Design vs. Fashion

One of the greatest things that have come from investigating the slow movement is the feeling of comfort that I’ve gotten the more I dive into it. As I read more about slow cities, slow food, slow education, there is a common thread that gives the sense that enjoying the process almost is as important as the end result. I really like this. 

When I think of it in terms of clothing I realize that for me, making clothes has always been about the challenge of creating, of falling in love with a texture or a colour, and finding the shape I want the design to take.  Then   drafting the pattern in a two-dimensional form and finally seeing it take shape in 3-D by completing the garment.  I just realized that I’ve actually always been more about the design than about the fashion. 

Preliminary sketches for a client, c. 1990

Design elements translate to all forms of art, things like lines, textures; colour and shape are all used to create a unified piece that is pleasing to the eye. Fashion as we know it nowadays is dictated by a select number of corporations that decide what is in or out. They do use all kinds of forecasting tools, to guess what the consumer will buy, but in the end, they get to decide what’s available to us. Fashion before the dawn of mass production was ‘trickled down’ from the elite, but each person had a say in what their garment eventually looked like because everything was made to measure. We had a say in the design. I think this is the part that I love, the craftsmanship of the trade. It’s in the details and in the small personal touches that each piece comes alive. One of the websites I have come across talks about how slow fashion embraces personal expression, encourages education, promotes conscious consumption and values quality. The part about embraces personal expression is most encouraging to me, because I feel that in our constant search to be on top of fashion we have lost our sense of personal style.

In my History of Fashion class, I teach about how it is a general consensus among scholars that the main reason humans started to wear clothes was for decoration purposes. Modesty, protection and status are also reasons, but even though the jury is out on what came first, most historians agree that all forms of societies have developed some form of decoration to their appearance. This indicates to us that no matter what we wear, be it a loincloth or a gown, it is meant to express our personality and therefore become a form of art. So it is only logical that our fashion should be an extension of who we are and what our lifestyle is. Slow fashion allows for this.

Samples of princess style line variations.
Pattern making for Fashion Desing, by
H. Armstrong.

The problem is that many of us have forgotten how. I have encountered so many people who have said to me “I just don’t know how to put outfits together, or I just don’t know what looks good on me, or I just don’t know what’s in”.  If we were to learn about the craft, about how clothes are made and how they are put together, then those questions could slowly be answered. You would learn about princess seams and empire waists, and how those could help make your shape slimmer or wider. You would learn about colour combinations that are complementary, you could learn that prints are a form of texture because they create an optical illusion. 

The process of making clothes has always been slow. It is like building a house or creating a painting, it should take time and thought and in the end the final product will be a piece that not only fits your shape but also matches your personality from the inside out. But what we forget is that the process - that time in which creativity is king- is one of the most rewarding parts of designing.