fashion as a means of articulating identity
Excerpt by Essay:
Fashion and Identity
The following statement is indeed true: “Fashion provides one of the most ready means through which individuals can make expressive visual transactions about their identities” (Bennett, june 2006: 96) as we have studied time and again throughout this class. Mainly because fashion is within a sense their experiential art: fashion distinguishes itself by all other artwork forms since one really does live one’s life in their clothes. With this sense fashion is able to monetize on the visual medium just as a portrait or film does, nevertheless unlike films or artwork, it offers they a distinct influence on their encounter as a citizen of the world. This kind of major connection between trend and personality has an powerful impact on vogue consumption.
Id is a thing that is highly ready to accept influence and which can conform and be motivated by the changing times: identification is not really neutral (Edwards, 2011). Just as so many college students argue that all art is actually a product of its period, identity is likewise susceptible to cultural and political influences: style is one particular manifestation of these. Perhaps one of the most revelatory examples that history has ever shown of the politics manifestations of identity through fashion have been via hippie culture almost 50 years ago. Hippie culture demonstrated a variety of impressive changes in fashion and hippies dressed and presented themselves to the community in an totally distinct manner. Hippies dressed in torn and frayed jeans and bell bottoms, love beads, with dairy products cloths, purple velvet, bangles and dirty, snarled hair (Edwards, 2011). The way in which that they outfitted was both equally a means of expressing their particular freedom – freedoms of dress and self-presentation, along with a statement that they can shunned tradition. For hippie culture, conference was connected with traditional middle class beliefs that were frequently very old-fashioned and which generally backed the battle that genuinely offended most hippies to their key. Thus, to get hippies, fashion was a way of expressing a great identity that they associated with their own political activity, one which was marked by simply love, peacefulness, experimentation, music, art and other values that were pinnacle to these people. You possibly can even argue that the expression between hippies nonetheless contained the eternal tension between the specific and cultural, as simply by rejecting what they considered to be conformist, middle school values, we were holding actually mentioning them, as the opposite of something even now refers to the initial thing. “At the cardiovascular of all with this is the tension of the individual as well as the social, a feeling of oneself because the same and yet different to other folks, as fitting in as standing out, and as shaped however creative. It is moreover, no surprise, that the whirling world of trend should have thus strong a connection with the equally dynamic regarding identity, as the patterns and gradation of the garments on the types mutate facing us, were also confronted with the three-dimensional kaleidoscope of ourselves” (Edwards, 2011: 105). Fashion and identity will certainly thus always go together, as the 2 are able to regularly engage in a certain level of offer and have and to set up an on-going dynamic. Thus, consumers will begin to consume garments and accessories which might not really reflect all their normal habits of intake, but that will reflect the manner in which they really want themselves to be viewed.
This give and take between fashion and identity is distinct and does indeed are present. As various other scholars have pointed out, significant Storry and Childs, “the way that we dress can easily serve possibly to confirm as well as to subvert different facets of each of our identities, just like our male or female, race, category and age” (Bennett, 2006: 95). These types of scholars appropriately point out that fashion does not have to be a outward exhibition of one’s identity and background, but can actually be a denial of one’s id and qualifications, serving just to deny whom one is or where one comes from. “As this particular declaration suggests, by simply assembling particular items of style in particular ways, and through experimentation with dress and appearance, later contemporary individuals produce personal photos, designed both to situate the home and distribute culturally coded messages to others. Thus, vogue embodies a number of symbolic values that are collectively comprehended within and across diverse social groups” (Bennett, june 2006: 95). Bennett is able to aptly touch upon some of the central pillars of image creation via the enlargement or adjusting of standard demarcations of identity (race, gender, age) (2005). Hence, one could even argue that style is a tool for id: it can be used as a tool because of not only articulating one’s identity, but as well as a means of adjusting or perhaps tweaking their identity, or presenting the version with the self the particular one desires the earth to see.
Equally as much as their sense of style presents, one’s sense of fashion conceals. This is apparent despite the hippies of the 1960s. Even though some of them dressed while the epitome of counter-culture associated with deviating from the norm, several same hippies originated from safe, affluent middle-class and upper-middle class homes and had parents who put conservative values. Thus, for several hippies, their very own fashion sense was a means of question where they came from, or one could state, it was a way of rebelling against where they originated from. Consumption patterns are therefore impacted, based upon what people desire there being hidden and to be unveiled.
Fashion as a means of presenting one’s identity is particularly in terms of hip-hop tradition and rap artists. For instance , the 1990s marked the period when hip-hop artists began becoming better compensated for work, rappers started their particular production firms and vogue lines: money started putting in and was quickly spent (Suddreth, 2009). “Although references to wealth have got existed since the beginning of hip-hop, the brand new ‘bling-bling’ lifestyle became part of hip-hop’s business success due to the videos of Puff Dad and Hooligan Records and Master P’s No Limit Records. The definition of ‘bling-bling’ was initially used in 1999 by Funds Money Information artist N. G. On his single ‘Bling-Bling, ‘ plus the artists on the Cash Funds label had been considered the epitome of this materialist lifestyle and attitude” (Suddreth, 2009). A large number of hip-hop music artists today actively celebrate this kind of excessive way of living to be certain, additionally it is apparent that many of them use this rampant materialism in the form of platinum eagle jewelry, artist clothes and shoes, as a means of articulating their own personality. Rather than discovering with the many black People in america in this region who happen to be rampantly marginalized and who also male middle-class or lower-middle class incomes, these hip-hop artists embrace and incorporate luxury, as a means of differentiating themselves using their peers, associated with attempting to enjoy their variation and success. This is comparable to when the zoot suit started to be all the rage intended for African-American men in Harlem and Chicago in the 1940s (English, 2007). As associates of a race that was consistently marginalized and discriminated against through time and record, using luxurious and custom made goods, you could argue, is actually a means of allowing for this course to distinguish themselves as crucial and to place value in themselves if the chains of the past often rejected to. Through this sense consumption patterns with this group became aggravated and manifested in ostentatious methods, to echo the id they wished to put forth.
This passage about hip-hop designers and trend presents all of us with a new part of discussion: how fashion as a means of conveying one’s identity is influenced by celebrity traditions. As it have been for many years, fashion is usually well supported by celebrity tradition with actresses, tv presenters, and the girlfriends or wives of footballers being the individuals who are scrutinized (Gibson, 2006). In the past, it was kings and queens who arranged the standards of fashion, but today, these individuals will without doubt need help in dressing excellently and in fashion tips, rather than being the individuals who determine such as well as amounts of specialist. One could believe the new royals are whoever are featured by attention in the media as well as the mainstream press, and that individuals are the those who dictate precisely what is fashionable and what isn’t very. Thus, 1 facet of style as a means of expressing a person’s identity is centered on the desire to imitate, as well as the desire to resemble certain celebrities. For example , lots of men copied Plug Nicholson’s well-known leather clothing and darker sunglasses if he was a well-known actor in the 1970s and 1980s. Other forms of famous fashion can “bubble-up” via edgy arenas of film and television; for example , Adam Dean was the person who made a white-colored t-shirt and levis green jeans seem popular and tough (Gibson, 2006). Therefore, a certain degree of fashion is present as a means of copying the ones that one admires and of imitating people who are in the public vision. Fashion is definitely an expression of imitating the lifestyle or the overall look of famous people, as a way of expressing the identity or perhaps life that a person wishes
