain time period. And it has embodied itself into that period. Thus, we are always able to identify the style of a decade.
Comparing the two definitions made before and after this course, I discovered my previous impression on fashion was limited to the clothing industry and luxury brands, and now I realized it is such a board term which includes many disciplines. I also learnt fashion, style, and dress are separate concepts. Clothing is one possible and highly accessible way for us to interact with fashion. Fashion is also highly personalized, and everyone has a unique style which can be achieved though dressing practice. Fashion is an epitome of a certain time period, depicting the culture and the surrounding circumstances. IFS makes me value more about the importance of costume design and the utilization of other fashionable elements in the photographs. As a photo student, I shall use them as part of the storytelling in my images.
