Vlog (aka Movie Time)

I finally got the video I made for my Writing for New Media class (also the class I started this blog for) to upload onto my blog! Enjoy! :)

xoxo
C.R.M.

Why Fashion?

Fashion is ever changing and morphing into something new and exciting. It never stays the same for long, and like a water fountain, it recycles the old and makes it new again. The only way to truly stay up to date on what other people are saying about fashion and keep with the trends is by being observant and doing your homework. There are a myriad of ways to do this, but my personal favorites are reading magazines and blogs, going shopping and even just people watching. But why do people even care about what the new hip trend is you may ask? Why do people spend their entire lives studying something that is always changing and to some, has no value whatsoever? People love fashion because it gives them a lift from the mundane of everyday life, it is a fun past-time or hobby, and it gives people a way to track history as it is being made.

I have always felt bad for people who are blind because of all the color they miss out on in life. The world we live in is full of such exciting textures, hues, depths and colors. How boring would it be if we all ran around in gray jumpsuits or the same jeans and black t-shirts? The way we dress can define us in ways we don’t even realize. It may seem like an unconscious choice you make in the morning to choose the yellow shirt or the red shirt, but you are choosing an aspect of the way that people view you and you are choosing how you are going to impact the world of color. Stephanie Maddux said, “In today's world, fashion defines a culture, the status in which society sees you, it defines the type of people that you hang out with, the type of attitude that you may have…Clothing defines your personality and your way of life. Apparently, living by the way of fashion has become a standard in life.”^[i]

Choosing what you wear and being excited about that choice can give you a lift on a bad day, make you feel empowered, and take away some of the gray that so often fills our lives. This is especially apparent around springtime. Glenda Bailey, editor of Bazaar magazine said, “A new fashion season always gives us a lift, and although the word may be overused, the spring collections felt decidedly fresh.”^[ii] So make a statement, embrace something new and give the world some color and something to talk about.

Some people don’t consider clothes to by anything more than a way to cover themselves so they don’t have to join a nudist colony. For others, it is a job that fills their entire lives. They track fashion shows and follow the trends like some people follow the stock market. These people track the trends and then tell us commoners what they find: “The New York shows were full of paisley…with trippy Beatles-take-a-jaunt-to-India swirls and brocades and ’20-era flappers. Right on New York’s heels, London was chockablock with the tech-no eye candy of digital prints.”^[iii] For many, like myself, fashion is just a fun hobby that brings them joy and satisfaction. This group may see fashion as a challenge like Rajni Lucienne Jacques: “Every spring I go on a journey to find a not-too-high sandal that satisfies me as much as my usual heels. [I want] cutesy and chic all at once.”^[iv] Or maybe all it will entail is a trip to the mall every now and again to buy a few new pieces and get rid of some of the old.

One of the biggest reasons people are interested in studying fashion is because of its historical value. How often do you remember a date or a certain time period in history without having a picture of what the clothes looked like in that era pop up in your mind? So it shall also be with our generation. Suzy Menkes said, “There is a sea change in fashion for spring 2012—and not just by way of the underwater themes that were captured I the pearls at Chanel, sharks’ teeth at Givenchy, and crustaceous corals at Alexander McQueen. A generational change and the techno revolution have brought a shift in attitude that may turn out to be the defining spirit of the 21^st century’s second decade.”^[v] What will be our overarching defining characteristics that our children will make fun of us for in the future? Will it be the peplum which Bazzar magazine says is “the season’s most modern look—and for that matter, one of it’s most flattering,” or “straight-cut trousers [that] impart instantly cool polish”?^[vi] Whatever they may be, it is only through having an interest and study of fashion that any of this will matter in years to come.

 No matter what you might throw on in the morning, someone somewhere made important decisions to have those clothes land in your closet. No one can go through life without fashion or clothing impacting him or her in some way and this is why study of the subject is so important and useful. People love fashion because of the way it defines and gives color to our lives, because it gives people a fun hobby to enjoy and because it defines history in a way nothing else can. So the next time you slide open a drawer or push open a closet door to choose what to wear in the morning, know that your decision could change the world.

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[i] Stephanie Maddux, “Fashion: Does Fashion Define Who You Are?,” last modified July 17, 2009, http://voices.yahoo.com/fashion-does-fashion-define-3797678.html.

[ii] Glenda Bailey, “Editor’s Letter,” Bazaar, Spring 2012, 156.

[iii] Lisa Armstrong, “The Shape of the Season,” Bazaar, Spring 2012, 235.

[iv] Rajni Lucienne Jacques, “Hottest Style News This Minute,” Glamour, March 2012, 160.

[v] Suzy Menkes, “The New Season,” Bazaar, Spring 2012, 380.

[vi] “The Style: Where Fashion Gets Personal,” Bazaar, Spring 2012, 199.

The Evolution of Fashion

The History of Fashion is such a broad topic that millions of books, articles, websites and blogs are dedicated to the study of it. Trying to narrow fashion down to a specific cut and dry history is almost impossible. Throughout time periods and cultures, every country, state, even city, has had their own history of fashion and unique style. Most everyone has a different view or opinion of what fashion is, but what is it that makes fashion so important and versatile over the years?

