There are many TV shows, websites, and newspaper and magazine columns that use the concept of being “Fashion Police.” As for myself, I love fashion and spend a lot time checking it out, but I could not possibly claim any authority on it that is superior to or somehow more worthy than anyone else’s; I just have stuff I like and stuff I really like! So, as for deeming myself some sort of singular Fashion Police force, I couldn't even possibly try, because my nonstop question would be, How could I ever “take anybody in” for their alleged style crimes, when I am far too busy being taken in (in the other sense) by so much arresting beauty, more beauty than I can ever apprehend?!?? Again, how could I, whoever I think I am, claim that someone’s waistline--or even their waist itself--needs to be taken in? Preposterous.

There is, I freely acknowledge, a clear form of entertainment, or even just simple perspective, that is provided whenever someone pokes fun at someone else’s taste, and every day I read dozens of blog postings that do just that, and which give a clear image of one person's own subjective taste. But my job, as I see it, is to inspire by way of the discoveries that I make between the creations of fashion designers, classical painters, and literary authors--what “style of mind” they seem to share, what kind of taste and aesthetic sensibilities they have in common, whether the more recent creator was fully aware of his predecessors or not.

In my work, I am looking to join two threads together, and I can only do that by recognizing my own predecessors:

You see, the major goal of the 19th-century American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson was to write a “natural history of intellect,” which he considered to be "chief task” of his life.

And the major goal of the early-20th-century Austrian psychologist Carl Jung was to expound upon his idea of a “collective unconscious” (or subconscious) that underlies all of human myth-making, storytelling, and art.

My goal, as the 21st-century Internetic researcher The Fashioniste, is to piece together a natural history of the creative subconscious. I have no interest in offering up my nominal judgments and opinions, but would rather like to trace the etymology of the language of fashion back to art, and then to literature and to get at the root of creative thought itself, and thus reveal, as much as I can, the creative subconscious of humanity--at least as it has expressed itself so far.

One of the most common proverbs from around the world tells us: “There is no accounting for tastes.” What I aim to do is at least present the source of these different designs, and the convergence of tastes that created in each of those designs a visual definition of beauty at a particular point in time--which, after I have made a connection, will be shown as a definition of beauty from a previous point in time as well....

“All our tastes are reminiscences,” or, in French, “Tous nos goûts sont des réminiscences.” – This was the observation of the 19th-century French poet by the name of Alphonse de Lamartine, and it articulates the premise of my entire venture as one of the more intense admirers and students of “style history.” One definition of “reminiscience” that is given by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary is: “something so like another as to be regarded as an unconscious repetition, imitation, or survival.” That is exactly the definition I have been talking about. However, the French word “réminiscence” is also translated into English as an “evocation,” a “reconstruction,” or a “recollection,” which adds more layers to the meaning of this process. Here are two current fashion designers who point to the concept of taste--first, as an evocation and a reconstruction, and, third, as a recollection.

First, as an evocation, from Nicolas Ghesquière, creative director for the House of Balenciaga, in reference to his Spring/Summer 2006 collection:
Interviewer: The way that you incorporate Balenciaga himself is increasingly interesting. I mean, that suggestion of the Infanta [Balenciaga’s famous 1939 dress inspired by 17th-century Spanish painter Velázquez], I thought, was amazing.
Ghesquière: It’s not to be nostalgic. I prefer evocation [rather] than [quotation]... It’s about evoking a style and reworking it with our techniques.

Cristóbal Balenciaga was the early-20th-century Spanish designer who founded the house of his own namesake, and it was some thirty years of dormancy before his visionary legacy was picked back up and introduced to a whole new generation. Balenciaga himself was known for the highly developed interior construction he gave to the dresses he designed--more than any other designer of the past century, he was the ultimate architect of fabric. So, when Ghesquière says that his focus is on evoking the signature style, but with new techniques, he is of course talking about the same taste undergoing reconstruction...

And, to consider taste as a recollection, and we might emphasis recollection, we turn to Stefano Pilati, creative director for the House of Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, in reference to his Spring/Summer 2007 collection:
Pilati: I always think about the archive, but you know, after years of working on it, you almost start to digest it, so it's really part of your vocabulary, and as I always said from the very first collection, you know, that you can be inspired by an old collection of Mr. Saint-Laurent, or you can be inspired by just one detail!

