August 11, 2011
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Fashion and Communication
The first thing someone says to you when they walk in a room is normally what they wear and their body language. The two together communicate a wealth of information about how they view themselves, what they are there for, and how they expect to interact with you.
Without spending too much time exploring the various modes of dress, posture and the like, I want to explore an aspect of difficult clothing - completely high maintenance shoes, dresses and the like.
As a guy, I value comfort and freedom of movement at all times. This allows nearly completely non-self-conscious behaviour all-the-time. I can focus on what I'm doing and so forth. When dressed up, I still prefer freedom of movement, and looking at most modern male formal wear, that's echoed. We can nominally run and fight etc, in our formal wear.
Not so girls.
I find it enchanting to see women in completely ridiculous outfits, a la, Alexander McQueen's Balsawood skirts. Spindly stilettos and either voluminous or scandalous wraps that women don can be absolutely breathtaking - but largely, all of them communicate one underlying message.
"I don't need to worry about function."
From exquisite coiffure to lacquered nails, from long trailing dresses, to dresses that reveal too much if one moves too quickly - all of these elements of beauty stress the expectation of admiration, and thus impute an understood value to the wearer. The outfits say I don't need to run, to hurry or to bustle. I will glide at my own pace, and it is the pace that beauty sets.
The more impractical, the more it assumes this role on the pedestal.
Personally, I enjoy outfits of all sorts along the continuum between practical work-chic to the flamboyantly haute.
Wherever they lie on that continuum, there is an aesthetic ethos to enjoy. Still, the completely impractical ends of beauty and fashion achieve a pinnacle of self-absorbedness that is simultaneously, amazing, stunning, and... sometimes sublime.
Comments (2)
I saw this post titled "Fashion and Communication" which are both topics dear to me so I had to come visit. It's been a while! Although I must say perhaps it would be good to distinguish between the fashion proclivities of all "girls" and the loftier aims of the haute couture fashion world =) hope you're well!
@taliesinaria -
Absolutely...
And in that continuum, they communicate all manner of things... as varied and nuanced as the vim with which we parlay with word, pauses, inflections, and tones.
A 3 paragraph communique about fashion could never do the topic justice - nor even a decalogy of tomes. That said, I completely agree with the distinction you make - adjusting that it's not merely a duality, but a whole continuity of predilections.
Yet, at one extreme, it is the very essence of impracticality that communicates so riotously. Understated in the spoken, but visceral in the impact.
I'm well. And are you? Where are you these days?
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