When it came to chosing my career focus, I was torn between two artistic mediums: music & fashion. From about age 11, my sights were set firmly on fashion. A falling out with my first music teacher and entry to the most academic girls’ school in the country, led to a belief that music was not an option for me. I was ashamed to admit my desires to be a performing artist. Fashion on the other hand, was a business in the more conventional sense. I knew people & my parents knew people, very bright, intelligent people, working in fashion marketing, design & editorials and doing very well. It was a potentially lucrative and therefore viable career path, but more than that, it was a complete and utter infatuation.

My new school had no uniform, a rarity in the UK, and after years of catholic school get up I was overjoyed by the possibilities that was getting dressed in the morning. I felt better on days when I wore an outfit I was distinctly proud of, more true to myself. It was an opportunity to show who I was beyond the academics, which in this school everybody had, all without uttering a single word. At age 13 my mother bought me a pair of scarlet red ankle boots with a chunky heel, which I still have and wear today. It was like unspoken permission for me to dress as I please. I will never forget how empowered & confident I felt when I first wore them out. I have worn heels nearly every day of my life since. It was a revelation. I was finally the person I always knew I was, that I always wanted to be. Though my style has grown and developed over the years, I still own and wear the majority of the clothes I owned when I was 13 (I’m a twig and always have been). The notable difference being my now distinct lack of jeans and far greater abundance of hotpants.

This once mere infatuation has since taken me many places including having delved into make up artistry, costume making & design for theatre productions as well as interning at Vivienne Westwood. I had hoped it would take me even further down this path, portfolios were already in the making for a future application to Parsons. However fashion ended up leading me down a different path. It got my creative juices flowing right back to music. This proved a dillema; working in fashion, when would I ever have time to practice?

“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” - Coco Chanel

Giving up on fashion would I feel, be strong choice of words for this decision. You can never really give up on fashion. I’ll always have to get dressed in the morning. We all do. Whether we like it or not, what we put on will reflect something about ourselves. This is unavoidable and therefore fashion too is unavoidable. What you wear to work may well be discriptive of your job, whether it be a suit, casual or a uniform. Choices in attire can indicate your class, wealth, self-worth and even core values. You can easily judge how much an individual values appearance by how much care they put into dressing themselves. Religious values may be displayed through accesories like headscarves or a cross. Those who place popularity in high regard are likely dressed on trend or ‘safely’. Fashion too can make a political statement. We identify hippie fashion with the anti-war & free love movement of the 60s. Both the Nazi & Soviet Regimes used fashion as a tool for propaganda.

Clearly Fashion is not just engrained into people like me; people who attest that it has transformed their lives. It is something we are all forced to respond to every time we get dressed, every time we see another person. What is rebellion to one is anothers’ conformity. It is the ultimate form of self-expression because it is one received by everyone who catches sight of you, regardless of whether you or even they acknowledge it. How then can anyone be so bold as to accuse it of not being art? Or worse still, deny its importance all together?

The present media is reflection enough of how important fashion is today. Lady Gaga’s success is largely based on her image. Overblown reactions to too much flesh are everywhere (as I wrote about in my previous post on the depiction of women). The banning of burqas in France made headline news. In some shopping centres, youths are banned from wearing hoods. Churches expect hats to be removed upon entry. Controversy around fashion has always existed at the core of every society. The breaking & binding of girls’ feet in China, death by corset in the victorian era, hemlines & make up in the 1920s, the list goes on…

Fashion therefore is a depiction of both the freedoms and constraints of society. This is why the fashion industry is so important and incredibly powerful. The below video is taken from The Devil Wears Prada, the story of an assistant to the editor-in-chief to the fictional Runway magazine but heavily stemmed from the truth of American Vogue’s editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour. It illustrates the dominance of the fashion industry in everyone’s every day lives, even those who believe they are exempt from it. Even subcultures, though they are shocking to some, are quite uniform and exist on such a scale because they are based and derived from certain fashions.

Our tastes and reactions to fashions have been deeply embedded into our subconscious through a combination of the above factors much like we have preconceptions about music and music tastes (which I have discussed in a previous post). Music, once considered one of the sciences, is generally thought of as the highest form of art. Fashion I believe falls just behind it. Music provokes fashions and so often genres of music and fashions correspond. Flappers, Hippies, Punks… Riots would even emerge between contrasting fashion tribes, based upon style & music taste, such as the infamous hostility between Mods & Rockers in the 1960’s.

So fashion is something we cannot escape and is incredibly evocative about who we are, individually and as a whole, regardless of whether we intend it to. How then cannot it not be considered important? How can it not be considered art?

Maya x

Like this? Read my previous posts: ‘There is an issue with how women are depicted but Playboy isn’t it’, ‘One step forward, two steps back? Concept Albums, Mixtapes, Classical Music & Generation Y’ & ‘I judge you on your music taste’ and check out my music at shadowshecries.nu.

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Awwww, thank you <3 I don’t usually do any of these tags or reblog posts but I don’t think enough people realise this about themselves or what a difference saying these things can make. So to all my followers, you’re it. You’re appreciated & loved whether you realise it or not. So stay positive and make someone’s day by telling them the same. As trivial as it seems, it’s a lot easier to achieve that positivity when you’re consistent with the above.

02
July

ask me something?

I do have proper posts lined up. In the mean time listen to this?