what our clothing says about us

Posted by: goofy328 on: May 26, 2008

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Clothing is perhaps one of the best indicators of what a person’s true personality is.  But you have to look beyond what they are wearing and take into account how they are wearing, what their body language says they feel about themselves having worn it and a number of other factors. 

Take urban wear for example, for the most part I am not that comfortable in my skin wearing it.  Now I should, because I do have that love/hate relationship with the city and can appreciate a lot of the concepts but my experiences are somewhat different than that of the average street kid.  Many times in wearing urban wear I feel as though the authenticity of what experiences I have had with the city are being put into question.  Notably I can come off as being uncomfortable with wearing that genre of clothing.

Some people can hide their intelligence and others can’t.  I’m not the most street smart person, I mean I get around okay but I like to take my time doing things and like to give everything entirely too much thought, to the point where I’m almost catatonic.  On the other hand being African-American I feel some sort of an obligation to at least try to wear the stuff, but for me it’s more like listening to rap music trying to be chic when I can’t truly relate to what they’re talking about.

So when you see me it says volumes about what my state of mind is at that moment.  Early on I was one of those types which everything had to be a certain designer for me to wear it.  I would follow the trends and was more of a follower than a leader.  That very much defined my approach to fashion in the nineties, as I would wear the same designers as everyone did but could never pull that look off in the right way.

There are obvious examples of what a persons clothing reveals to us.  A man in his late fifties wearing Rocawear and Cooji, or perhaps Abercrombie and Fitch never truly got past his midlife crisis.  In general, someone older wanting to be younger or feeling most comfortable around youth, of which popular culture is often centered around.  These days there is less emphasis being placed on how expensive the clothing is and more of an emphasis on actually what is worn.  The popularity of stores like Old Navy, H&M & Steve and Barry’s suggests that we can look great for less and pull off rather sophisticated looks for as cheap as possible.

Now this isn’t to suggest that everything you get at those stores is necessarily the top shelf either; but it does say a lot about being less pretentious and more practical.  If you’re already upside down living hand to mouth living paycheck to paycheck you don’t really care that much if people know that you shopped at the thrift store, or if the designer substituted polyester and nylon for cotton and wool.  You just want that look.  On the other hand designer clothing sort of puts you in this exclusive “club”; not so much one of privilege, class, and the jet set lifestyle, but one with other devotees that have to that same designer label.

If the people that really were fanboys and enthusiasts of any one particular designer were to ever get together and sit down and chat they would realize that they are from all sorts of different walks of life.  Chances are the majority of them would realize that they aren’t living the lifestyle that the models and photographers suggest that the brand represents in the advertisements.  The common thread between the individuals are their aspirations, as opposed to the actual reality of what those aspirations should reveal about the reality of their situation, once those dreams have been achieved and realized.

For example there are a lot of people wearing urban wear because the ghetto life has a certain chic to it that it didn’t use to have.  It used to be that Americas poor just wore cheaper interpretations of what everyone else wore, and urban wear actually gave someone in the ghetto a voice and a way to express themselves through fashion that was truly theirs.  It has changed a bit though because the movement that it’s devotees shared in common, the hip-hop culture, has changed and expanded over time both as a ways of remaining relevant, and as a testimony of which the musical genre has matured. 

At the same time rock music has devolved and became a little bit more like hip-hop, as listeners of both genre of music realized that they had a lot in common.  Out of this fusion came such brands like Ed Hardy, Black Label and Christian Audigier, sort of an intersection where the two worlds come together in fashion.  Hip-Hop fashion lost it’s street graffiti chic and took on skulls, broken hearts, snakes and a more rough aesthetic that used to be reserved for motorcycle gangs.  This sort of started a while back when Von Dutch was popular. 

It isn’t necessarily my thing, but it does say a lot about the unification of fashion whose roots are in the street life or the music culture.  Basically a lot of us want the same thing and feel the same way, but it took a lot for anyone to realize that.  It makes a lot of sense, because a lot of the differentiation between grunge, urban wear and prep in the nineties were a bit rediculous.  When there was a concerted conservative movement in urban wear and we were wearing Ralph Lauren or the uniforms and gear of laborers it could have been construed as being outright disrespectful or a homage to the ideals those looks represent.

Those were fun times; conservative African-Americans who were already into Polo felt even more comfortable wearing it because they had a look that wasn’t that different from what the street kids were doing.  It was one of those rare times when a lot of us were on the same page, though clearly it wasn’t going to last forever.  By the time the new millennium came around the conservative crowd tried on the metrosexual look, while the more adventurous types develed into couture and street kids went back to what they were doing ten years ago when urban wear was a newly coined term, baggy Calvin Klein jeans and Helly Hanson.

Those who like to consider themselves as being seriously devoted to fashion share a lot of things in common, and often find themselves doing the same looks as the other person that thinks they’re serious about fashion more often than they would like to admit.  Being unique and being an individual is fine and all but you have to go with how you feel instead of trying to make a calculated play at being different and standing out.  It can be rather exhausting, and you’ll also pass up a lot of great stuff on the way out of concern to what someone else is thinking about you.

When teenagers all look the same, with indistingushable looks from one town to the next it’s because they want to fit in; often they’ll continue dressing to be part of the crowd well into their twenties.  They have their individuality all along, particularly by their mid twenties, but letting go of it on the outside is typically the last thing to happen.  It is one thing to feel so assured of yourself but another thing entirely different to let that show; so you’ll hide behind that fashion long after until your subconsious is thoroughly convinced of it.  If you see something but then you start thinking about it a lot, getting doubleminded, and so on and so forth your subconscious isn’t entirely convinced.

You’re ready but then again you’re not really ready.  It shows, and people will often suggest that you wear this or that, and you won’t wear it because they’re seeing a different side to you that you can’t see or aren’t ready to see because you’re stuck on the side that you are comfortable with.  That’s what’s so great about fashion, you can find yourself a look that expresses how you feel at that moment a lot better than you could ever do with words; that’s when you know that you’re really hooked …