Splash of Fashion!

Hello my dear readers, it has been a couple of great weeks writing for you. This fashion blog began in my first college English class, I was assigned to create a blog and chose a topic that I could relate our class readings with every week. Hmm, I felt puzzled and worried, I had no idea what I could write about, but when Professor Hanson told us to choose something we were passionate about, I instantly thought fashion. She said that if it was a topic we enjoyed talking about, our weekly blogs wouldn't be difficult. Boy, was she right! These last 10 weeks flew by, I relating our readings with fashion it made me discover and put things together that I never would have cared to notice or find out. 

I couldn't be any happier that I chose to write about fashion, there are so many things that are relevant. Fashion itself comes in all shapes, colors, sizes; from clothes, to shoes, to accessories, even make up could be part of a fashion statement. Many of the things that I wrote on my blogs were things that I discovered or learned as I went through this class, I didn't know there could be so much to discover. It was a fun way to learn things because it was a subject that had my interest, I was learning on my own about the world of fashion, as well as learning new ideas from the texts I was reading for the class. 

In all honesty, I didn't except myself to be excited about any homework assignments, but this blog became more than that, it was those types of projects that you used to look forward to back in elementary. Another huge reason these weekly blog posts were so fun was because we were allowed to talk in our first discourse, we didn't have to found fancy, we just had to write for pleasure. Incorporating technology was also very fun, we could make it as colorful, and pretty as we wanted, we could add music, and pictures, we could change fonts, font color, and sizes whenever without being wrong. It made our paper and ideas come to life and help me keep being excited to write. This was definitely a fun ten week project. 

I don't have this blog for trend setting purposes, so it made me laugh!

Unfortunatley, I probably won't be posting blogs anymore, I enjoyed doing this but life gets in the way and suddenly you can only make time for priorities, this blog was a priority to me because it meant my grade. After my English course is completed I will have to reorganize my priorities. This was definitely an escape for me, it was almost like a little diary that I never had, except I could share my thoughts with others who share the love of fashion with me. I dot want o completely say goodbye to this page, so Im promising myself that whenever I do have free times, I will post a few ideas here. I am not here to set any trends because just because I love styles, does not mean I am a stylist, LOL. 

I ENJOYED THIS VERY MUCH, AND WILL HOPE TO KEEP THIS UPDATED! XOXO

Collab!

CoLLAboRatiON

Welcome back readers!

I bet some of us hardly want to read a thing about fashion on a day like this, it is Black Friday. We just had to deal with creating a super cute outfit to impress our family on Thanksgiving dinner, and we just had to deal with people who were trying to take the shoes that were on sale for midnight sale racks at the mall! 

But before putting your hands on all the different clothes, shoes, accessories, and make up, did we consider how much time and effort was put into each individual thing at the store? It had to come from not only one person, but an entire group of people who decided that the piece was good enough to be sold. Yes, an entire group, anything and everything that you can think of, came from a collaborative work and collaborative ideas, in order to have the best possible offered to us when we shop. 

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There are many different ways that collaboration comes into play when it come to fashion! There are many steps that fashion objects go through before they are sold to the public, they go through the designing, editing, testing, visualizing, developing, and presenting. All of these step are very broad, but I can only imagine the many other things that they go through. The reason so many steps are includes is to make sure they are creating something that will be successfully sold and there will be a high demand.  All these steps are done by many different people, they pass down the item to others for different ideas and perspectives, with the collaboration of others, will perfect the product. 

 

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Collaboration is an exciting thing for the world of fashion, it creates more complex ideas, that when overcame, they become extraordinary pieces! If it only took the idea of one person to create a piece of clothing, it wouldn't contain the many tiny details that make a piece great for a variety of buyers. Let's have a shirt as an example, if the idea was designed by one person and had no others ideas of others, that shirt would only be for those of the same taste of the designer, which would be too few and the shirt would not have a high demand. Rather than someone beginning the design of a shirt, and having it passed to others for corrections and more details incorporated into the shirt, that would give the shirt many different elements that will make it something that many buyers would look for.

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Above, we see two different men's shirt, the one on the left is just a simple white shirt, it started of as a design of one person with not much complexity or ideas that would make the shirt appealing to buy. 

