The Wardrobe_Remix!

Daily Ink

Stored in: Groups

Posted On: September 27 2006

By: Bryan Partington

Once upon a time I took a nude photography class. Sort of like a life portrait class, except photo based.

We were going over each other's work, critique like, and remarking on the almost meditative calm that our model possessed about being completely naked in front of a fury of student photographers with obscenely long lenses. One student took on an air of quasi-enlightenment and mentioned how she thought that it was unfortunate that people didn't go about publicly nude.

"Why would you want to go walking around naked all the time?", I pontificated. "Clothes are a tremendous vehicle for diversity and expression! Even when they aren't, they are amazing signaling devices. Uniforms carry tremendous communicative power. For a most people, clothing is the primary vehicle for personal expression. Sure, it gets wrapped up in issues of economic and social status, but it is fundamentally creative and cannot be so easily dismissed. "

The class collectively sighed at my over-reaching rant. I think later in that class we were all asked to name the most beautiful thing to us, and after a series a bunch of people made obligatory mentions of their boyfriend or girlfriend i elected to answer "Nothing. Beauty does not exist except to inflate our sense of self-importance."

It was that kind of day.

wardrobe_remix is a DO IT YOURSELF street fashion community. That's "fashion" with a lowercase 'f', my friends, and the relative lack of self-importance that implies.

It's all about people being creative with the clothes that they've bought, found or made, and posting the results head to toe for the whole of flickr to see.

Sounds incredibly superficial, doesn't it?

I thought the same thing at first, but after digging around the pool for a while, I found most of the submissions to be functional, vibrant and varied. Authentic, in the best sense of the word. Mostly young women post to the group, but the occasional guy pops up every so often. People like to discuss where they found the clothing and why they like it, revealing how brand names and thrift intersect, how subcultures express themselves and how you can be expressive whether you shop at value village, the mall, high end stores, the coolest indie boutiques or all of the above.

The group description stresses this:

this is not a community just about refashioning clothing, or about thrifted or handmade clothing, though some participants do wear clothing that originates from those sources. whatever you wear, wherever it's source (designer, mass-market/high street, thrift/charity, handmade--it's ALL good): show us how you CREATIVELY put your everyday duds together.

This is a genuine look at everyday expression.

fashion. not as it is advertised, but as it is.

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