7/24/22

I want to punch children.

Today I'm going to talk about fashion. Yay! I created this blog, as I've stated previously, to give myself something to work on and connect to the work I do in the fashion industry. I wholeheartedly believe one of my biggest fears is graduating college and having nothing to fall on to, and even though I'm only in my second year, I'm already in  my second year, and can feel the pressure of wanting to feel accomplished already pressing down on my shoulders. So my solution is to create somewhat of a portfolio for the stuff I do, which is why I have my blog, for more personal things, Instagram for the things I make, and Tiktok to showcase all of it. In no way shape or form do I think I'm doing anything particularly inventive or original, but I will admit it does feel good to have something out in the world for me to talk about. 

All throughout grade school I had been working on things somewhat related to fashion. I took "handwork" classes 1st-8th grade in which I learned to knit, crochet, sew, etc., and have been very artistically focused since then. I knew I would never be able to do something that people need, I could never be a doctor or anything science or math related, I had no real desire to be a teacher and spend the rest of my life back in school, I wanted to do something for me,,,for the world. I wanted to be the person attached to something else. You see the Mona Lisa and think "what a cool painting!" and then "Leonardo DaVinci was gay, right?" I wanted that for myself. I want to have something of mine in the world for people to see, maybe admire, maybe speculate about hidden meanings, and have enough credit to my name that people know who I am. Not to necessarily famous, not to be a celebrity, just to be known. Known for my work, known for who I am and what I stand for in the art world. I also am a queer, so fashion seemed like the logical next step. However what I failed to consider was how many people with the same trajectory as myself, who ended up in the same industry as myself, had significantly better financial standing when they started. Money plays a huge role in pretty much all art majors. When you do things like journalism, like nursing, like early childhood education, sure you have to be able to provide certain things for yourself, but when your grades are coming from physical objects you have to create and hand to your professor, a lot more is financially expected of you (not at all saying we have it harder or discredit the work literally everyone has to do). When your assignment is "make a pair of pants" you have to buy the fabric, the zipper, the measuring tape, the buttons, the supplies, anything you want access to you provide for yourself. Thankfully my school does provide the sewing machine. But when you come from a lower-middle-class home, in which most direct family members are still paying off their own loans, paying rent, paying bills, going to work every day of the year, and you are paying for your own loans, your rent, your bills, and going to work, you don't have a lot of wiggle room in terms of quality materials you can come by. I, personally, have been very fortunate to somehow manage with the money I have, I've been very Jewish (I'm Jewish) about how I spend my money so I'm making it work, but the point I'm making is how much I underestimated how much success money can buy you. 

When I first started college, I almost thought that the previous experiences I had had with making my own clothing and stuff would give me an advantage, and I do think I knew more than some of my peers, but a lot of them had more than me simply because they had the money to start that much earlier. I'm just now having access to things they were able to have much sooner (good on them) and it has greatly impacted my confidence in the long run. People with less money have to work that much harder to keep in toe with the people around them, and I hadn't really given that a lot of thought. I look at my peers, and see them doing shit I would die to be able to do. They have the embroidery machines and sewing machines and screen printing machines and all the machines, I have a $20 sewing "machine" and a needle. Am I intimidated? Absolutely. Do I think I should drop out and be a homeless crackhead? Definitely. Am I bitter? Of fucking course I am. And I'm going to talk about why in two seconds just give me a minute, fuck. But I also think that coming from a less "giving" background has its advantages. Yes their work is going to look more complete because they bought the fancy lace, and screen-printed their own logo on the sleeve, while you used your professors extra denim she was trying to get rid of, but I like to think hard work pays off. Your professors are going to see that you're not letting machines and money do the talking in your assignment, that you sat down and custom embroidered an entire face that you drew in your notebook onto the back of your shirt (something my friend did and I'm very proud of her), and see that you're willing to do the work to make a piece look good, rather than letting mommy buy you film to iron onto it. 

Which leads me to my next point. Fuck rich people. In recent years I'm sure we've all seen the exposure "fashion" has gotten. My age demographic has seemingly veered our attention away from things that are famous because they're famous, and started giving credit to things that seem more deserving of it. For example, nobody likes Kylie Jenner anymore. Her products suck, she's annoying, and the only reason she's successful is her sister fucked someone famous (right? that's what happened isn't it?). So the people now like Bella Hadid, right? She's a model, we can recognize her street style is good too, she seems nice enough, whatever I don't like her I'm just saying she's better than Kylie and we all know that. Also side note I went on three dates with a guy once (he ended up ghosting me I wont get into it I was not in the wrong (I mean I lied about my friend getting pregnant to get out of a date with him, but we had another one after that so I don't think he knew) I promise) who was literally obsessed with the Kardashions and Paris Hilton and now whenever I think about them I think of him, how cringe is that? Anyways as the topic of "fashion" becomes more mainstream to people not like myself who are already involved with fashion, I've noticed how many people like to try at it themselves with nothing but money to back them up. I believe there are four types of "fashion people" currently getting exposure. On the good side theirs designers, and stylists. Good designers are people who know of fashion as a subject, and use that knowledge to create their own interesting, well thought out, and unique pieces, that one guy on Tiktok who created those jeans that cut low in the groin area, than warp up towards the hip bones is a great example Ill find his socials and put them in my references page when I do cause he's a great example of a normal guy who creates cool things. Good stylists are people like TinyJewishGirl, who takes her knowledge of fashion and creates outfits that do objectively work whether or not you're a fan of them. She will also be linked in my references. Now the bad. The bad designers are people with little to no knowledge of fashion subjects; line, color, shape, etc. They use money as a means to makeup for the lack of creativity by buying as much "clothing making" stuff as possible, and put fourth into the world the most mediocre screen-printed, bleach dyed, ripped piece of garbage we've all seen a million times from a million people. Printing a black German Shepard barking on the brown fruit of the loom shirt you bought off of amazon is not designing. Its arts and crafts. A bad stylist is a bit of a grey area. Personally I think bad stylists are people who claim to have a good sense of style because they have to money to wear what is currently being recognized as stylish in their community of people. A bad stylist is a person who dresses and gives their opinions on outfits based on the consensus that what they're wearing could be defined as "stylish" without actually knowing why. Not even in the previously stated subjects like color or shape, but they saw dickies were trending so they are going to wear dickies every third day with a white graphic T and a pearl necklace to tie it all together. 