The shirt on the right has more ideas incorporated, it may have had the idea of one person to add long sleeves for those who get a bit more cold, another person could have added the idea of buttons, another may have suggested a collar to make it more formal, another added some color to make the shirt more appealing, and finally another could have suggested to add a plaid pattern in order to create variety. This is only a very simple example of how collaboration may have been used in order to create a fear better product, something that would have a higher demand than a simple white t-shirt. 

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The importance of collaboration in todays workplace is huge and very important, not only in designing but in every other work field. Collaboration is a great way to create new things, collaboration has also become easier with all the use of technology, if it wasn't for technology, it would be hard to collaborate with others in order to create amazing products. Not only can we use ideas from our co workers, but also use ideas from others around the world. This idea of contracting things with the ideas of many has become popular and I would say has also benefitted us in many ways. 

Shopping From My Phone

Welcome back fellow followers!

This weeks topic will be on technology, yes technology. Every individual is entitled to different opinions, whether they believe technology is helping us grow and make amazing things, or whether it is impacting us negatively. There are many different pros and cons regarding the impacts of technology on society. You might be asking yourself what technology has to do with fashion, so read and discover the many ways it benefits the fashion world, you could be amazed! 

 

Through a bit of research and some personal experiences, I came up with some ways that technology relates to fashion in a sense of bettering it. Technology has allowed to share trends through social media in a very quick way, which is amazing because we know that the speed of fashion is also moving quickly. Another way it is an advantage for the fashionistas of the world is that it influences others to wear what celebs are wearing;if it wasn't for technology of taking pictures and printing them, we most likely wouldn't be able to see what the Hollywood stars are wearing, in other words, whats in. But what I found technology had a huge impact on was online shopping! 

Online Shopping

Online shopping is a fashionistas best friend, the possibilities of finding the perfect piece are endless. Thanks to all of the fascinating technology that has been created and prated over the past years, we have been able to take the world of a fashion t a whole different level. I don't see why anybody would disagree that technology has increased the things we can do for our personal style and taste. Online shopping benefits us in many ways, some examples that I believe are saving the time and hassle, a way to compare, saving gas, avoiding the salesmen, and a wider variety of sizes. 

Save Time!

Being able to save the time and the hassle of actually getting yourself out of the house, driving through traffic, and going to the mall for something simple can be irritating.I find people will actually rather not go out because they don't want to spend time getting pretty just to go out and buy a couple pairs of socks. Online shopping saves us the time we spend getting ready to go out in public and the time you would be stuck in traffic. Not only would it save you that time, but also the time you will be spending in line to pay for your items, especially during the holiday season. They say, time is money, and if you're losing time AND money while shopping, you're not making a smart choice,so why not spend money but save time? 

Comparing

One of the many benefits of online shopping is that it makes it so quick and painless to compare prices and style. Many times people will be looking for a certain item, when they have found it on three different on lie pages, they can easily compare price without having to drive around to all three departments.

Another reason it is easy to compare clothing, shoes, or accessories so easily online is because they usually take a couple different shots of the item looks on a mannequin, they give you many different views, and some times will even give an example of an outfit that you can put together.  

Yes, comparing is something that would've been done without technology, but who are we kidding? Who actually takes the time to drive around town to try to compare prices of a shirt ?

Variety!

The times that you find the perfect shoe, but come to the counter just to find out that the retail store has run out of your size are endless; not to mention, frustrating! Another amazing benefit of online shopping is that we have a huge variety of items whether it's the color, size, price, and brand. Usually, it tends tone easier to find the item you want in different color online, if your at your local store, they just have whats out, you get what you get. Finding a certain size at the actual store you have walked into is often near impossible, there is always something that has to go wrong in order for you not to have what you fell in love with. If you're shopping online, chances are that you will have more size options because you are directly ordering from the company; if the product isn't on that wen page, there are always many other cites that are easy to find by punching a couple of key words of the item you are looking for. 

There you have it ladies and gentlemen, the way that we in the fashion world are influenced and impacted positively thanks to the use of technology. 

