Style vs. Fashion...after about 30 minutes of blog research...

First, a personal anecdote:

I've been on a recent shopping spree. It was bound to happen as last year I tore through approximately FOUR pairs of pants. I've gone the skinny and straight route, something I thought I would never do not necessarily out of disliking the style, I just have this pair of monstrous calves that I can be insecure about from time to time.

Fashion crossed my mind when I observed that about 60% of the pants I had procured over the past week were straight leg. I find that straight cut pants are just the skinny equivalent for people with big calves. When I wasn't buying clothes, I could not tell the different between skinny and straight, they all looked the same to me.

After this week, my conclusion:

"Style and fashion only diverge with the passage of a sizable amount of time."
- Christine, on her blog

There were many conclusions that I came across in the many postings about "style vs. fashion," the most popular being about how fashion fades, but style...persists, stays the same, is immortal. Yes, all of that.

The most helpful blog I found in relating my conclusion was the Style v. Fashion page from Samantha C's Style Pick. What I liked was her citation of an article from Psychology Today about how to have style.

My interpretation: "Style is what makes the artist. Fashion provides the tools."

- Christine, on her blog again

Was it a massive change in persona that led the majority of my wearable pants to become considerably skinnier? By some odd means of convergent evolution, my style is now fashionable? In my clothes-less year, in addition to assessing my own wardrobe, I couldn't avoid looking at the ways other people dressed and ask myself "would that look good on me? Would I wear that? Could I wear that?" Even to those who don't follow fashion , it's not hard to find people in a crowd who do. Even more so, since fashion does dictate what is in stores, it was hard to find things similar to what I tore up since a number of years had passed since I acquired those clothes. That, my friends, is divergence. Regardless of style persona, people have to work with the time and with what is available. If we consider "things available at the time" to be clothing sold in stores as a premise based off of three sentences ago, then perhaps style and fashion are closer friends than initially perceived.

By no means am I down playing anyone's style. Nor am I saying that to be stylish you should get with the times. Fashionable? Maybe. Stylish? I've always felt that style flourishes out of limitation whether it be monetary, body type, weather, or time.

To be a great artist, do you need to have every tool possible at your disposal or just the ones the you use the most? Any artist would pick as you also don't need to use every tool to create something amazing. Any tool used would be dictated by what is available at the time and I don't think that's ever stopped anyone from expressing themselves.

Oh Barbie!

Barbie, is by far the most far reaching fashion icon in history. While I can't back this up with a thesis on the cultural impact that Barbie has had on American society, I can say from experience that before girls can even coordinate clothes for themselves, they start with a Barbie.
If you think about it, as girls, we can play dress up to some degree, however, that takes a fair amount of money just to see yourself in ill fitting clothes compared to seeing how clothes "should" fit on a Barbie. You see, at a very young age, we were color and fashion scientists. How does this fit? How does this look? A friend of mine says her mom gave her pieces of cloth and she made clothes for her Barbie. One day when I brought Barbies to school for my friend, all of the girls were huddled in a giant group waiting for our turns to dress her. I always got pissed when I lost a shoe.

With a few exceptions of gimmick Barbies, I've really enjoyed how her style has diversified while remaining vibrant, new, risky...overall, a perfect combination of the craziest fashions in a package that makes it work. She out-divas Lady Gaga and Madonna. It also doesn't hurt that, like me, Barbie has large calves.

Observe a more recent conception of Barbie. Sugar by Byron Lars. Who could wear a pagoda style hat that (when placed to scale is probably the size of an umbrella) completely covers a large afro? Barbie. Who could wear a safari style bustier on the outside of her blouse? Barbie. Who could get away with wearing THAT much blue eyeshadow? Barbie. Who could think up an outfit like this? It's like mixing all your watercolors together and actually getting something nice oppose to a giant breen (brownish green) sludge. Of course that would be the amazing Mr. Byron Lars. I'm sure Barbie is the best client to design for. For one thing, she can wear anything. Secondly, I feel that designers chosen to create collections for Barbie are more sought out because of a pure interest in their art oppose to their ability to recreate trends in their vision. It's free range, pretty much complete artistic freedom.

This was mainly inspired by the Barbie Fashion Show over a year ago. Were the designs awesome or what? It would be nice if designers could produce a Barbie line for the general public because seriously

I'd want to get married in this.
I'd want to just go out somewhere in this. Betsey Johnson really got it down!

Mannequin: To Be or Not To Be?

From Merriam Webster

1 : an artist's, tailor's, or dressmaker's lay figure; also : a form representing the human figure used especially for displaying clothes
2 : one employed to model clothing

from left to right: Barbie, Mannequin, Eugenia Mandzhieva

While I don't want to resign myself to the thought that my mind does not have the artistic caliber to interpret fashion and all I can do is think of the social issues, really - as of the moment - it's hard for me to ignore the social issues surrounding fashion.

If you observe the definitions given above, I wonder if designers would prefer the brain functioning of one def along with the living convenience of the other. It's occurred to me that designers could just use mannequins (non-english definition) but, 1.) it takes a lot of time to change the clothes and reposition a mannequin. 2.) As showcased by Old Navy, campaigns attempting to personify mannequins kind of...are not fun.

not fun

At the same time, it would be nice to have a medium that didn't complain about low BMIs and self starvation. Something's gotta give, seriously.