I will in no way say I'm better, say they're worse, or in any way suggest that I even know what I'm doing, but in this current age in which we applaud every cis straight white man for not being a god awful human being, and yes most of this is targeted at that category of people, we need to move our agenda forward. People are not stylish for wearing what's trendy. People are not designers for customizing a shirt. People are not contributing to the fashion industry by doing what everyone else has already done. My main argument is that money and "buying style" has become so normal that we can hardly differentiate them from people with actual skill. If all of your designs are sketched onto your iPad, your style consists of brands and recognizable figures rather than well thought out pieces, and the shirt you make having its only interesting element be something you ironed onto it, I don't see that as skill, I see that as money. And the sad thing is I'm starting to think a lot of people don't see it the same way. If college has taught me anything in terms of life lessons thus far, it's that money means a lot more than I thought it would. If you have the means to take shortcuts, a lot of people wont even see it, they'll see the final piece and the fact you made it. I really do hold out hope that skill and work ethic can be recognized, but when surrounded by people who have the money to buy the skill they lack rather than working to fix it, it feels like a moo point. OOh I just thought of another paragraph haha.

Another point to be brought up is doing something actually interesting. Fashion is one of the biggest industries in the world. Like when you really think about it. We all (well most of us) wear clothes, so we are all constantly consuming bits of fashion every single day. The underwear you're wearing was designed, produced. shipped, packaged, and sold to you, and for you. We are all in some kind of target demographic of people when literally any article of clothing is made. And as I've said especially recently fashion is getting bigger and bigger, with more and more people attempting to get out there and create something for someone. With that comes an even bigger demand for a breath of fresh air in the industry. Someone to throw a stone in the water and change it for the decade before we need to do it all over again. So what I don't understand is why all these new people want to do the same shit over and over again. You see a shirt you like, you don't create and produce the exact same thing for the exact same people, you take inspiration from it and narrow down the focus to someone different. Its the same as the music and art industry, these industries that have been around since pretty much the dawn of 'civilization' as we know it. If something has existed the for thousands of years, and people are still consuming it, we need to be making new shit for them to consume. If we look at music for example. Pop music specifically. Avril Levign and Rihanna were HUGE in the 2000s, and for good reason, we really hadn't seen a young teenage girl make music like that before. Then Katy Perry and Kesha came for the 2010s for the party aesthetic that ate us all up internally, now we have Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, yes I'm leaving a lot of big artists out and skipping a lot of steps, but they all made headlines, sold out shows, and blew up from nowhere because they made something new and created a ripple in how we summed up the music of that time. But then came the copycats who just continued with what they had already set into place, washing it all out and creating the need for something new. Pop-'punk' is huge right now, but how many more child's nursery rhymes turned breakup songs can we hear before it changes again? And that's where we are with fashion. We had the same things being done again and again and its been great, I wont say literally any of it was bad, but why would you want to create something for an industry that already has 50million different versions of what you just made? Whether it comes in the form of more eco-friendly products, different designs, new fads, or fucking going back to skinny jeans, the overexposure of what 'fashion' is is not helping anything. Brands like Miu Miu, Nihl, Andagain, and yes, Iris Van Herpen, give something. They're "newer" brands that are getting recognition, not for making more bags and Chanel-esque jackets, they're doing something new. They're creating pieces out of recycled fabric, pieces that aren't trending but should be, ball gowns made specifically for the MET, and not things Jake Paul would've worn. The biggest thing for me in what makes a "good" fashion person is the reason behind why they began creating in the first place. So many people, especially as a result of Tiktoks infamous ability to make literally anybody famous, want to put in their two cents in an attempt to get their claim to fame. I think that's dumb. Yes I want recognition and the ability to be seen for the work I eventually do, but I don't want to do it to be famous, hell most people don't even know what most designers even look like. I want to make art. And I think that goal is lost when your only interest in an artistic industry is a cash grab, a chance to become something. You loose credibility by not changing something. You can do any of the "bad" things I just talked about and still be "good", but if you're not making something new, something creative and pace-changing, then I don't think there's a point. And that's a lot of what I think about on a daily basis. Do I realistically have what it takes to do something actually cool and new, or am I just going to blend in with the millions of other people exactly like me? 

My final note is recognition for how annoying this post has been. 99% of it is literally just me being bitter towards people for having more money than me because I know for a fact if I could afford it, Id most likely be the exact same way. But I want to assure that my message is getting across. I wont argue that people with money cant also be talented, screen printing something on a shirt you made is still incredibly impressive, and I never want to insinuate that my peers are worse than me creatively because they have the money I don't, what I am saying is that I'm bitter and hate rich people. It is not fair that I have to work extra hard because your parents did and you get to benefit from it, and that makes me hate you as a human being, not as an artist :).

Anyways my laptop is about to die so I'm done. I love you all very much, thank you for reading I hope you're still enjoying it, I literally cannot wait for this blog to be about things I'm doing rather than just thoughts I have on things. I hope you're day went well and this post wasn't as annoying as I think it is. 

Ily <3