Online shopping is only one of the many examples that we can use in order to convince society that technology has improve many things that we benefit from. The possibilities can go on forever, although some all read through and still disagree, I can't help but be convinced that technology has truly done an amazing job of promoting and serving the fashion world and many other things. 

totally trendy

Are You Totally Trendy This Season?

Welcome back to the weekly post on Splash of Fashion!

This week I will be discovering fashion statistics, how trendiness is measured, and how people decide if you are in style or not. This is going to be a bit of a challenge, I had never asked myself this question, but with some research, I will tell you everything I have found on these rules that are expected to be met in order to be in style every season. 

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First of all, what is a trend?

A trend is simply a form of expressing what is being worn or most talked about in pop culture or fashion. It is what is popular at a certain time or period of time, because trends are constantly changing.  

A trend doesn't necessarily have to be directed with fashion, but many times it is understood to be a fashion trend because it is commonly used to discuss the latest style.  

The way a certain style or article of clothes, shoes, or accessories are measured to be good or bad is by how "trendy" they are. If it is claimed to be trendy, then that means its in; Everyone is wearing it, most stores are stocking up with that certain merchandise because they know its going to be sold fast, considering the high demand. 

People just make certain things popular and trendy. When an item, for example a high low dress was made, the maker couldn't tell whether it was going to be sold or not. They designer simply had to take a risk, luckily the high low dress became very popular because people started wearing them everywhere. The high low dress didn't start off trendy, it would've either worked real well or have been a disappointment, but somewhere a brave individual wore it and rocked it, that created a chain reaction of the rest to purchase and wear the high low dress. 

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In the world of fashion, being on top of the fashion trends is very important. If you are caught wearing last years best dressed summer outfit during the current summer, you are considered to be committing social suicide. 

As much as I love being in style and dressing up in today's most popular clothes, I also see the negative in trending, it sets goals to society, and if society doesn't meet those goals, they aren't part of the "cool" club. 

Having a great style which many can admire is a good quality, but style should be used in a positive way, to encourage, motivate, and speak to others, it shouldn't be used as a way of locking people out of the popular culture. 

Sadly, many individuals as well as groups of people who aren't in the latest clothes, or wearing whats new don't have a chance with society; they are automatically taken out of the hip bubble. 

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The way fashion trends become trendy is by having one person start the trend, if people see that they look good in it, it influences them to wear it to try to look as great as them. 

Some false ways to sell certain pieces are when they are shown on a magazine with a model with a waist the size of a pencil. It should be obvious to the buyer, that if they are not the same side, it will not look the same, but they ignore the way they look and keep in mind how the mannequin looked. 

In fashion, trends are measured by the popularity of people buying and wearing the clothes, shoes, or accessories. The more that is sold, the more the word spreads, and the higher pressure for others to look the same and consume. 

Joan Rivers ft. Michel Foucault 

Hello welcome back to Splash of Fashion, this week we will take a look at fashion through "Foucaudian lenses." Don't worry if you have no idea what those crazy lenses are! Just take a few minutes to watch this clip from fashion police and then I'll explain! :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENMAQS8gA3k

If you are confused at of what Foucaudian lenses are, well that tern came from Michel Foucault. Michel Foucault was a French postmodernist who ideas revolved around the idea of power and how people are surrounded by social policing, binary branding, and disciplinary mechanisms. Like the Panopticon building, which was built many centuries ago to watch people in such way that the people in the Panoptic structure couldn't tell when they were being watched, therefore creating self discipline and for most part obeying rules rather than suffering consequences. 

Michel Foucault wrote, "Panopticism: Discipline and Punish," he came to the conclusion that ever since the Panoptic structure was build, the entire world became about being watched. Everywhere we are or go, we are ruled, not necessarily ruled by a king or police, but by the way hospitals, prisons, schools, and workplaces are set up. For example, in a classroom, you can easily see the panopticism because of the fact that teachers are always in the center front of the classroom. it always them to watch every student at the same time. 

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Now you're probably asking what Michel Foucault's ideas have to do with fashion and fashion police so I will hopefully make you realize that social policing and classifications are used everywhere we go. 

