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Fashion do’s and dont’s
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"Fashion is only wrong when it’s practiced without understanding.” Harold Koda, curator of the Costume Institute at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, reads fashion cues for a living. Though I am no fashion connoisseur-I do have an understanding of what’s in and what’s a fashion faux pas. Like wolves, we have behaviors that establish our place in the population. But we also do it through decoration.
Since we don’t have chromatic feathers to show off to send a non-verbal message we have learned to replace this with apparel. The fact is that everyone cares to some degree about fashion in general-others more so than others. There are those of us who care more about doing well in class and there are those who are dying to afford a denim jacket from Guess. Even Adam and Eve cared about being clothed, though the donning of fig leaves is hardly a fashion trend.
Adam and Eve wore fig leaves because of guilt-the same could be said for us, I know I’d feel guilty for putting others through the misery of seeing me naked. Oscar Wilde said, “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” There are whole books dedicated to the psychology of fashion-why we wear what we wear and why and how we judge others based on “the visible.”
One theory as to why women invest in cosmetics and clothing is to remedy anti-death beliefs. Our life curve starts going down from the day we are born. But each new dress is an antidote against this dying off. We strip off the old dress or shirt and with it all that is old, tired, and dead. We feel renewed and satiated when we buy new clothing-a new shell or fa