Sometimes we look at bizarre catwalk fashions like…
“What was that designer ON?? Nobody would ever wear that!!!”
…But sometimes I stop and think about what fashion designers have to work with.
I mean, as animals, we did not develop a very design-able shape.
(^THIS is a designable shape.)
We developed these weird, organic shapes and then decided we wanted to put things ON our shape. And that was hard.
(^This is NOT a designable shape, especially since the arms don’t just stay up like that and the whole thing’s always moving…)
I mean, think how hard it was to come up a way to put on clothing that would stay on your body while you’re hunting and gathering and keep you warm, made mostly out of the skins of OTHER animals, which ALSO do not grow in nice, flat, straight-edged pieces:
(^Working out THIS would have been very difficult. We’ve got ideas now to work with, stuff like “neck hole” and “arm holes” and “sleeves” and “loincloth”… but they had to figure that shit out from SCRATCH.)
And then different groups of people in different areas decided that certain things in clothing were “normal”. People in Polynesia were like, “Hey, clothing can be grass!”
And people in Europe were like, “Hey! Clothing can be pointy shoes!”
And people in east Africa were like, “Hey! Clothing can be big flat collars!”
And now people in western culture are like, “Hey! clothing can be double-breasted suit and tie!”
And avant-garde designer are like, “Hey! clothing can be… whatever the fuck this thing is!”
And honestly, when it comes down to it, that’s not any weirder than the stereotyped shape of the double-breasted suit and tie, or the pointy shoes you trip over, or the skirt made of grass. Human bodies are weird, and the things we wear on our bodies are also weird. It all just comes down to what you’re used to seeing.