Now that is a great love for diverse forms of beauty, as Yves Saint-Laurent was one of the most “global” of designers in his full use of countless cultural styles and traditional costumes from every continent!

It’s about the global nature of beauty, and a global subconscious to human creativity itself. Any powerful and influential designer, artist, or writer must have an unusual perception of things, and I mean unusual only insofar as it is “not usual,” rather than “strange,” as that word tends to carry unnecessary negative connotations. Such productive minds will indeed tend to see more than one form or type of beauty, and have the power to make other people see that beauty as well. The French designer Jean Paul Gaultier exemplified this in his Spring/Summer 2006 Ready-to-Wear show, in which he closed the show with a very curvy model, and then had this exchange afterwards, backstage:
Gaultier: …I think it’s nice also to show some beautiful woman who has, like, volume and beautiful shapes, which is like [the work of 18th-century French sculptor] Rodin, so she is very appetizing, like…” [laughs]
Interviewer: It’s also saying Jean Paul Gaultier is for everybody in a way, isn’t it?
Gaultier: It's not that I “can find” beauty everywhere... It's that there is beauty everywhere!

That is a point that is much like this one:
“If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”
-Vincent Van Gogh, late-19th century Dutch painter

So, with this very enlightened and egalitarian point of view, are there actual “mistakes” in fashion and style? Faux pas is a French-derived English word for a social blunder; it literally means “false step” or “misstep,” and there are two outstanding supermodels, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista, who each gave their own response to a question about this idea.

Fashion News Live: Interview with Naomi Campbell
Q: When you step out of your house—do you live in London or New York?
A: I live in New York.
Q: When you walk around New York City, or you visit South Beach or L.A. or wherever you might go, what’s the biggest fashion faux pas that you seeing people making?
A: Oh god, I haven’t, ah… I don’t know, I could be making faux pas myself for all I know! I don’t know. [laughs]
Q: Okay, what are fashion do’s and don’t’s?
A: I mean, I really don’t know... I could dress ’30s today, I could dress ’70s tomorrow, and I could dress present-day that after that. I just dress how I feel comfortable.
Q: So as long as people dress the way they want to feel comfortable, then they’re doing fine in your book.
A: Yeah... yeah.

Fashion News Live: Interview with Linda Evangelista
Q: When you walk outside and you’re walking around in different cities, what’s the biggest fashion faux pas? You’ve been in the industry for so long modeling, and you’ve changed your look…
A: The biggest?
Q: Yeah, like “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this person is wearing what they’re wearing!”
A: Well, you should’ve seen me as a teenager, what I used to wear [rolls eyes], whoa, so I have no right. The biggest? I don’t think there are fashion faux pas. I think that, along with make-up, you know, and hair, fashion is a way of expressing yourself. I don’t want to live in a world with clones, and I like the diversity. There are no faux pas.

The priority in dressing may be comfort, or it may self-expression, or those may even overlap or be one and the same, but the truth remains that there is no accounting for tastes, and each has his or her own. What I am trying to do as a sort of “style historian” may seem like I am trying to make an account of tastes, but that's not the case: I can only show a connection, a prior source, but I cannot explain why or how a certain look originally emerged, which is what an “account” would ultimately be. This is in much the same way that that a linguist, an etymologist of language, can trace words back through some 5 or 6 previous forms spanning many centuries, but still not provide a conclusive account of why certain expressions originated--let alone why they have persisted or perished over time, or reappeared when they did. It is the same with fashion as an evolving set of trends, and the same with the unique styles that are presented from one individual or another.

But as for criticism and how to deal with outside judgments of one's taste, I can affirm that any strong designer has a good attitude about those who may pass judgment on his or her work. A true personification of this is Valentino Garavani, the longest-working couturier in the industry ever, who had four and a half decades of sublime creation--thousands of great dresses made by his own vision--and he had this to say in an interview from 2000 (and I found the phrasing so nice that I had to transcribe it in verse) –

Well said.

~ The Fashioniste ~