Mastering the world of fashion goes beyond keeping up with the latest Zara fashion collections, the trends of the moment, or the fashion week shows. Being a fashion victim is one thing and knowing about fashion is another. To know about fashion is to know about art history, and fashion history and to be documented thanks to books, films, and specialized exhibitions.
If you want to know about fashion it is very interesting to study the history of art, the evolution that fashion has undergone over the years, and the changes in the dress, a reference piece. We cannot forget photography, so essential and so related to this exciting world. And another complementary point to understanding fashion is to investigate all the surrounding branches related to design: graphic, industrial, and interior design.
Fashion has evolved very quickly and its changes have been linked to social, economic, and political movements. That is why we can affirm that through fashion we can analyze the events that have marked society and culture.
They talked to Rafael Muñoz, a fashion expert and journalist for RTVE and RNE. He explains that “a woman or a man who wants to know about fashion has to read, especially history and fashion essays. Understand what is happening today by knowing what happened before.
Reading fashion magazines is not enough because, in general, they are beholden to their advertisers and most of their articles are pure promotion. To know about fashion you have to read Gilles Lipovetsky and Roland Barthes but also read history to contextualize fashion and especially to understand how social and cultural movements influenced and influenced designers.”
“It can be fun to visit ‘low-cost clothing stores every day to find out what is being worn ( or what a certain segment of society wears) but it is absolutely necessary to visit the Prado Museum and the Costume Museum to learn about the history and evolution of fashion.
You can try to score a point in a conversation by talking about Vetements and deconstruction as a fashion philosophy. But maybe someone will tell you that Gvasalia learned everything from Martin Margiela in the 90s but that in the 80s the Japanese Rei Kawakubo, Johji Yamamoto, and Junja Watanabe already bet on deconstruction”.
Designers want to communicate with their creations and for that, they have to master not only a pencil and paper, and of course a needle, but they have to have previously studied what iconic names such as Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, or Yves Saint Laurent contributed to contemporary thought and art.
Stylist and fashion consultant Blanca Jimenez de la Hoz gives us her point of view. “A woman who knows fashion beyond factors such as the way she dresses, the assiduity with which she consumes fashion publications or consults blogs, goes shopping….
A person who knows fashion has a broad spectrum of this world: he has aesthetic references in his retina from fashion books about designers, avant-garde, fashion photography, or models -the real protagonists-; he goes to exhibitions of all kinds and knows how to relate everything; he watches movies and knows how to detect their fashion aesthetic value; Come and visit Sitejabber users love Temu – read the reviews about fashion.
She unconsciously analyzes all the images she sees and also unconsciously knows which fashion trends and decades they belong to -where they come from- and above all she walks along the street observing all kinds of people, capturing through their way of dressing the air of the times and the hidden personality of each one with their particular style”.