"The Poetics of Details"*

Tonight I had my first “Art and Clothing” class, and as the cliche goes, it was everything I hoped it would be… and more! I’ve been looking forward to this class all year. It’s pretty much my dream class. Art and clothing (and the convergence of the two) is something that occupies my mind constantly. Not just in the sense of what I put on my body, but also what everyone (even fictional characters) puts on their bodies.

I’ve spent three years in college studying, well basically, what people wear and why. Plus sewing and crafts. As a costume design major, we have to be able to read a character, get to know them, and decide how to communicate who they are with the world through the clothes they wear. When you go to a play or watch a movie, every aspect of the materials and objects (or lack thereof) that adorns a character’s body was thought out, believe me.

When I took one of my first major-specific classes, one of our first assignments was to take a real person and draw them in a way that conveyed as much information about them as possible. I ate it up. I knew I was in the right major. I chose my brother, and with a pack of 96 Crayola crayons (I hadn’t built up an arsenal of decent art supplies yet) I drew him out, agonizing over every detail, from his shoes, to the stains on his shirt, to the way his clothes fell on his body (baggy, in case you’re wondering. He’s skinny as a rail).

Suddenly, my attitude towards clothing changed. I was more acutely aware of the communication lines that are opened when one dresses oneself in the morning. I had always thought about what I wore and how I presented it to the world: for example, my roommate likes to joke about how freshman year I always wore “man-pants, Bill Cosby sweaters, and fake Birks”. But after that assignment I started to think about how my manner of dress at that time was a reaction to what I felt was a pressure to over-feminize and over-sexualize myself in high school. By the time I got to college, I was subconsciously attempting to free myself from that by discarding my makeup and throwing on the baggy Dickies.

But back to the class. It is basically an open-forum discussion on THE VERY SAME CONCEPT. After introductions, my professor (who I promptly decided I loved), stood on the table and asked us to tell her about herself based upon what she was wearing. I had to hold back after awhile, I was jumping in so often and excitedly.

So now we have to write a short paper on what we think art is, what we think clothing is (for instance, do tattoos and jewelry count? Does hair count?), and how the two relate to each other. I know for me, clothing is art, simply because my artistic medium IS clothing. I clothe others to make a statement about who they are (incidentally, I do that with myself as well… but more on that later). As to whether or not I can go around calling costume design an art form… well, my university puts it under the academic category of “fine art”, so for the purposes of this post, I’m totally playing that card.

When you dress yourself, what statement are you making? I believe that whether you know it or not, you ARE making a statement, even if it is, “I don’t care how I look.” So now that it seems I have my paper half-written, I’m going to sign off and let anyone who reads this mull the issue over with themselves.

*The title of this post comes from the professor of my class, when she pointed out that artists are naturally good at observing the messages in clothing, because they are concerned with “the poetics of details”. I just liked how she put that.