Thoughtful dressing

Another interesting find from the library, 'The Thoughtful Dresser' by Linda Grant (2009).  Ms Grant wrote this book to try to "get to the bottom of this relationship we have with our clothes and why we love or hate them and what they mean to us and how we are linked to them in all their intimacy with our own bodies".  She explores why we wear what we wear, why looking good matters to us, how we show our individuality and culture, and sexiness.  She interviews a number of interesting people related to the fashion industry.  But her most fascinating interviewee is a holocaust survivor who talks about the need to look pretty even in the darkest times of her life to give herself confidence.

There is discussion about 'porno-chic' versus sensual, suggestive dressing with confidence.  Comments on how clothes can express your personality, but also help you fit in with your peer group, or represent a rebellion, or just cover you up and give you invisibility.  She bravely talks about fashion and real women, and quotes a designer as saying "I still think that clothes look better on thin people... They look better in a size 8 and 10 than they do in a 16 and 18".  Ms Grant goes on to say "Fashion is a visual aesthetic.  It's concerned wholly and entirely with how things look.  The designer is thinking about fabric and drape and tailoring and colour and above all innovation, newness, modernity... Pity the poor designer who must see his clothes degraded by proximity to the ordinary human body...  it has not been the designer's business to consider what makes the people who are wearing his clothes look better".  Unfortunately, this can create a lot of insecurity for women with gorgeous curves and non-standard sizes.

Fashions are constantly changing, "Are we dictated to by fashion's whims, its short-term memory, its teeny attention span, its boredom, its love of the shock of the new?  Or is fashion dictated by the human desire for change?  There is a primal need for newness.  Women get weary if forced to wear the same shabby dress".

The same fashion will be:
Indecent - 10 years before its time
Shameless - 5 years before its time
Outre - 1 year before its time
Smart - at the time
Dowdy - 1 year after its time
Hideous - 10 years after its time
Ridiculous -20 years after its time
Amusing - 30 years after its time
Quaint - 50 years after its time
Charming - 70 years after its time
Romantic - 100 years after its time
Beautiful - 150 years after its time

Why do you wear what you wear?