You? Fashionable? Pluuuuzzzeeee!

Welcome to my little experiment for Interim 2014.  This is both a way for me to express myself and to organize thoughts about my interim project.

So I'll begin by admitting that I have no right to keep a fashion blog.  I'm not hip or cool, I don't live in a big city where I can watch the streets for the latest trend, and I'm about as anti-'edgy' as a person can get.  But I do love clothes, and I especially love the history of clothing and fashion.  I suppose the history part comes from my day job and the clothing part comes from being the daughter of a seamstress.  I'm fascinated by the process.  It's fun to see something go from idea to cloth and notions, through pattern, cutting, fitting, and finally the triumphal wearing.  I'm very enthralled by all of this despite my complete lack of any skill in drawing, design, or sewing---though I do a mean embroidery stitch or two!

What I'll be writing about, primarily, is the idea of clothing as a means of personal expression.  As I once read, "the only way not to speak with your clothes is to go naked---and then you're still saying something!"  Even folks who claim to put no thought into what they wear are still making statements.  They may be saying things like "blue is my favorite color" (ever known someone whose entire wardrobe is in the same hue?) or "I hate my arms so I always cover them" (I bet you know someone who wears sleeves even when its 110 degrees outside!).  These are statements, expressions with the color and cut and texture on our bodies.  Speaking with fashion is, for the most part, so soft and unobtrusive that we never notice it in others or in ourselves.  And, fortunately, for the most part we never have to worry about it.

But sometimes we get in trouble.  Sometimes we say things we don't mean.  Clothing can be an expression of contempt, even when no such attitude is intended by the wearer.  And yet such language changes, is malleable with time and place.  Just as we no longer wear frock coats and bustles, the 'rules' for what we should wear, and when and where we wear it, are in greater flux than ever before.  Some might even question if rules exist.

It's that space where rules and expression meet that fascinates me, as a historian, an observer of people, and a wearer of clothes.