Since the beginning of the civilization, clothing has been important to the masses. From the time of Adam and Eve wearing fig leaves to cover his nakedness, to now days, where society spends a good chunk of their time worrying, obsessing and fussing over it, fashion has an impact on each of us whether we like it or not. As is sung in “The Creation of Man” from the musical, The Scarlet Pimpernel^[i], the lyrics “Now, drape your cape and puff your cuff, embroider those lapels! Be the king of the beasts in pastels! La, but someone has to strike a pose, and bear the weight of well-tailored clothes, and that is why the Lord created men” demonstrate just how important clothing is to our society.

What I find ironic about fashion and its increasing importance in our everyday lives is the lack of people who actually know how to sew. “Ready-made clothing…resulted in the devaluation of the sewing machine in the minds of Americans, which lead to its ‘disappearance’ in American culture. Since it was no longer a status symbol, the sewing machine became an object whose use was assumed but not proclaimed—something akin to a washtub or broom.” In our culture today you rarely hear of people making their own clothing. More often I hear of people throwing or giving away old clothes, or even new ones, that don’t fit them because they don’t know how to mend or alter them to fit. This trend is unlikely to be reversed, but at least there are some designers left who devote all their time to making beautiful clothing. If not, we might all be running around in potato sacks. How uncomfortable.

In contrast to the lack of at home designers today, the first “fashion designers” were disputed throughout the history. Before the 1800’s, most seamstresses were anonymous and were employed by the rich and powerful. At the time, the rich were able to dictate specific fashion trends. If a queen, princess, duchess or other important noble man or woman wore something new, it was instantly the height of fashion. A more recent example of this is charm bracelets. They became popular in Queen Victoria’s reign because she “loved to wear and give charm bracelets. When her beloved Prince Albert died, she even made ‘mourning’ charms popular; lockets of hair from the deceased, miniature portraits of the deceased, charm bracelets carved in jet.”^[ii] Charles Frederick Worth^[iii] is said to have been one of the first fashion designers who was actually recognized for his work. He led his customers to embrace the new trends he conjured by “preparing a variety of designs that were shown on live models at the House of Worth…his aggressive self-promotion earned him the titles ‘father of haute couture’ and ‘the first couturier.’”^[iv]

There have been many fashion revolutions and shifts throughout the years that have shaped our ideas and given names to the trends we see today. For example, Mrs. Bloomer who “had a skirt just below the knees and trousers gathered at the ankles,”^[v] the flappers of the 20’s, the greasers of the 50’s, the peace loving folks of the 60’s, and the hipsters of 2012. One of my favorite and commonly overlooked revolutions in fashion was Christian Dior’s “New Look” of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. After World War II, people needed something new and exciting to help them emerge from the dregs of penny pinching and assisting the war effort. “Christian Dior delivered it in a collection of luxurious clothes with soft shoulders, waspy waists and full flowing skirts intended for what he called ‘flower women’.”^[vi] The fifties are a huge inspiration for me in my designs and the way that Dior was able to take America by storm in a single, simple silhouette is remarkable. “All the reference books agree: contemporary fashion was born in 1947, with the New Look, the child of Christian Dior.”^[vii] Many fashion designers like Dior have changed the world in their time. That is why we continue to be inspired by their creations and people are willing to spend small fortunes on a dress just because it has a particular label on the back.

Another interesting aspect of fashion is the way we use it as an alternate way to study history and the people involved in it. CBS news posted a video on their website that shows in three minutes the evolution of fashion by a woman changing just her hair style and the clothes on her upper shoulders. Even with such a limited view, the watcher can instantly relate to what time period she is embodying.^[viii]


Moby - Wait for me from Lena Nosenko on Vimeo.
Another video shows a man and a woman dancing while their clothes and the music they are dancing to changes to match the time period. We are such a visual culture that when someone mentions a decade, the first thing that pops into most of our minds is a picture of someone in that time periods clothing.

To answer the question I posed at the beginning of this post, the reason that fashion has remained so important and versatile over the years is because it directly involves people and their imaginations. As long as a nudist colony doesn’t take over the world, we will always need something to wear. The individualist nature of humans will continue to push us towards the new, different and exciting things that fashion has to offer year to year. We are always stealing from the past and the styles they held while looking towards the future and the evolution that is bound to continue.

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[i] “The Creation of Man,” last modified 2012, http://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/s/scarletpimpernellyrics/thecreationofmanlyrics.html.

[ii] “Charm bracelet,” last modified February 14, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charm_bracelet.

[iii] “History of fashion design,” last modified February 20, 2012, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fashion.

[iv] “Charles Frederick Worth (1826-1895) and The House of Worth,” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, accessed February 22, 2012, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wrth/hd_wrth.htm.

[v] Wilfred Mark Webb, The Heritage of Dress: Being notes on the history and evolution of clothes: (London: E. Grant Richards, 1907), 361, accessed February 21, 2012, http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/HumanEcol/HumanEcol-idx?type=goto&id=HumanEcol.MBWebbHeritage&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=361.

[vi] “Christian Dior: Fashion Designer (1905-1957),” Design Museum, accessed February 21, 2012, designmuseum.org/design/christian-dior.

[vii] “History of the House of Dior,” Dior, accessed February 22, 2012, http://www.dior.com/couture/en_us/The-House-of-Dior/House-of-Dior-in-Video/The-House-of-Dior.

[viii] “Evolution of fashion and style for women over centuries,” last modified September 21, 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504784_162-20109692-10391705.html.