Christopher Breward’s Aphorisms

1. “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-lived and futures foretold.”
   1. Fashion is not as personal as this aphorism makes it seem. Fashion is not about who we are but who we want to become and who we want to show to the world. Fashion acts as a facade for the wearer in order to distort perceptions and control how the wearer is viewed. Everything we wear is steeped heavily in unassigned connotations but we can control what our clothing says about us. Fashion is also heavily influenced by current trends and styles. People are more concerned about how they fit in than how they can be true to themselves. Fashion is also about wearability, practicality, and function.
2. “Fashion can be about confirmation, of self and others. But it is also about anxiety, ambiguity, and worry. As an aid to understanding psychological complexities it is unsurpassed.”
   1. I am extremely interested in what fashion can say about the designer and wearer subconsciously. While I don’t believe that fashion is traditionally “personal” I do believe that it provides insight into the person who wore it and even designed it. I think it is true that fashion is rooted in insecurity because so much of what we wear is “corrective” and designed to hide flaws and accentuate assets. Many conceptual fashion collections, although analytical, are still rooted in anxiety in many ways. I think of the late Alexander McQueen’s most memorable work and how his collections often reflected his current mindset and thoughts. His final collection before his death in 2010 was inspired greatly by religious iconography and shows his contemplation with the afterlife and death.