Identity and fashion

Identity and the fashion world

If you want it or not, fashion has a major influence on our identity.

Clothing is full of symbols. A man wearing a suit may implicate he is a business man. A person wearing hoodies, a cap, sneakers and a lot of gold jewelry is often associated with a gangster. Clothes tell us who we are or is it who we want to be? If you are a bit boring a colourful outfit will help people to think differently about you. Clothes could also reflect our emotions:  in times of financial crisis people have the need to wear dark colours (Dutch Avantgarde sept 2009), in springtime people feel much lighter and spend more time in the open air which reflects what they wear: colourful, (flower) prints and light, thin fabrics.

The way we ‘read’ clothes depends on our cultural backgrounds, knowledge and mood. But also on our surroundings.  If we are on holiday we may wear shorts and slippers, but if you wear the same outfit to work it is often misplaced and clearly not representative for the office you are working for.

Another example is that of multiple people wearing the latest trend e.g. shorts, if one person wears a skirt people may think that person is rebellious, she isn’t a trend follower. Someone else may think that she hasn’t got any knowledge of fashion and if perhaps the person with the skirt is Kate Moss, people may see her as a trend forecaster.

Trends

In the past fashion designers, super models and famous movie stars were dictating the fashion world. The designer decided what to wear and if you had the need to be ‘someone’ you followed their opinion.

Because what the ‘famous’ designer created is cool and if that Hollywood star wears it, it’s hot, right?

Within a few months the whole community was wearing oversized pants, high heels and a man’s hat. A trend was born, but while people finally knew what to wear, there was again that movie star that wore a mini skirt. People massively changed their pants for a mini skirt. With this change of clothing style does their identity changes too?

To make it even harder for the trend follower there is a shift going on. Not the designers and movie stars are dictating the fashion world, but the editors of fashion magazines (e.g. Anna Wintour) are the new rich and famous. Placing a model or dress on the cover of their magazine means that that style or look is going to be trend.  But to make it even more complicated technology (internet, digital camera’s) has created a second shift: that of fashion bloggers.  Scott Schuman and Garance Dore became famous because of their blogs. And their influence on fashion is hot! They spot people on the street, place their photographs on their blogs with a few lines of texts telling why this pants, trousers, shoes etc. is so great. A trend follower can pose itself a big question: Who do I need to believe? 

Do you need to follow their opinion?

Aren’t you capable of making your own decision? Just put on the clothes you like.

For a very few it is a simple as that, but for the mass there are other factors e.g. psychological aspects (people tend to feel better wearing the perfect outfit; they are more secure and have more confidence), again our surrounding and advertising that influence our clothing behavior and at the same time our identity.

The influence of high fashion advertising

In A semiotic analysis of high fashion advertising, Alan Rhoder and Rodrigo Zuloago state that fashion advertising is an excellent example of identity-image producing media.

They write about high fashion media and advertising describing a spectrum of identity, unified in general types of signifiers-young women, high status, high sexuality. Through the constant repetition and variation of images on these themes, they serve to create this identity spectrum.

In the later part they give an example of a Prada advertisement. These photographs are surreal and the viewer can’t reflect itself with the identity of the model. The authors call this form an alter identification, an alter-ego.

The Prada images present a woman in an open-narrative context. There is a tension between what’s within focus and what’s out of focus—what’s within frame and what out of frame. (…)The context is ambiguous, but present, and there is a definite emotive quality of vulnerability and isolation… lost.

(…) The characters presented are unreal, fictional, story-book characters attempting to resonate emotionally with the viewer. This emotional resonance cannot be described as identification—the identities presented are impossible: the women idealized, the backgrounds obscured—but as an “alter-identification”, an attachment to the image as an Alter-Ego.

On page 7 they make a link to my other research fields that of children, the body and psychology.

They compare the process of identification/Alter ego with Lacan’s mirror stage experience in which the child first identifies both the Other and his Identity:

Through the recognition of his or her own Gestalt, the child anticipates his or her corporeal unity, which is needed in order to build a proper Ego. This results in the lack of an “original” bodily identity tracing back to one origin of a body image, such as the genetic mixture of the parent’s bodies, and hence in the loss of a secure historical representation of the body. The stable concept of identity is replaced by what Lacan calls the “fractal body” (dispersed body), whose identity depends on a process of “inscription” and semanticization through an outside world.

In the next paragraph they make a link to the anorexic body:

Media, especially High Fashion advertising, has been frequently cited as a potential cause of anorexia in women. Viewing images of fictive morphotypes, the anorexic pushes their real body to match them. This can be considered in terms of Fashion Advertising as Alter-Ego creation. We can theorize a sort of feedback loop between Alter-Ego, Ego, and Identity. Presented with the fetishized

repetition of Alter-Ego images in the media, these images become a desired part of the individual’s

character, thereby becoming part of the Ego. (…)High Fashion media expands and fetishizes the Alter-Ego by moving along the axis between self and no-self, toying with identification, and presenting as real that which is essentially illusionary.

Fashion, identity, picture books and artwork ideas

Fashion is identity. The viewer must have the skills to read fashion and identify the character.

The clothes (style, colour, structure) my characters are wearing are therefore very important. Placing an outfit in a certain area/place and context is a second thing to take into account.

I can also work with:

-Uniforms: identity becomes unified

-Traditional clothing: cultural aspects

-Princess dress, Batman suit: identity becomes alter-ego

Bibliography:

Colombi, Chiara and Conti, Giovanni M, The body of Design, Indaco Design department Milan (year?)

Davis, F. Fashion, culture and identity. The University of Chicago Press 1992.

Rhoder, A and Zuloago, R. A semiotic analysis of high fashion advertising 2003 via http://www.garhodes.com/writing.html

Thomas, Sue and Van Kopplen, Anthea, Fashion design: the other person, culture and environment, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia (year?)