"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion." - Jack Kerouac
Although it's unlikely that this beat writer was talking about blazers or berets, Jack Kerouac was on to something. Fashion is the most ephemeral kind of creation; subject to culture, aesthetic and monetary motivation. As a verb it means "making" or "doing." As an art, it is constantly being made. Fashion, by definition, is constantly in transition. That being said, how could one ever say that something is a "Fashion Don't?"
Fashion faux-paux are a popular feature in most fashion magazines. They cover back pages with clichés and censor bars, branding the unwilling wearer. Aside from the obvious rudeness, there is something rudamentally wrong in terms of Fashion Theory when it comes to the pages' sartorial shame. Fashion, as an art form, not only benefits from "Fashion Don'ts" but requires them.
Fashion would not be a $150 billion dollar a year industry if it weren't for the constant shifting and changing of styles and norms. While it's nice to imagine Tom Ford or John Galliano pining away over a muse, a vast amount of influence for collections is taken from the current culture, or rather subculture.
Groups of people who fall outside the "normal" margins of style bastardize and modify historical items or current trends in order to emphasize "otherness." Think of the way the classic and preppy Ralph Lauren looked oversized and juxtaposed on inner-city youth rapping in the 1990s. Or how flannel, once reserved for lumberjacks of the Pacific Northwest, became a mark of the music scene coming from Seattle during the same time period. At first these trends were popular with people who were considered marginal by society because they were marginal stylishly as well. Those who seek to criticize the status quo will hardly don the duds of the fashion followers they see as droids.
Fashion, as an industry, seeks to remain fresh. Subculture is a fertile ground for ideas and new trends for the exact reason it is created: it's not like anything currently in style. Fashion trends that were once ridiculed are often repackaged and sold to the very person doing the criticizing. Odds are you are wearing something that was once a "Fashion Don't" right now. You don't think so?
Are you a woman wearing pants? Pants were popularized during the first women's suffragist movement by ladies who refused to be confined by their cumbersome dresses. Women's pants were even banned in some American towns, and anyone of the Aristocracy would rather be caught dead than wearing them. Yet, before the end of the decade the wildly popular "bloomer" was a staple in early fashion magazines and in women's closets alike.
What about a woman wearing a button-down sweater? Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was briefly made a social pariah for cutting and belting a man's sweater when she got cold at a polo match. Today it's hard to imagine anyone criticizing Chanel's taste, or a simple cardigan.
It seems that saying something mean about someone's outfit follows the same rules as saying something mean about someone in general. Call it Coco-Karma: "what goes around comes around." Fashionably.
