At the beginning of July, the institutions of modern education held their graduation, and in a few months a number of new names would join the circle of those who take care of our clothes and stylistic statements. Among the collections they put up after hectic work are items that challenge the values of aesthetics, the design consensus, the familiar. The audience is filled with cries of admiration. At home, the peanut gallery is energetically typing “What is this ugliness, who will wear it?” Yael Rosenwald Yaniv wonders who is right?

It is not easy to be a fashion designer these days. On the one hand, “Within your people you live” and the influences of the political-social mood permeate you into the work and make you create your own interpretations of the uniforms, wild west and Soviet-Communist inspirations as ironically counterproductive to everything going on around.

On the other hand, “a person within himself lives,” and I wish that this “self” is calm, peaceful, and mainly – far from everything that is happening here. Rooted in another decade of “make love rather than war”, for example.

Also, fashion designers are torn between two grievances by an audience looking at their works – “Oh, nothing new under the sun, everything has already been done” against “Who the hell should be wearing this???”

Peacemakers like us are here to reconcile, to find the Golden Bridge, however narrow, between clothing and fashion.

We all know what clothes are. They are a product. We wear them. They contain us. They create a layer that separates us from the world. And they’re also terrific at keeping us from some sort of weather. Such practicality.

Fashion, however, oh … Here we are already getting into the issue of cultures and social influences. Something more abstract.

In the 1960s, the French philosopher Roland Barthes studied the language used by French fashion magazines of the time. The result was a large-scale, first-of-its-kind analysis of the super-verbal and verbal messages system in the fashion world. To this day, the “dress code of fashion” as presented by Barthes, transforms the “reality”, the garment or the work that we see, into “narrative” – part of a larger story.

Later on, we can understand that fashion is a means of social expression, based on the dynamics of “acceptance” and “rejection”, while creating dynamic social groups.

The Middle Ages in Europe were characterized by the growth of commercial capitalism. This, in turn, led to the acceleration of substitution of fashionable styles. It is possible to belong to the right fashionable social group in one moment, the nobility in France at the end of the 18th century, and the next moment – sent directly to the guillotine only because of your outfit.

“Fashion for the masses,” screamed the proletariat Viva la Revolucion!

That’s how fashion is, says Hedi Klume – “in fashion, one day you’re” IN “, and the other, you’re” OUT “- in a frozen face.

“So what,” you’ll probably ask, “Fashion is just a response to what the masses want to get? Capitalism at its best! Didn’t you say it was art?

If previously it was clear that there is a “Modus” (Le Mode), from the Latin word Modus, which relates to the way we perceive form; And there is “La Moda”, which is associated with costumes and clothes and tastes that change when it comes to it, meaning – limited in time; The confusion between the two in the postmodernist era is what leads contemporary dressers to think that fashion should change every year. it does not.

Let’s talk for a moment about the 1997 collection for Comme Des Garcon, “Body Meets Dress Meets Body” (also called Quasimodo), which was created by designer Rei Kawakubo. Kawakubo created a collection in which every item of clothing gained extra volume in unusual areas, such as the back, abdomen, and shoulders. The result was so not “fashionable” and so challenging the social-design conventions, which is burned in human consciousness forever.

On her collection, Kawakubo said, “Fashion is a tool for which each person has to express his personality and individuality.”

Fashion is an instrument of expressing the individual, defining identity, transmitting messages, and hence, naturally it becomes, in the cases that the designer chooses, also into the form of art.

In 2011, the New York Metropolitan Museum launched an exhibition in memory of the late Alexander McQueen. The organizers expected around 300,000 visitors. The exhibition was attended by about 660,000 of them. Jaws fell and the exhibition is still defined as one of the most popular at the Met (along with exhibitions of the Mona Lisa and several Picasso works).

The New York Museum was not alone there. Throughout the world, and throughout history (as early as 1944), leading museums are taking fashion out of the show’s pathways, and right behind the glass panes of galleries.

Fashion, as defined until this day, included mainly the authority of the elite designers of the Haute couture tribe, or meant to be from the leakage from the wearable fashion runways (Prêt-à-Porter) to the fast fashion chainstores with an unheard of price and appeal of sale. And what about everything else? For example, uniform, folklore costumes? Do they have a place in the history of fashion? And what about the person who wears the clothing, does she have the ability to turn her clothes into art, or is this vision in the hands of the designer? 

elite designers, or intended to leak from the Prêt-à-Porter fashion show to Colby, the fastest fashion chain at an unprecedented and opulent sale price. And what about the rest? For example, uniforms? Dressed folklorist? Do they also have a place in the history of fashion? And what about the wearer, does she have the ability to turn her clothes into art, or is this the vision of the designer alone?

One of the blessed trends of the “Me” era that characterizes our present is the discovery of new definitions – the individual becomes powerful and the tribes become more dynamic and more numerous than ever. In the midst of all this, you may also find a new, multi-system setting for fashion as well.

“When fashion is clothing, you can give it up, but when fashion is a means of understanding our day-to-day life, it is essential” (Yoji Yamamoto)

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