Тhe universal cloth
Some people wonder how to define categories such as “modern” and “modernity” according to the personal choice of appearance and style of clothing. Some of them are convinced of the fact that nowadays everyone must be modern. They talk about the right of being modern but also about the duty to modernity... But what do “right” and “duty” mean? If we start to talk about rights and duties, we will inevitably get to the point of responsibilities, control, discipline and other administrative terms, contrary to the liberal nature of fashion which allows everyone to choose his own outlook and identity. To be modern means above all to be original and different, to correspond to the spirit of time. But having own style is different from being modern. Coco Chanel herself had made difference between style and fashion, affirming that fashion passes by but style stays. In fact, style is a refined concept about beauty and elegance while modernity is a matter of actuality, of simultaneous or outstripped outlook and behavior.
Which then are the emblematic, eternal or universal clothes and accessories? Some designers prefer to talk about formal and casual styles, about the sweater for example, or about the trousers, which women wear. It is difficult to make a categorical conclusion, but if we pay attention to the colors, black is universal for formal and casual cases (although exceptions are possible and they are well-found and culturally motivated). Aesthetes, journalists and fashion creators are concerned by the conventionality of clothes and the different situation they are suitable for. The necktie, for example, outlives its time more and more, but this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have to be worn as a symbol of rituality, solemnityр businesslike manner etc. Lately there is a big change in business suits, which are conservative but chic.
Universal cloth and universal elegance are two different things. Universal cloth is non-fashionable cloth, it is closer to uniforms and is convenient in different occasions. Universal elegance is a conditional term which contains recognition and applying the eternal symbols of femininity and masculinity, beauty, harmony and refinement in clothes.
Ideally, universal cloth always contains or it has to contain some of the great ideas of fashion icons such as Coco Chanel and Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis and Lady Diana, Madonna and Victoria Beckham and many others. But we also don’t have to forget that fashion and novelty are such as Siamese twins and that the symbols of elegance, which are familiar from the past can’t be applied without reason , but have to be combined and recombined, mixed and remixed according to the spirit of new time, according to people’s individuality, according to the dynamics and changes in their thinking and behavior.Read: 65173 times © Fashion Lifestyle Magazine, issue 20, Mart 2009
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