doing fashion wrong

[anotheranon]

For all my love of clothes and dressing up, I never really got the hang of "fashion". Indeed, I think it's taken most of my dressing-myself life to figure out that the way I defined "fashion" is rather different from the way others do.

I started dreaming about working in the fashion industry when I was 14 or so. In my mind it was a glamorous alternative to the same ol', same ol' everyday wear I saw where I grew up in the suburbs, a place where not only would my versions of goth/punk/new wave/indie (and I use the slashes purposefully - I've danced around with many subcultures but never got the uniform for a single one "correct") fashion would be appropriate but also welcome, where I'd be surrounded by kindred spirits who saw clothes as toys, and the latest trends as a list of possibilities rather than mandates.

College was a welcome respite from trying to keep up with either the mainstream or alternate fashion worlds, and the fact that I didn't mind that should have been a clue that maybe I didn't need to be in the fashion industry. Starting my fashion merchandising major didn't clue me in either - I read fashion history and the like as "5000 years of MORE toys, oh my!"

It wasn't still I started working retail that I realized that many (if not most) people define "fashion" as "keeping up with the Joneses" or "telling the Joneses what to wear next".

Even most subcultural styles are about uniformity - goths don't wear white; ravers don't wear skinny jeans :P

Reading of the snarks over Amanda Palmer's hairy pits or Something Out of Nothing's complaint that most fashion blogs dwell on mainstream feminine looks and little else highlights that fashion is also about enforcing conventional (thin, straight, white, hairless) femininity.

And while I recognize that the fashion industry is in the business of selling stuff, and stuff wouldn't sell if everyone was happy with what they had, it still all comes off as junior high-style snobbiness in a way :P

That it took me this long to figure it out is no surprise because it the only alternative to keeping up seems to be not caring at all: casual sweats forever, or wearing the same stuff you wore in your 20s until it falls apart and then bitching that you can't find it anymore :P Whereas I like change and new things but am leaning more towards additive gender dandy than anything else.

This is why I love costume :)

Comments

[semmie17.livejournal.com]

Thanks for introducing me to Amanda Palmer! She rocks!

I like black jeans, stompy boots, and purple shirts and I tend to wear some combination of that except in the summer when it's really hot. Then, it's a skort, Vans, and... a purple shirt. I wore Prada and Armani in the late 80's early 90's until I was liberated by the poverty of graduate school.

That's one great thing about being a professor... once you have tenure, you can wear just about whatever you fucking well want. :ppppppppp

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I read a few fashion blogs geared towards academics and more than one fears that their interest in fashion might cause them to be taken less seriously (http://fashionableacademics.blogspot.com/2009/12/open-forum-on-perils-of-fashion.html). Mind, I know anecdote != data and I don't know whether they're tenured or not and it might vary by school, discipline etc. so YMMV.

[semmie17.livejournal.com]

It does vary by school and discipline, even by department. In Canada, at Lethbridge, all the professors wore suits to teach, regardless of gender. Suits and ties for the men, and business blouses and suits with professional heels for the women.

At Michigan State, it totally varied, but I saw more of jeans-n-polo shirts being worn, with a very casual atmosphere.

Here at Northern, it's sort of in the middle -- Dockers and button-up shirts, but not too many ties. I wear black jeans and shirts, reserving blue jeans for Fridays, but I know other profs who wear suits all day long (both genders) and others who wear only blue jeans and t-shirts. I think it depends on how much authority you are trying to exude -- I have a very aggressive, powerful personality, so I try to dress down and a bit more feminine to buffer my classroom impression. My friend Lys, who is all of 4'11"... dresses in high heels and business suits, because she says otherwise students think she's a child and don't take her seriously.

I think the Wondering-how-fellow-faculty-take-you is more for the first couple of years, until you've proven yourself and/or get tenure. Then it's all about reaching out to the students, and creating your impression with them. IMHO, YMMV, etc.