What is Fashion?
Nearly a decade ago I was starting my first year at fashion design school. On that first day we had an assembly lead by Yamagata-san (Yoshikazu Yamagata, WrittenAfterwords). There was a big white board with ”ファッションと言うのは” (What is Fashion). So the discussion began. He asked for volunteers to give their thoughts. His prompt fell on a silent room of anxious first years unwilling to be first on the chopping block to give their thoughts. So he began pointing at random people. Answers started to come:
-For protection from the elements
-For self-expression
-To attract someone
-To identify with a group
Soon the board started to fill up with answers, and the conversation was starting to pick up. Simultaneously I was reaching my capacity for Japanese language and was starting to phase in and out. In all truthfulness, and embarrassingly, I probably started flirting with one of the girls sitting in front of me as my focus went in and out of the lecture. At the time I looked at the question as one with an answer that I was determined to find.
At the time my only exposure to “fashion” was what I could read from books, blogs, and other online resources. While I had a real interest in clothing and had a desire to design, I grew up pretty isolated and the idea of “fashion” almost felt like a curse-word or something to be ashamed of. I could write a whole post about that, but I think I’ll save that for a therapist.
Anyways, this question “What is Fashion?” is one that I would find myself coming back to all the time. Always changing my thoughts and thinking “This is it! This is the answer".” The final part of Yamagata-san’s lecture, maybe the most important part, that I almost missed. He brought out google maps. He had it zoomed in all the way to the street view, then he back out, back out some more, and continued to do so until we were looking at the earth, then he said now you can keep zooming out till you reach our galaxy then solar system etc etc. He was describing how this question and the answers we gave are really just the micro, and that it’s important to step back and see the macro and how interconnected the fashion system, how it’s not just any one of those answers but it encompasses all of that and connects so many aspects of the human condition.
That is all I really wanted to write. This is a memory, time and question that I often revisit. I imagine this may feel circular and maybe repetitive with past writings, but I believe that clothes are often overlooked in their importance to our stories. I think that this type of conversation will often circle back and maybe at times feel repetitive. As I work and make garments I will continue to explore the connection clothes has with our stories as people and keep revisiting in both micro and macro levels “what is fashion?”. New thoughts, experiences and ideas will be integrated and or filtered through the same line of questioning and analysis. Just like language, history and culture it needs the same level of inspection and discourse. Anyways, thanks for reading. I hope this sparks some thoughts
