fashion: what does it mean to you?

Fashion week has begun (the first of a few) and what a feast it is for the eyes and mind.

When I started this blog it was initially to concentrate on fashion and sewing in equal parts but I’m finding myself leaning towards the sewing and not so much the fashion. This is because I feel there is a divide between the two in the blogosphere. Either a blog is sewing or it’s fashion, very few concentrate on both and sometimes I sense an apprehension between fashion and sewing, but as a sewer (stitcher?) I very much look towards fashion (even if this makes me seem snobby nosed in some peoples books). I love the catwalk/runway more than anything just for inspiration for sewing. So over the next few weeks I’m going to make a considered effort to write about fashion and how it links to the sewing world.

So first up I’m looking at what fashion means.

What does fashion mean to you?

To me fashion means a lot, almost everything (in a sewing way) and yes this might sound fickle but then fashion is fickle, but let’s not forgets it’s extremely multisided.  Fashion shapes everything clothing wise, you don’t have to been wearing the latest trends or the coolest labels or any labels at all for that matter, but whatever you wear, whatever  you design and whatever you make will have been shaped by fashion somewhere along the line whether you are conscience of it or not.

                            1950's McCall's vintage  pattern                                      Dior

Take for example that vintage pattern you have in your stash, well that was once designed based on the current fashion of the time and that style/design will always inspire someone somewhere whether it be the home sewer or a fashion designer (bias cut’s and Galliano anyone?) as they say fashion keeps coming round so nothing is really new, only reworked and re-designed. Even if you design your own pattern you will have referenced something whether it’s that 70 year old dress hanging in the museum or that brand new Dior design you seen on the net, fashion is everywhere inspiring and influencing you whether you realise it or not.

Fashion does have a fickle face and many a time the word fashion conjures up images of that immaculately dress Amazonian like women  wearing the latest trend and the must have labels, but fashion is much more than that it goes much deeper. Those women rely on magazines and stylist (manufactured fashion perhaps?)  along with competition and wealth to be dressed like that  Then there are those of us who dress ourselves and wear what we want,  not what’s in the magazines or shops and those of us who sew the dress’s and design the shirts. What we wear is all equally fashionable (stylish!) ‘it’s not the money I got, it’s the style I cut’).  

In a way those of us who make our own style and wear are own fashions and don’t rely on someone to tell us what to wear are more like designers than we think, the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Ralph Lauren , Vivienne Westwood, they all design the things they like and want to see. They use inspiration from holidays, culture, traveling and fashion history, obviously the designs have selling appeal and that’s what makes them a success but hundreds of designers show their clothes at the fashion week but these designers do not sit round a table and decide that some of them will use lace or that 20 of them will use a 1950’s influences any coincides are just that .It’s the  fashion magazine's editors/stylists  who dictate the trends, so give the fashion designers  a break you may be referencing  ‘proper’  fashion more than you think.

In short fashion to me is:

 past, present, future, the person in the hand me downs, the girl who looks like she just walked out of the 1950’s, the latest designer clothes, the clothes that are so last season, the garment which is more antique than vintage,  the person with the thread hang from their skirt or the wonky seams, it’s the fastness (or slowness) of my sewing machine, the vogue pattern or the one I got free, the old pictures I look at and the paintings in the museum, my surroundings  and the different cultures I experiance, it’s my mum, my nan my family, the way someone holds  themself and the way I design, fashion is everything in my line of sight. What is it too you?