In the beginning of this Fashion Police clip, Joan Rivers talks about the things people would usually think about when they think of Venice. She mentioned the amazing food, romance, and of course beautiful women with heavy mustaches. Wait a minute, heavy mustaches… why does Joan say that on national television? 

I don't understand why she is being so stereo typical, Im not sure where Joan's idea of women in Venice having heavy mustaches, but that is an example of how society values looks and nothing more. Looks are what should least matter about a person, but society naturally classifies people as prejudicially as can be. If women did have mustaches, which many women do, it natural just more subtle than it would be on a man. So its nothing out of this world for a women to have a bit darker facial hair, but society makes it seem as if you do have darker upper lip hair, you are manly or ugly. But was there ever a rule that said that if women showed facial hair they were less worthy than a women without facial hair? 

Beyonce is a great example, she is beyond beautiful and she has a natural mustache. Of course the 

people that take care of her beauty make sure to keep it off, so that she can stay classified as a beautiful

 women. 

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Then they criticize what Jessica Alba wore in Venice, this Valentino dress that is shown in the picture. 

They said a few things about the style of the dress and how she wore it but Joan Rivers says that she looked like a "Atlantic city hooker" and they also called it a "mullet dress." Joan and the rest of the judges on Fashion Police act like the syndics that are in charge of everything going on. They are acting as a surveillance camera that decides whats good and bad. Within these four judges on the show, they all can't agree that she looks good or bad. This is where the binary comes in, does she look good in the Valentino dress, or is it really that bad looking. 

Yes everyone has a right to their own opinion but this national television series allows for a few syndics to be in charge of deciding what others should wear, they are acting as the center of the panopticon and watching everyone in their wardrobe. No matter how many miles, cities, states, and even countries away, the fashion police is watching the celebs in hopes of judging them.

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Lastly, this clip of Fashion Police talks about Naomi Campbell's Dolce and Gabbana dress. 

I don't find anything wrong with her dress, so usually our little fashion police would do the job of judging the wardrobe. 

Well, surprisingly, Joan Rivers and the rest of the group hold themselves back from judging her. The silly thing is, they don't hold back from saying anything because they absolutely think she wore it wonderfully, but because their sarcasm says that they are afraid of saying anything bad about her. 

This could be a possible of action of a racial binary, they judged the other two ladies with no hesitance but they hold themselves back with Naomi and she is the only one of the three that is of color. Society has this idea that they decided to believe that colored people can fight or are more aggressive than non colored people. 

They all laughed and said she looked great in a very obvious, sarcastic way. They didn't actually mean that she looked good, it was another way of making fun of her. 

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These are only a few examples of where my Foucaudian Lenses came on while watching this short clip of the national television hit, "Fashion Police." 

Foucaults ideas had a huge impact of how I view things now, I now see little things that are so obvious yet can be so subtle to others that would have never read Foucault's ideas on discipline and punishment. 

Fashion is only one aspect that clearly shows panopticism in full action, but we are honestly surrounded   by those ideas all around the world. 

Styling in Foucaudian Lenses

We have all once heard that if you want to be viewed as a certain person, we must dress in a certain way to appear as if we are who we want to be, correct? 

Yes? No?

Well, if you have, you will be familiar with reading about the good and the bad in fashion, what is "wrong" and was is "right," and what's in and what was so 2002. 

For those who have never heard that phrase, you will be able to read about the binaries of fashion and style. 

Who made the rules? 

Who gets to decide? 

And did anyone ever say there were rules for what to dress in?

Or were these silly little rules created by ideas of those who live in a world that is all about judging others? 

I bet there are no actual rules that were once created and meant to stay forever, how would it make sense to make concrete rules about something like fashion that is constantly changing. It changes so incredibly fast, it isn't even every year, the way people dress and what they call "in" changes so quickly, seasonally. People make up rules as time goes, never have I ever ran into an official rule book for what to wear and how to wear it. 

The way every individual dress shouldn't be coming from a rule book anyway! That's the amazing thing about style, everyone is different, even the same piece can be wore in thirty different ways and look completely different on each person. 

What fun would it be if we walked around in uniform?

