Tension: Fashion is a language

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: NEW YORK TIMES
What does the way you dress say about you?

Most of us wear clothes, and we (mostly) always have. What our clothing says about our personality is really the only reason fashion exists. I mean, we (mostly) don't walk around in potato sacks. Beyond the practicality of clothing, our outer trappings denote our tribe, our music, our rebelliousness and our conformity. Clothing is our uniform, our security blanket and our bane. We dress to hide, we dress to expose and we dress to communicate — fashion is a language.

We rely on clothing as an economic and social indicator in a society that lacks an official ranking system.

What does your ‘uniform' say about you? Do you exemplify an idea or stance in society? Do you dress to personify rebellion, gang, wealth, skater, rocker, sexy, hippie or lumberjack? Sometimes it is not so much a definition of who you are, but how others perceive you. Do you females wear shirts with drooping necklines so as to focus attention on your chest? Pants riding so low they show your thong? Do you really like that sort of attention? Or do you wear clothing too large for your body to conceal yourself? Dress too young (or too old) for you age? Are you covered in designer logos?

I think that those pants that women wear that have some sort of corporate branding across the ass (Campus Crew and PINK, to name a couple) are a great idea. I think that some men would really benefit from having wording on their pants as well. Maybe even whole sentences, like: ‘Please remember to pull me up over your ass,' for starters.

I am no prude; I get mohawks and hornrimmed glasses. I get the handlebar mustache, the high heel, fanny packs, cowboy hats and hoop earrings. I get that a backwards baseball cap is a symbol of man's inhumanity to man. I get long hair on guys and short hair on girls. I get skinny jeans, corduroys, headbands and polo players on shirts... but I don't get the pants-hanging-below- the-ass thing. Perhaps you pseudohomies can skip wearing pants altogether and just wear really baggy socks?

It seems that the whole idea of low-riding pants derives from an unspoken American jail code that allows an inmate to signal his desire for ‘attention' from any number of other inmates. Not what I would call a romantic style trend.

There has been a long trend of fashion being used as social signals: the stoner coat, the earring in a certain ear, a bandana with certain colours. In the mid-1800s, wearing a cowboy hat pushed back at a cocky angle was code for “I'm a badass looking for a fight.” The same signal is seen today using purple baseball caps.

It wasn't all that long ago that every guy in the world wore a baseball hat: front-wise, side-wise, back-wise, with the tag, with a crisp rim, with a bent rim and at a cocky jaunty impression of all of the above. It looks like the baseball hat is waning in favour of a toque and an emo haircut. Multitudes of Justin Bieber clones rolling up their sleeves to show stock tattoos that they picked from a wall of butterflies, sculls and middle-ages' Gregorian typography spelling out phrases like “Thug Life” and philosophical stanzas that someone saw on Facebook once. Let's not forget the scrawl of Chinese characters spelling out ominous and foreboding ancient secrets.

I realize that to think of tattoos as a form of clothing is a stretch, but there certainly are similarities. Granted, you may have issues surviving a blizzard wearing nothing but tattoos, but your frozen dead body will look cool... unless you are super old. Think about that: one day, you women with full sleeves of tattoos will be old, blue-haired ladies (the old husbands already in the ground). Old waddling biddies clunking down the street in your walkers, full sleeves of misshapen, faded tattoos slouching like deflated balloons. The once-vibrant butterfly on your chest now looking like it got caught between the door and the jamb with just its wings sticking out, and those tribal gauge piercing holes in your ears looking like an old inner tube hanging off the edge of a toilet seat.

Clothing protects us, hides us and all too often defines us. It is all too easy, I feel, to get caught up in what others expect us to look like. The corporate world depends on our fashion trends to change so fast it is all we can do to stay current. It's called perceived obsolescence, and it is pure corporate manipulation. I think we would be much better off to just wear potato sacks — the insistent itch will remind us that the true beauty of humanity really is skin deep.

Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.