Conformity Of Fashion Essay

London is known as one of the fashion capital cities in the world. The rich mixtures of cultures influence the diverse ways of expression about how people see fashion and be fashionable. Fashion is a way of expressing attitude through individuals or a group of people. It shows a certain level of the personality and taste. This essay will demonstrate how much of the means of individual expression for fashion in London.

Nowadays, the mainstream high street fashion brands dominate ordinary people’s appearance and lifestyle. The famous designer Vivienne Westwood announced that ‘we are so conformist, nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff, we have been trained to be consumers and we are all consuming far too much’ (Westwood quoted in Elks
2012). The mainstream fashion brands have trends for every season, every year and also for the next year. For instance, there must be a particular range of colour pallet and silhouette for a certain period. People can constantly be aware of that when they shop in London. For the high street brands, the trend of spring/summer 2012’s of the clothes that you can see in store is colourful floral prints and pattern. It is not so difficult to realise that when all the mai nstream shops are usually geographically located beside each other in London. For example, Top shop, H&M, River Island and Zara. The garments which been selected into their window display all have a certain similarity at the same time period even though they try fairly hard to be different from each other.

The mass media strongly influence our daily life.
People resolve messages inadvertently. Wong (2008) stated that people follow celebrities’ style and also wear the brands that are advertised, and rather than practice individualism, we become clones of what is to become a mass capitalistic world. The fashion followers can recognise that people walking on the street with the same brands of clothes. However, not just the people wearing the same outfits but there are also brands copy other brands style. There is hardly any purely original work
anymore.

Most people wear clothes that make them look good but fashion is not just about looking good and pretty. ‘Fashion is dress in which the key feature is rapid and continual changing of styles’ (Wilson, 2003: 8)). Fashion is all about showing difference and unique attitude, to see the changes and evolution happen. Fashion is also about contradiction and ambiguity. People wear their aspirations. All the unique and exquisite details make fashion exciting.

However, there are exceptions.
Many independent designers and stylist in London work extremely hard to create their own features and styles. They are trying not to follow the trends. They use their imagination to look into the future and create a fantasy world. Young student designers in London are always very experimental. For instance, Central St. Martins fashion design course are very well known of their student’s futuristic style and exaggerated silhouette, also the use of material in clothes. Sometimes, young designers try too hard to label themselves. They design clothes without functional means and they only want to be individual and expressive. The lecturer Shamsavari (2012) stated that fashion comes to symbolically represent resistance against dominant cultures. In other words, the young designers try to announce their designs are different from the mainstream
styles.

Although the designers try to explore the future and make their work very individual, sometimes they also look back into history as well. They mix elements from the pass with a new idea. They create a new meaning for an old look. This is also individual style. The feel of postmodernism always can surprise people how history can be used.

London is famous of its unique street style. There are groups of young people in London try to mix things to a new style. They mix the vintage clothes with the high street fashion together and try to express their unique identity. London has a huge amount of foreigners and the British Empire already ‘introduced’ lots of different cultures into Britain back in time. London’s street style is all about mixing, the mix of vintage and trendy, also the mix of different cultures. For example, there were group of young people mix the ordinary consumer objects and create a new style to express themselves and their music belief. That was the punk kids. Elizabeth Rouse explains style innovation as taking your surroundings and making it what you want it to be. The term “style innovation” or “bricolage” describes what happens when groups of young people take over existing things or objects, and put them together in a new way, to communicate their ideas and values. They re arrange “ordinary consumer objects” in a new “pattern which reflects their values and aspirations – not that of their maker” (Rouse 1989: 287). Re-arrange and mixing fashion is definitely a means of individual expression in London.

Although the young designer and stylist are trying not to follow the trends, sometimes they create the new style and it becomes the trend again. The mainstream brands will adapt element from it and sale it to everybody. It is a cycle chain and it is hard to be defined who is the original nowadays. They all influence each other in a way. It is called the “bubble-up and trickle-down theory”. When the style from the trendy mainstream goes to ordinary people or the youth culture style influence the mainstream brands and become everyone’s ordinary look, you can see how fashion changes by then.

London has its unique and strong individual expression for fashion, but fashion is a cycle and it can be changed in anyway and copied in anyway. Fashion is definitely not the death of individualism. Instead of a beacon of hope that helps people shape up their personalities and help them to stand out in this world as truly themselves. London, as a leading city of fashion, it already shows that the outstanding creativeness and the individualism.