Fashion and Emergence in Medium
How the new base of texts can step in fashion studies.
The Fashion, studied and discussed, is, by over banalized, undeveloped. Believe, we are as well developed in studies of Fashion like we were at communication studies in the 1960’s. How Fashion is constructed? Who or what dictates the trends? How symbols of a given time reemerges in actual collections?
Coincidences that we see between a fashion show and other in the Fashion Weeks around the world reacts to the acknowledged trends labs and their well-crafted books of trends, with textures, shapes, colors and details, with such a simple function such as complicated: show the future.
As much these books have a methodology in their fabrications, is hard to imagine how information on ethnographic images of many parts of the world becomes something so well established and uniform. Yet thinking about the repercussion of these books, we have trends everywhere in alternative way, parallel to what we see in catwalk.
One day, i was introduced to Complex Systems Theory, especially the Emergence phenomenon, where, in the theory, independents components without relevant hierarchical position made a system of organization without a planning or order, thus form what the American writer Steven Johnson calls bottom-up behavior, that is a phenomenon where certain data emerge from the bottom to top, without any hierarchy (JOHNSON, 2003).
I was instantly obsessed by the idea, that even responding to some hierarchies, in a mechanical way, they may not deserve the due proportion. After my euphoria, after read the book Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software by Steven Johnson, elaborating a survey about fashion in the London’s Soho, I started to think perhaps Emergence and Fashion were connected and never in whole story it was so clear.
The individualism, the will to belong and not belong, will to appear and hide, and all the other features of our actual society, lead us to believe that there is no hierarchy: the barriers are becoming increasingly blurred. The extinction of straightness, the giant proportion of networks, the concept of friendship, one crisis chaining another… All of this suggests the Emergence serves well the Post-Modernity, with repercussions in Fashion, especially when saying about groups of style.
The London’s Soho and Augusta Street in São Paulo (Brazil), places that i started searching for verification of Trends as Emerging Quality, are just some of we can see: sets of affordable housing with people who never left the São Paulo City have this characteristics, as well as young tourists from around the world, who never met each other before, wear very similar clothes and do a uniform mass in Saint Tropez (France).
Even more curious to know of the elements of a place affect in another place. The propagation of these elements is practically imperceptible, as the originality, which is lost, relatively. According to Brazilian researcher Silvia Laurentiz:
“Is fact that we are part and we contribute to the formation of one Complex System cultural, social, economic — though we can not clearly see our individual contribution, because is diluted among the others of this system.” (LAURENTIZ, 2004)
For years I’ve been looked for something on the web, where my ideas have one format to fit perfectly. The Medium, plus all that I read in reviews, it is a example of a society with the concepts of Emergence. Until now, any place on the net for me was a hierarchy with a good makeup: Like and Do not Like, Follow and Unfollow, viral and from last season. Opinion without to much to expatiate. All binary, black and white. The discourse hurts a little more to be ready than a click or a touch, but I had a lack.
While in the studies Internet is something much more developed and discussed than Fashion. behaviors in the web stoped to evolving, even with multiple social networks and upgrades, perfecting everything and everyone.
I’ve tried to be frequent in Blogs and Twitter, Facebook is always the same and my life is not so beautiful every moment for a photo on Instagram, even a filter can not make this better sometimes. The Medium came up with a much more contemporary proposal, in relation to where I live and in relation to what I observe.
Seeking to collaborate with the development of studies in Fashion, I thought I should share my ideas and almost ideas. The topic that I most study in Fashion (Emergence), is a behavioral trend, a methodology (or a transgression of methodology) applicable in so many unexplained things, and Medium proves it somehow.
For the first time I feel stepping on mainland on the web.
Sorry about my english, I’m not native.
Inspire yourself!
JOHNSON, Steven. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. London: Penguim Books, 2001.
LAURENTIZ, Sílvia. Padrões emergentes originam valores estéticos?. In: I Congresso Internacional Mídias: Multiplicação e Convergências — Caderno de Resumos. São Paulo: Senac, 2004.
