So this week in lecture we had a discussion about what really is fashion, and the class came up with a lot of definitions as to what they think fashion is. A very textbook-y definition of fashion, according to Wikipedia, is "a popular style in clothing, footwear...makeup, hairstyle and body". This definition doesn't really address the various sub-cultures of fashion. For example, business fashion are clothes you would wear for formally: think suits and ties. Sure, there are a lot of ways you could design your suits and ties to express yourself in the best way possible, in the end they are still formal attires and are reserved for special occasions. Then there are casual fashion for day-to-day wears which also has its own enormous categories of sub-cultures that people identify with. One sub-culture would be high end fashion, which people tends to joke and make fun about since those clothes deviates heavily from the norm. Personally, I respect these type of clothes and generally have no problems with it because I think those type of designer clothes are just a way for the artists to express their ideas and show their latest explorations on fashion rather than showcasing actual practical wear because I heavily doubt anyone would pay 4 digits just so others can call them weird. If you do though, props to you. Then you also have people who places a heavy emphasis on shoes, or sneaker heads, which really messes up the shoes market since the only group that benefits in this business are shoes scalpers who use bot to make massive purchases on release date then sell them for three times the price. Sometimes I like to think that the corporations are actually working with the scalpers for maximum profit but that's a thought for maybe another class. Now personally I feel like the casual fashion street wear market is quite over saturated and you see a lot of "same-ness" in these type of trends, and the worst thing you want to have is to wear the same clothes as someone else; this happened to me once in high school and it is kind of embarrassing. So this bring us to cultural fashion, which are quite distinct depending on the culture of the group. The group could be ethnic, national, or regional. This type of fashion are rarely seen nowadays and only are only reserved for special cultural occasions as street wears has taken the casual day-to-day style by storm and dominates the market across all regions; this is the "same-ness" I talked about earlier. However, this wasn't always the case. Looking through Fashion History: A Global View by Linda Welters and Abby Lillethun, one can see that fashionable daily wears used to be distinct by culture. So why is it that society nowadays are less likely to wear these cultural fashion style for daily wear? In class professor mentioned how kids nowadays are embarrassed to embrace their culture, which leads to insecurities and thus rejecting these type of cultural wear as it identify them as such. I think if we can change this way of thinking, then we can bring cultural fashion back to the market and society, thus making the world a more colorful and vibrant place. Question is, how do we achieve this seemingly impossible task as the media are working directly against us?
C'mon bro you wouldn't really wear this shit would you?
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Picture: https://www.thecut.com/2014/06/most-outrageous-mens-looks-at-fashion-week.html
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