Today, with the rise of feminism, multiple posts, tweets, videos and other innovative forms of communication are flooded with content on women empowerment. Then again, there is different kind of content refuting the value of content stating that women are liberalised, that the glass ceiling is now a myth, and so on and so forth. In the midst of all this I wonder - what is the value of content in the life of my forever favourite entity, “Fashion”?
But wait a minute - isn't fashion supposed to be "content free"? Of course, fashion comes with the baggage of visual overload which is spewed all over our feeds; google, twitter, Instagram and every other social media that exist. These visuals, however, exist simply to tantalise the fashion conscious eye while it may escape everyone's attenton as just another post. Perhaps, we stop for an angstrom of a second to ogle Alia Bhatt or Candice Swanepoel but the meaning of this content is limited to just that. Fashion is considered as being simply the candy wrapper and being the candy itself is far from fashion’s wildest aspirations. So, what real content is fashion a flag bearer of?
In my short fashion career, free from heavy machinery and technical jargon, there have been multiple instances when people have claimed to understand the nature of my work in a quick glance because of the apparent lack of "content". According to them, putting together some soft skills, marketing gimmicks and a bunch of well dressed girls results a fashion firm. All of which is pretty, fun and superficial.
They fail to grasp the real essence of such ventures. If you look closely, the person who underestimates the value of content in the Fashion industry, is the same one who stands and judges and, instantaneously, labels the bare shouldered, high heeled girl in the club as a ‘slut’. This kind of judging and labelling has become so deeply ingrained in society that even the most educated and self-proclaimed ‘liberals’ give in to such an attitude. All of it without the slightest attempt to look beneath the surface. This is just one instance of the cloud of hypocrisy shadowing the world so adamantly, which is difficult to discern and which no attempts seem to dissolve.
I would not call myself the most intuitive when trying to get a read on people. But even when I extrapolate my data and reach the most valuable point on the graph, can I objectively say that it is possible to get an accurate study on individuals in most cases? People are complex algorithms, and so terribly nuanced that the most carefully tried and tested mathematical functions not only fail but can't even be applied to them. In some sense, you could even call people a mess of illegible content, hard to decipher and even harder to comprehend.
So in this situation can Fashion be the David in the story, having the potential to defeat the giant Goliath that is science?
Contrary to popular belief, Fashion, along with its content, has the power to provide an unbiased insight into people as they really are, without stereotyping. Fashion is capable of giving an accurate character analysis of that bystander in the club. Perhaps, Fashion is the solution to rise above the cloud of hypocrisy when all else fails.
