Committing in Fashion and Art
One trap I often catch myself thinking about in fashion and art is “how could I make something that showcases my entire self?”
Whenever I start contemplating that question, I always spend a ton of time without coming up with anything good; and after some deliberation, I think it's because trying to represent all of myself is the wrong thing to do there.
I think the story of most people are quite complex, and not really possible to capture in something as simple as a single outfit or a single work of art. For one, there isn't really an overarching “designer of our life” that sculpts our life to have certain aesthetic qualities. For two, in different contexts we can be into completely different things.
For example, I enjoy both Japanese and Italian cuisine at times. However, it's impossible to capture a representation of how I enjoy both cuisines in a single dish. Since meals are usually considered one slice of immediate experience, a meal that tries to be both Japanese and Italian can only represent a meal of fusion cuisine, rather than the pleasure of eating each authentic cuisine individually, just like how an Italian sushi of shrimp wrapped in soft bread is likely delicious, but nobody would argue that it's authentic Japanese or authentic Italian food.
In this way, a single song, picture, or outfit fall very much short of having enough scope express our different likings fully. They only express a slice of our immediate experience, not a collection of them. While it is possible to combine two different likings to something entirely new, a part of the authenticity and directness of each component is lost in the process, and that can remove the effectiveness of the art itself as a whole.
It's no longer possible to convey the joy of pure Japanese food or pure Italian food in a fusion context. Conveying the liking of a single style within the scope of an immediate experience (a song, a picture, a meal, etc.) requires commitment to that style.
On a broader level, in order to authentically express a person's different likings (and most people have such different likings) fully, something of higher scope than an immediate experience. An artist needs an album or a menu, or beyond that, a discography or a set of restaurants, in order to fully express the idea that they can like things from different contexts at different times. Pinning it all on a single dish or a single outfit is, as I have found at numerous times, a purely futile endeavor.
What this means, luckily for me, is that I have license to make multiple pieces of art and to shop for a wardrobe instead. :)
— Categorized under: #fashion, #art, #communication, #identity