After reading Christopher Breward’s foreword to Fashion Studies: Research Methods, Sites and Practices, a book edited by Heike Jenss, in my Intro to Fashion Studies Lecture/Recitation, two of his aphorisms caught my attention.
“Fashion does not define. It is instead a term that demands definition.”
“Fashion is intensely personal, in the same way that poetry is intensely personal. It is a medium through which personal stories can be told, memories re.lieves and futures foretold.”
The first aphorism is in my opinion very straightforward and also true. I choose it because I believe that fashion can not be described in one sentence; everybody has its own definition and view of it. Fashion itself does not define us, it does not define who we are or what we believe in, instead we, with our own experiences and character, define what Fashion means to us, in other words, each of us gives it a definition and a meaning. After a lecture about Fashion Studies in Parsons School of Design, the instructor asked us, the students, to define Fashion. Everybody in that lecture room had a different view of it because fashion is seeking to be defined by us.
I choose the second aphorism because I’ve always thought of Fashion to be very personal. For example, if I show a black suit that I own to a group of people, there is a high chance that it is going to remind them of something. Maybe the color reminds them of something they used to wear or the texture is similar to a suit their mother has. But personally, I know that that that suit was my grandmothers, a very elegant woman and that it still has her smell. Every piece of clothing has a history behind them; they have the power to enhance your senses and trigger memories. I also agree that with fashion you can predict its future because it’s not static it is a cycle, and the trends tend to come back years after they were popular.
This two aphorisms really resonate with what I believe fashion is. They explain in a very solid and straightforward manner that everybody has a different definition of fashion and that we are the ones that give it a meaning, and that fashion is highly personal, being able to tell stories, trigger memories and predict the future of itself.