This week in English, we read Michel Foucault's amazing piece, "Panopticism." In this piece, he made it clear that his idea of the way the world worked was by having power everywhere and controlling everyone. We aren't actually as free as we think we are, everything we do is being governed in some type of way. There is really no way of avoiding the power that there is over us. We are under rule anywhere in society that we are, in schools, hospitals, jails, and even at work. The only choices we really have, are to choose over the good and the bad. 

If we take a step back and look at fashion through Foucaudian lenses, we would see that we are also being policed over what we wear. The reason is that society makes these "rules" they're never written or posted anywhere. The problem is that everyone has different opinions, nobody has the same idea for a rule. 

Take a red, long dress, ask three different people the rule about wearing the dress. One answer would probably sound like this, "you have to be tall in order tower that dress." Another might be something like this, "if you're dark skin you shouldn't be wearing a red dress in the first place. And the last comment might be, "if you're fat, just don't even think about wearing that dress."

So we took one simple piece of clothing, and asked ONLY three different people for the "rule" for wearing that piece and all answers were different. 

What that says to me is that, there is o such thing as a rule for what to wear, society just makes them up. How hard to please the million fashion polices of this world! 

If people are worrying about the way they are socially policed, they will never be at peace within themselves. Every individual has a different, unique way of adorning they're body and worrying about pleasing others shouldn't be at the top of their priority list.

We are being watched anywhere and everywhere we go, and no matter what end of the fashion binary we choose, we will still be judged. 

Fashion and style is only one of the infinitely many examples of the way Michel Foucault explains that everywhere we go we are being watched, and it is entirely up to you if you want to choose the "good binary" or the "bad" one. The reason I quote it is because nobody ever told us what end of the binary was the good one, society only made the good binary the road that most people would choose. 

So, overall, there are no rule books, rules are made as we go by society, and they evolve just like human, animals, and plants evolve over time. 

Check it(me) out!

Dear fellow readers! 

Don't Keep Calm, 

it's Fashion Fridays! 

Fashion, looks, style, and appearance are all a world of revision. When have you ever loved the way you look on the first try? Have you ever completely chose an outfit without changing it somehow, anything about it? Nope, I find it hard to believe if you answered yes to these questions. That's the trick about looking good, well at least in our silly little brains, "looking good" means staring at yourself long enough with different clothes, shoes, jewelry, or make up until we have made ourselves think it is the perfect outfit. 

This weeks reading dealt with Murray's essay which was about revision and how revision positively affects writing; of course this week I will be sharing how revision affects the world of fashion. As we learned in class the how helpful peer reviews can be, I realize that not only are they helpful for stronger essays but also to look or feel better within a person. 

I can almost assure everyone has at least asked once for somebody else's opinion of how they look. We always want reassurance of how good or bad we look, because as humans we worry so much over what society will think of us. We live with the fear of being judged by the world, and that is why instead, we ask people who we trust to tell us how we really look. 

Asking a friend, a sibling, or anybody you trust to check you out and tell you what they think of your outfit is usually what makes a person feel better.  Sometimes it is simple things that may seem as they don't make a big deference, but they do. The times I have changed little things, like my accessories until it suddenly becomes the perfect outfit have been many.

Asking for advice is a good tool, it helps catch those little details that can make or break a look. Very much like having a revision on a paper, the first outfit we decide on is our first draft, it isn't enough to  make a statement, but after revising, or in the world of fashion, checking yourself out or being checked out by someone, it can make the outfit totally work. 

Overall, I feel that revising your outfits can never hurt, it can only help your outfit become even better. Receiving friendly fashion advice is as best as it gets, although of course sometimes it sucks to hear things we didn't want o get back. It can be hard to get negative comments on the "masterpieces" we think we have created.Getting comments that we don't want to hear are not necessarily always bad or negative comments, but sometimes the truth hurts and we must learn to accept that not always will we choose a complimentary outfit. We must learn to accept advice, at the end of the day, we asked because we were not sure of how we look, if there was uncertainty from yourself, expecting positive comments all the time would be unrealistic or untruthful. 

So, let's all remember revising makes the perfect outfit! Strut like you mean it and always OWN IT!