If looks could feel
The course of fashion is shifting, but the way forward is to look inwards. In the wake of a cultural about-face, and as the industry pivots to meet new demands, we’re gravitating towards garments that help us rediscover joy in getting dressed. By Jen Nuri
induce joy, on or off the body. She explains: “It isn’t the pursuing, purchasing or wearing of a garment that brings me the greatest sense of fulfilment, but the hands-on affair of crafting and creating.” By manipulating old styles that appear stiff or modest to feel lightweight and playful, she’s hopeful wearers will find liberty to express themselves, something she worries we’ve compromised in our search for convenience. “[When founding Olli], I was creating pieces that I wouldn’t have had the self-assurance to wear,” she reflects. “Perhaps I was subconsciously creating garments that represented the version of myself I wished to be at the time.”
It may sound like a cliché, but she is striking at a fundamental link between our clothing and its emotional affect. Slip out of a suit and into a dress and it may activate feelings of relief or sensuality or, as Slater reflects, simulate a sense of proximity to people we’re unable to see, especially during a pandemic. But the opportunity to dress in the mood of someone, or embody the spirit of a particular era, assumes we have the clothes to do so. Vicki Hartley, chair of Dress For Success Sydney, an organisation that empowers women in the workforce by equipping them with the clothes they need, recognises that what we wear affects how we perform and perceive opportunity. She recalls “clients who are thrilled to, for the first time in their lives, be the proud owner of a crisp white shirt or a suit jacket that fits like a glove”, and who are then emboldened to attend a job interview. Through clothing, she says, “the women we serve become self-actualised”.
Even if we romanticise the role our clothing plays, its impact is real. Working at the pinnacle of dressier occasions, bridal designer Nicky Apostolopoulos knows it’s up to her to ensure that each client feels and looks transformed on her wedding day. “It’s like taking on another role,” she says. “They’re not putting on airs and graces, but they’re showing their true best selves.” After her custom bridal-wear label Velani was put on hold as clients cancelled or postponed their weddings, she’s welcomed a palpable shift in their mindsets. Brides are reappraising the value (financial and sentimental) of the wedding gown in the context of marriage and starting a family. Where some are spending more conservatively, others are taking greater fashion risks. One bride has revised her original design (“simple, A-line, pockets, strapless”) in favour of a skirt that shows more skin, with another designing a second party dress in anticipation of when she can celebrate again. The intimacy fostered between each bride and Apostolopoulos remains the same – even over virtual consultations – but the message the dress should convey is no longer tied to cost, but the occasion it signifies.
For Samantha Haran, a law student at the University of Queensland, the thought of reserving clothes to wear to occasions she may never attend pales against seizing every day to dress up. That’s why she’s channelled her free time into her role as coordinator of HF Twitter Met Gala (or High Fashion Twitter Met Gala), a digital companion event to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala, cancelled due to Covid-19. “The idea is democratising a very exclusive event,” she explains. “We open the floor to anyone with a Twitter account.” Small, independent designers seldom, if ever, seen on the Met steps are encouraged to promote diversity, with participants attending through virtual challenges that include creating mood boards or looks inspired by this year’s exhibition theme, About Time: Fashion and Duration.
The HF Twitter Met Gala body, which includes 11 female organisers working across seven countries, also compiled its own e-book, exploring the theme through an intersectional lens with a unique objectivity, given its members exist outside the industry. Although she’s never met her colleagues, and cannot buy or comb through the collections they unpack in real life, Haran relishes being part of a band of outsiders bonded over a shared affinity for the fantasy fashion can afford. “In this world, where we feel like there are so many ways we can be misrepresented, you really control the way you dress up,” she reflects. “[I’ve found] a level of connection that is stronger than my real friendships, because we have such a common interest and passion.”
But Slater notes the advent of social media and fast fashion has reshaped our relationship with clothes, and reduced the time and financial costs of owning them. “[In the past] you had way less and what you had, you loved. If a button came off, you repaired it,” she says. “[With social media], there was this distancing from the actual garment. Instead of looking in the mirror, you’re looking to Instagram. And that’s how you’re making your decision about what to wear … not from what is coming from inside you.”
Yet at a moment when several labels have shuttered and some have broken away from the fashion calendar, designers are taking strides to produce less, disclose more and sell clothes in the season for which they were made, to try to fix a broken system. It means even those who may have felt ambivalent about their clothes before will now be more deliberate, facing up to the many ways in which what we wear holds up a mirror to who we are. As Norman reflects: “After this challenging time, there will be a lot to express. We have begun to cherish many aspects of life that we previously may not have. Perhaps a good outfit is one of those things.”
“I started to use clothes as a way to counteract that feeling of not being visible … I came to know that clothes hold so much power”