Fashion is a Point of View

Today I saw a photo of a t-shirt with the slogan ‘Fashion is a point of view ’. I couldn’t help but stop scrolling down my Instagram feed. It is a very simply put and rather accurate description of fashion – whatever one may think and however one may define the term ‘fashion’ – this slogan would be still valid. Do you think of fashion as something beautiful, something ugly, something visually exciting or provocative? A tyrant or a never-ending source of inspiration?

Fashion constantly evolves and our perceptions of it change too. From external social factors to internal emotions, appreciation for aesthetics, desire for self-expression, frustration with its current social and ecological impact – everyone is bound to have a point of view on fashion – positive or negative.

Just like art, our perception of fashion depends on our personal experience. We establish our intimate relationship with it early on and then adjust it as time goes on.

I grew up in a family, which encouraged creativity. My mum always made her own unique clothes and my grandmother used to be Head of Wardrobe in a theatre. I was constantly exposed to the process of how things are made, colours, textures, fun attitudes. I later studied fashion, which broadened my horizon in historic and conceptual terms. And so, no wonder in my mind some aspects of fashion can be considered art – textural textiles, innovative textile prints, fashion photography, getting consumed by the creative design process, using cloth, form and silhouette to encourage conversation, using fashion as a form of protest – there are so many diverse ways, in which fashion is a form of art – thus a point of view.

And because it has become such a controversial topic, my point of view is that it would be hard to simply box it inside one single definition. In its core fashion is – in my opinion – a visual symphony of human creativity, desire for self-expression, a celebration of joy, texture and colour. And just like in other forms of art - there are many cheap knockoffs out there. Unfortunately, unlike other forms of art – the knockoffs have taken over the world. And in this case – fashion knockoffs destroy -among other things - the art that has originally inspired their existence.

And why invest in dozens on knockoffs, when you can have an original?