Fashion. I was one of those people who always said I didn’t care about fashion because fashion didn’t care about me, but in the last decade or so, I changed my mind. Maybe it was my move from Copenhagen to Glasgow that prompted my change of heart? The two cities have radically different approaches to fashion. Maybe it was because I began making clothes? I started thinking about necklines and silhouettes in another way. Whatever the reason I began thinking about fashion as both visual communication and social history.
I spent last week doing jury duty. I was never picked to sit on a jury but I spent several hours every day sitting in a crowd of around 100 strangers. It was so interesting to observe what people were wearing. It was a sea of black trousers, various blouses, and suits but people still looked so different depending upon the cut of their trousers or how their jacket sat. One guy stood out for a slim-cut navy suit with brown brogues - I imagined him working in media or the trendy part of IT. Another man wore a loose, baggy suit that screamed 1990s to me - I guessed that maybe he didn't wear suits to work and only owned this one suit? What people wear say a lot about them - just as much as body and verbal language do.
What has this to do with me working as a designer?
I don't live and work in a context-less world. I am influenced by what I see around me as much as anybody else. I have my own specific aesthetic which is tied to my body, my colouring and my love of vintage shopping. I design things that I want to wear myself (unless it is a very, very, very specific brief which rarely happens). I have pinterest boards that I edit frequently to help me hone my aesthetic (How to Wear Clothes is my imaginary wardrobe, for instance; Knitting Inspiration does what it says on the tin). I keep an eye on people like Shirley Kurata whose stylistic instincts I admire. I also spend a working day each season going through catwalk shows on style.com thinking about things like necklines, colour combinations, sleeve caps, tailoring etc. You may not be able to see all this work in my design, but it is there. When someone commented on the Lindgren mittens saying "they look like the most amazing vintage find!" I had a quiet, internal fistbump of yay, yay, yay, that is what I wanted to say!
I think talking about hand-knitting in a fashion context is always likely to be fraught with danger. I know many Ravelry people have the same 'I don’t care about fashion because fashion don’t care about me' stance that I used to have (which in its own way is a reaction to fashion - or at least the fast fashion of the retail world). But what we choose to make speaks its own language and forms part of social history (increased leisure time; rejection of consumerism; ethical consumerism; concerns about sustainability; the rise of nostalgia industry etc). Clothes are never 'just' clothes. I'd argue we even see micro-trends within hand-knitting that are as much about fashion as we'd like to pretend they are not.
What are your thoughts on the act of making and fashion? Do you try to imitate current high street trends? Do you have a specific style you try to make? Do you follow making trends and like making 'the in-thing'? Do you follow fashion? How do you think about the clothes you wear & make?