It's an interesting thing. I like to think I'm very open to other people's style but I was thinking about it and I'm not. I like, in my snobby fashion brain, to think that yes, I am very accepting of other people's style as long as they do in fact, possess style. Let me explain...
We have just finished a semester long paper which involves being split into groups and designing a collection for a certain NZ knitwear designer. (Won't mention the name as it's too soon to not hate them down to the core of my very being) To cut a long story short it's run by a 50-something year old man who likes to describe their clothing as "sexy"...... so we gave him sexy. A black and silver metallic dress slit to the navel and backless to be precise. At the end of the presentation he commented on the whole year as a whole saying "Our clothing is much sexier than anything you have shown us here today, our customers in Sydney want sexy clothing, this kind of stuff could possibly sell in Melbourne, in Sydney the people are a lot like they are in California" this proclamation was met with silence and I swear I saw tumbleweed roll by.
We didn't know what to say. So fundamentally, people in Sydney dress like sluts? My fashion snobbery flared up. Overt sexiness is not something that I even consider fashion design, but clearly there's a huge market for it. It is a fashion truth that makes my brain hurt, and by the collections shown by my fellow classmates, they also hate overt sexiness. What is it that makes us recoil from it so dramatically?
Think of contemporary fashion icons; Lady Gaga, Kate Moss, Carine Roitfeld and even Michelle Obama. The styling couldn't vary much more drastically than between these women, yet they are all fashionable. Lady Gaga could be said to dress sexily, but I don't think she does? She has a lot of flesh on show but it's not sexy per say. She does it to shock, not to make you want to sleep with her. Hmm... I do struggle to grasp "sexiness" as a concept that isn't as a result of good tailoring, styling and confidence. This is why I hold the label in question in distain as I don't think they get it. To look like you are trying to be sexy immediately destroys the illusion and having skin on show doesn't guarantee sex appeal, it just makes you look like a prostitute.
When he left I think he thought we were idiots and that our fashion school was disappointing, I'm secretly smug as this opinion. It reaffirms my belief that we are great.
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