When answering the question “What is Fashion?,” I think about the uniformity exhibit and the lesson about uniformity, fashion and nonconformity has changed the way I think about fashion. Originally, or before this class, I answered this question with saying that it is clothing that is created by designers that has a cultural or social significance. I wouldn’t have classified uniforms to fit into the fashion description because I never thought they had any influence on fashion or that fashion influenced them, I saw them as boring, meaningless, and just specific to whatever job they were for.  After seeing the exhibit and reading the article by Jennifer Craik called, “The Cultural Politics of the Uniform,” I see it as a piece of fashion too- as an influence for fashion and for the uniforms to be influenced by the fashion of the time. In this reading she says, “Uniforms are intriguing. Uniforms are all about control, not only of the social self but also of the inner self and its formation. Uniforms send out mixed messages – some of these are obvious but others less so. Often it is those other subliminal messages that make them so intriguing. Those mixed messages are a combination of “not statements” (rules of wearing and not wearing that are often unstated or only partially stated- or arbitrarily applied) and transgressive messages” (Craik, 128). The idea of mixed messages being shown through uniforms are so interesting, and something that I never thought about before – but what’s most interesting is that the mixed messaged she speaks about are also seen in fashion too – all fashion shows mixed messages. So to now answer the question, “What is fashion?” again after this whole semester, Fashion is anything that is worn or adorned by all types of people (any body shape, social level, job) that shows cultural, personal, social, and/or economical significance – which definitely includes uniforms as part of this definition of fashion!