Cultural observation and ethnographic practice

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Fashion has been on people's minds since time immemorial. Whether man, woman, child or elderly, individuals have sought to express themselves through how they dressed, one more conservative, the other extravagant and glamorous. Nowadays, it's quite a technique to skillfully attempt to dress people when being dressed sometimes implies having no clothing whatsoever. This effect is accurately illustrated in Picture 1 in which a marrying couple seem to be wearing, what looks like a uniform for the man, and a dressing gown for the woman. While one does notice the boxer shorts on the man and the extension of a real dress on the woman, the effect is nevertheless substantial. Deeply rooted in ritualized tribalists cultures, body painting nowadays stands for various purposes: it has come to represent either a form of extravaganza, or means by which people choose to protest (Picture 2), other times is used to cover up certain physical disadvantages.

Following a similar trail, there is a new fashion in town, one that requires liquid mixture of cotton fibres, goggles, and some imagination. How does it work? One sprays the paint over the body in whichever form of clothing one wishes to create. It can be anything from a T-shirt to dresses, or swimwear and hats. The paint dries instantly once it touches the skin, resulting into a garment that can actually be used like any other piece of clothing bought in a shop (Picture 3). The invention belongs to Manel Torres who sought to demonstrate how science and technology can help fashion in a "futuristic" sense, while being able to return to how clothes were initially made when fibres were bonded together without weaving or stitching.

Extravaganza is not limited to actual dresses, but hair styles follow a similar trend as depicted from Picture 4. While it looks like the animal is made of the model's hair, the "surplus" is actually a hat. This sort of initiatives are the product of contemporary world in which designers do not shy away from even using dead animals to create new trends in fashion. Iris Schieferstein has become famous for her usage of such "materials" from which she designs and makes shoes (Picture 5).

Women's hats go back into history since the Middle Ages when the Church decided women should cover their hair. What started at home as making of hats soon turned into a profession of its own. From the old bonnets to parasols, from Glengarry highland caps to doll hats decorated with cockades of feathers, hats started to mark a distinction between social classes, sometimes, the bigger the hat, the higher the rank. By 1950, women had started to wear hats less and less. The milliners sought to revolutionize the industry to recapture women's attention. However, once the Church itself lifted the banner in 1967, hats were history. Nowadays, they are more of an accessory used for spicing up fashion shows.

Shocking fashion looks like it has become a trend with broad initiatives. Olivier Goulet is a French artist who designs and makes anything from clothing to accessories from a type of material that looks like human skin and feels like flesh (Picture 6.1). The same, Nicole Tran Ba, designs bodysuits that imitate skin (Picture 6.2), in an attempt to emphasize on the subjective experience of the human body, subsequently, the woman's body and its social appearance. The difference thus between Goulet and Tran Ba is that the latter puts forth her fashion with a message and creative art. The bodysuits are not there to shock with being gore, but to question artistically about the nature and the social role of the body.

One particular fashion draws on women seeking to return to the innocence of childhood; it is called Lolita fashion and it represents a doll-ish look alike (Picture 7.1, 7.2). Lolita women-girl are specific for Japan mostly who developed this style in the twentieth century. It was first catalogued in the 80's although the style emerged a lot sooner. Since then, various sub-genres have created their own particular style within the style, like gothic lolita. The Lolita fashion spread so fast and so vividly that Japanese society turned the fashion into a "lolita complex" because of men's pornographic attention for lolita women.