I grew up in a time where if you were a supermodel, you were either featured or mentioned in a music video by either Ru Paul or George Michael. Yes. The awesome glamazon models of the 90s!

I don't know what is was that made those models bigger than their 5' 10" frames, but I feel that the quality of being "untouchable" worked in everyone's favor. I'm thinking that trends were a bigger deal then as well, and skinny was not quite as trendy then as it is today. These days, I think most people have figured out that proportion is the name of the game and if you're not tall, you can always be skinny. And this is where all hell breaks loose.

About a week ago, I was intrigued by a few articles (NY Daily News, New York Times) claiming that Coco Rocha had become a part of fashion's fat camp of models. Though at first incensed (hey, I'm a size 2-4 and about 8 inches short than her), I decided to resort to a more reliable source for the real breakdown: Coco Rocha's blog - O H S O C O C O: My Uncensored Point of View

- aside -
It's times like these that I truly appreciate blogs. Where else could I get an uncensored version of a models opinion other than her blog? On an even more far fetching note - I happen to like a Korean band called SHINee that I wouldn't be able to keep up with if it wasn't for blogs writing about them given that everything else is in Korean - a deep thank you - keep on blogging!
- end -

Needless to say, I much preferred Coco's version to the articles embedded with the elements to make someone angry at the fashion world. I'll admit, it brought me back to 2006 where Italy banned size zero models and Spain required a healthy 18 BMI for their models after the deaths of Ana Carolina Reston and Luisel Ramos. And now the sample size is at zero (0) again. Guilt is never in vogue for that long.

While talking with Pumpkin about it, he commented that he feels some of the things in the fashion world are f***ed up, but that his friend (who was a design major) commented that models may look the way the do so as to not distract from the clothes. Really? Walking hangers essentially. A designer could send down their clothes on hangers and perhaps a conveyor belt of mannequins, it would be cheaper and cost effective, but they don't. The only reason I can think of is that it takes away from the art. I think, in my idealism, I'm trying to get across that there is value in fashion models. That they're not there just to be hangers, but part of the overall artwork. Maybe a model will only be around for one season, but they had a part in completing someone's piece that otherwise would have been substandard. The world already respects the art, but we should also respect the aspects that make it possible.

fashion: the minority opinion

As a precaution to my largely imaginary audience, my teaching nature may diverge into a lot of analogies as well as a few references to history and science. My logical reasoning is also highly mathematical - as reasoning should be.

I've been stumbling across a lot of fashion commentary (via Tavi Gevinson's blog) concerning the opinions of the factions that fashion tends to create. Pro-fashion, anti-fashion, and some mild commentary on things in between, I've found to be interesting in their own ways with distinct messages to offer. There is still one thing that escapes me and it's not due to any unresolved issues within each respective article as much as it is... a more permanent enigma: What is fashion?

It may come off as odd that someone who likes reading fashion blogs and opinions, who has their favorite models and favorite designers, doesn't really have an idea of what fashion is - but seriously, there are times when I have to wonder where a lot of this commentary is being derived from and while they all may have a foundation in fashion, fashion in itself is quicksand.

Fashion, as defined by Webster, is a prevailing style during a particular time. Fashion, being defined by time, essentially makes it a function and with time constantly changing - fashion changes as well. Fashion is a variable in an environment searching for a constant. As a matter of fact, it is quite obvious that fashion trends are predicted through calculus and this manifests itself as:

1997: baggy jeans
2000: boho
2005: metallics
2008: bug sunglasses
2009: big waist defining belts

To add less of a method to the madness is the opinions of designers, who I am quite sure do not come to a hard consensus on the style of the time, also contributing to this unstable, ever changing view of fashion. Thus, fashion is generally an environment where anything goes, but only the best stays. It's the theory of evolution on crack. Hence, the elusiveness of the concept of fashion.

In my own experience, I've never found myself in an environment where I felt the need to alter my style to fit in. I spent the first 9 years of my life in a rather unsexy catholic school girl uniform and that did not change social distinctions at all. I've been regarded as a little off or odd for almost all of my life and since changing a personality is rather hard - especially a personality I like, I embraced this outside perception of me as an opportunity to do whatever I wanted - even wear a stained sweater with ducks on it to picture day. I accepted that, regardless of what I wore, I was always going to be a little odd - because of the way I looked, thought, talked...etc. There was no point in trying to "fit in" with any group and this train of thought was only supported by my having, what one would call, friends. Anyway - this is turning into an aside on my style development, I'll get back to the biz.

I generally go for the nondescript "fashion is a mode for self expression" route. To those who complain about clothes, do you ever look in the mirror naked and find yourself completely content being out of the confines of fashion? Truthfully, I'm quite comfortable either way - though I prefer the clothed route for the sake of being lawful. Laws dictate that we be clothed in most public areas, but that opens some to the larger problems of letting the fashionable general public dress them versus trying to dress themselves. It's a match between the development of personal style versus going with the flow of the fashionable time.

When it comes to fashion, I can't analyze it as concretely as other things. I find it far more abstract - inspiring, interesting, and fun, but nothing that I feel I can supply relevant commentary on. Always adjectives, but never nouns. Maybe social commentary, but fashion commentary? I need words for that.

It wouldn't be out of line to say that I don't really follow fashion, I just like looking at the pictures.

"Do you think that fashion is oppressive to women – and men – or should we celebrate it as a source of fun and self-expression?" (Tanya Gold's Article)

Seriously, it's both.