First Impressions and Such Musings

I will honestly admit right now that I’m a t-shirt and jeans kinda gal.  Yup.  I’ve never really been all to into “fashion” and hence never thought myself to fall into the “trendiness” category of the fashion world.  I thought my deliberateness to wear just jeans and a t-shirt were my statement to the world that I thought about other things than just my looks.

And yet, 

...isn’t “fashion” a kind of statement? 

In my Design class a few days ago, we got into groups of ten and went around in a circle complementing each other.  What I interestingly caught my attention was that 100% of these compliments were based on each other’s appearances (80-90% of which were based on what the person wore). 

Why??

It was our first full week of class and hardly anybody knew each other.  We were basically all meeting each other for the first time.  Then it got me thinking; it wouldn’t make sense to compliment each other on our character, or our strengths and weaknesses as a person, or to encourage one another, or to affirm our unique talents.  We didn’t know each other.  We were all making our first impressions. 

If fashion is a type of artwork, a type of design, it is a form of communication.   And communication is a type of statement.  When we see something (or someone) for the first time we can’t help but notice appearance.   If you’re at a used book store and you find four copies of Dr. Zhivago, you’re probably going to pick the one that looks more appealing to your taste (or is in better shape) because it says something about the book and you.  Same for people.   What I was wearing was me trying to make a statement (an embarrassingly prideful one) about myself.  Someone who comes to class dressed a bit more on the dapper side might convey a little bit about how they pay attention to presence.  A person with bed-head can convey anything from staying up late studying or pulling an all-nighter playing video games.  First appearances might just be able to tell a little something about the person, but our first impressions are the things that are always incomplete.  My disclaimer here is, the saying still stands: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”  But I would add, “…but the cover does tell us something.” 

And on that note, I really ought to be thanking whoever-it-was that made jeans fashionable! 

  

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeans.JPG

Now, I think I might consider putting a little more effort into my outfits.