Session 2 Task 3 Fashion a Language and a Game

Session 2 Task 3 History of Creative Practices

For centuries individuals or societies have used clothes and other body adornment as a form of nonverbal communication to indicate occupation, rank, gender, sexual availability, class, wealth and group affiliation. What we wear and how and when we wear it, provides others to make assumptions on our social situation.
Fashion is a language of signs, symbols and iconography that non-verbally communicate meanings about individuals and groups. Fashion in all its forms from tattoos piercings and hairstyles, is a form of iconography that we use to express individual identity.

Does it enable us to be more fully understood, as a means of free expression, or are we just part of a large brainwashed society afraid to break out our social boundaries?

Maramoti, L (2000) Conecting Creativity in Hartley, J (2005) Creative Industries Blackwell Publishing p.205-213

I really enjoyed this read, looking into ideas of clothing as a lanuage and how it can express different meanings at different times, refuring to the trickle up - trickle down process where the rich and wealthy are supposed to simulate trends of the poorer classes, but inspiration can come from the poorer classes which then gets made into rich garments.

Also how each style creates an anti-style that defines it and how this then simulates other changes and that their are reacurrng paterns of items and fashion in different contexts, and why.

That Fashion is a tool for articulating and supporting words, rather than substituting them, meaning that fashion is nothing without something to feed off of. That fashion as a code of meanings in society, target instability and therfore creating a gap for a trend. Fashion delights us by playing on opposities and  creating games, fashion is an infinite game, since no one is interested in starting the ultimate trend the final one (p'206)

That fashion is "a ping-pong game between antithetical meanings, the motivating force for creativity with fashion is nearly always or often, cultural"p.206, that designers cannot create the desire to posses a product only arouse the curiosity in achieving a certain lifestyle related to the product, that "fashion can appropriate practically anything and change it into a look" p.207

That rules have a short life in fashion and brings about the question of is "change for changes sake" and that the smallest of changes can cause a chain reaction - a designed garment is fashion only when it is worn by someone. Human organisms have similarities each posses a genetic code but may evolve through time from external stimuli and that there is always a danger in creativity because in the fashion world it can have a massive impact, and messesage it sends out is sometimes the key to a cultural shift.

I found that there was a lot of information here but it was all very in dept and very interesting and may be something I use for my research project!