is everything in vogue?

Prof. Lubomir Stoykov editor-in-chief of “Fashion Lifestyle Magazine”

Prof. Lubomir Stoykov

Designers and journalists, image makers and styling specialists very often shrug helpless when being asked “What is in vogue?” They are aware of tendencies and they can repeat as parrots what is the fashion conception for the season of one or another fashion house, of one or another designer. On the other hand they (or at least those of them who are aware of the contemporary mechanisms of fashion) understand very well how liberal, unpredictable and less powerful (in the traditional sense of the word) is fashion today. But is it true? In fact does the domination of the unilateral, commercial and imposed through media and advertising “obligatory fashion” decrease?

The rule “Everything is in vogue” looks like an exit from this complicated situation. “Everything is in vogue” means that people have a better chance to construct their own identity. “Everything is in vogue” means endless market and aesthetics possibilities for everyone to make a choice without taking into consideration the opinion of the fashion authorities and especially of the designers and fashion houses, whose only motif is profit. “Everything is in vogue” is the tough, unpretentious, a little bit cynical but also direct response of the real life, of the new generations, of the casual style. It is the pretending lack of principles in the principle “Everything is in vogue” that allowed the mix of styles, vintage and recombination to enter the contemporary fashion styles. “Everything is in vogue” is another cultural sign of the unlimited opportunities of postmodernism and of the useful fragmentation of society. In the era when everything is permitted, there are logical statements like Miuccia Prada’s that fashion has to know its place and not rule our life, Roberto Cavalli’s that jeans and t-shirts are his favorite clothes and Hussein Chalayan’s who pays homage to the fantasy of the real virtual.

But we have to admit that “Everything is in vogue” doesn’t mean irresponsibility towards one’s own outlook, platitude and negligence of the style of dressing, lack of activity and melancholy when choosing our behavior and style of communication. The convenience and the conception, changes of the elegance and the fresh inventions come together with the phrase “Everything is in vogue”. That’s how we have reached the chance of contemporary people for being different, original and also for being able to send the right messages through the language of their outlook, through their body language. So we can say that “Everything is in vogue” expresses aesthetic freedom, which is more committed to cultural responsibility and chance for authentic identification than to the superficial and stupid conclusion that fashion is out-of-date, that it disappears, that it is useful and empty… So if we cite Oscar Wilde, it is impossible not to agree that your clothes are in vogue, and not someone else’s. Or saying with a smile: “Everything is in vogue, if I can do it”…

Read: 93095 times                                                  © Fashion Lifestyle Magazine, issue 8, Mart 2008