Self-Perception in Fashion: Why Dress? #

July 7, 2023
Chicago, IL

So we aren't naked
- Jenny

The role of any good marketing group is to establish generated demand, meaning you want to generate interest (or a feeling of need) in whatever you are trying to sell. Quite often the things for which demand is being generated for are not necessities. This is to be expected of course, the vast majority of things the average person is likely to purchase is not something they need for survival, yet generated demand still feels rather questionable in nature doesn’t it? And when you couple it with connections that are being made between marketing and neuroscience, in effect studying the brain to determine how we act and manipulating that to purchase things, it feels even worse. Tackling an issue like free will or self determination here is wildly out of my knowledge level and understanding, but it does have an intersection with personal style and how we dress ourselves that I do find rather interesting.

Any and all of us who are interested in fashion would like to believe that we have complete control over how we dress ourselves and how we present ourselves to the world around us. And in some sense, fashion allows us a very direct way of self-presentation. It is, after all, the first thing any person will develop in relation to you. Speaking for myself, I definitely (attempt to) tailor how I appear depending on who I am meeting (or expect to meet) and where I am. Surely then, I would like to have full control over how I appear and all decisions related to that.

And like every sane fashion enthusiast, I continue to disregard the weather when making stylisic decisions. I will absolutely wear sweaters in 80 degree weather.

Our clothes, then, should be an extension of ourselves. It should enhance our perceptions of ourselves, or how we desire to perceive ourselves, and should accurately signify that image to others. There are always going to be communication issues, of course, in that certain signifiers that may clearly indicate one thing to us could indicate something else to someone else (imagine improperly encoded unicode characters leading to incorrectly translated messages between two phones or how black can mean mourning in one culture and something totally different in another culture). This issue of communication, however, isn’t something we need be bogged down in, because another more interesting question arises therein, namely are we truly identifying ourselves through our clothing?

For one, the vast majority of us do not make our own clothes, we seek out clothes that we like and that possibly relate to us in some way or another. These clothes each have a message correlated with them, either literally (with printed textual shirts - which can just directly display a message), or through social ques (like a winchester shirt, which one can connote to banking). It is interesting, then, to consider that we are seeking to develop (or enhance) meaning for ourselves through things that were not created by us, but for us. And those designers can very well have very different imaginings and/or significances they themselves imbue into the pieces they create. The finance guy that wishes to be perceived as a finance guy will purchase the blue oxford collar button down, brown chinos, and grey patagonia vest, because they wish to be seen as part of “the tribe”, yet that vest they wear was designed and sold by a company that very much so supports environmentalism and slow consumption (at least at face value, this ladder concern is a wholly new issue unto itself), the opposite of a money driven and imbued career.

So in one way it is strange that we take clothes designed by others and purport our own meaning unto them, where our meaning can overshadow the original intention. However, that example of the finance guy (and even the examples before) are of a very mainstream perception. If I was to, for instance, discuss consumers of Yohji Yamamoto or Rick Owens, we would be reaching into a very different, but interesting territory.

I’ll preface this by saying that I personally can not consider myself an expert or even somewhat knowledgeable on fashion, and especially fashion of the variance that I will proceed to talk about. In this way, a lot of what I perceive and discuss will likely be from a very abstracted angle.

From what I have been able to observe of fans of designers like these (Yamamoto and Owens), I can see that they use clothing to paint a picture of themselves to a much stronger degree than the vast majority of us do. For instance, right now I’m wearing a grey puppytooth polo tucked into some salt and pepper trousers. This does portray an image (even moreso because I’m writing this while sitting at a cafe), but it isn’t as strong as say how the “Rick enthusiast” works with their clothes. Their outfits are very self descriptive, and you can see a lot of a person in them.

I’m going to move away from those two designers, because I do not know enough to speak about them. However, what I have mentioned about them is applicable to many different designers, and designers of many different generations and times. Consider Yves Saint Laurent: what sort of image do you have of a woman that wears YSL? I’ll speak of the mid to late 1960s, when he debuted “le smoking” jacket, so that I can capture a particular image. To me, the kind of woman who would wear Saint Laurent of that time was somebody who was elegant, sophisticated, cool, and ambiguous: the kind of person who would chainsmoke outside a parisian opera, and look mysterious and seductive while doing so. These kinds of designers have such a strong image of perception attached to their clothing that even the whisper of their name can paint an imaginative wonderland into the minds of those even vaguely aware.

The image I described in the above paragraph is effectively this image, but that was kind of the purpose of this exercise. The image itself has such a social cachet that my imagination of the "YSL woman" defaults to this woman whom I don't know.

Yet, how can one’s personal style be defined in such a way? What I have just described doesn’t necessarily sound personal does it? Some among us might say that what designers and brands are really doing is selling an image to consumers who are gullible enough to want to pursue that image (generated demand - feeling as though you need to be perceived in such a way, and can only do that by purchasing and wearing clothes made by X designer). Indeed, in some respects a good designer is able to create and attach characteristics to their clothing; they are able to create an imaginary person who would be the “wearer” of their clothes, an imaginary person who you could become and inhabit with the right amount of money.

Think back to the woman who would wear the YSL smoking jacket. What does she do in her free time? What kind of person is she? What kinds of conversations would she have? What would she read/watch/listen to? Maybe you don’t want to be like this fictitious woman, but there are many who do, and Saint Laurent was able to create an image of a woman that many did (and still do) aspire to.

But to the consumers of these designers: they genuinely feel like they can see themselves in those clothes. What right do I have to tell them that they’re just endlessly pursuing an effigy crafted and commodified by a designer? If it is meaningful to them, why not let them vivre leur vie? And yet, generated demand still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It still feels that the idea of designers making a pipeline towards an idea that doesn’t exist, a road paved with lots of clothing bills, is not necessarily an honest way of designing clothes. But still, that is their job! Good designers are able to create those imaginary worlds and figures, and the pieces that were best able to achieve that became pieces of history - clothing you can see at the Met! But to paint myself with ideas and emotions crafted by others feels dishonest in some weird way.

I think it feels dishonest to me because, with clothes like those, I can easily manipulate my self perception to others, depending on what I want. Almost as though I always have a mask affixed that can present me in any way I want. There still persists that common addage that clothes are a person’s “armor to get them through the day” anyhow. In this view, it becomes an extension of my inability to tell anybody else who I am really, or to let them see that.

Maybe this is just a me problem...

I don’t really know, though. These are just my two cents on the idea of individuality or personal perception through fashion. Really, as with most things, it is probably just related to how we as beings act socially, and with what we personally seek out in social relationships. Those mesh with how we dress ourselves, and thus any and all of our desires therein can be harnessed by designers and brands to make lots of money.