styleandfashion Archives

Style and fashion

6 July, 2022

The question is: do they overlap?

Style and fashion are not equivalent concepts, they do not perfectly overlap, yet they may intersect sometimes. Fashion is about trends, so it changes frequently and involves your wallet. In contrast, style is timeless and goes deeper than money.

We happen to hear people say: “I’m not interested in fashion.” And the funny thing is that they say it with a deprecatory tone of voice, perhaps willing to show a kind of superiority.

Maybe those people ignore that everything that surrounds them relates to fashion. And not only clothing or shoes. But also furniture, food, music, technology and so on. Fashion is everywhere.

On the one hand, considering how the fashion industry presents itself these days, that disgusted reaction can be understandable. Yes, they aren’t entirely wrong. But, on the other hand, if we dig deeper and see how they present themselves in detail, in most cases, that attitude just reveals a total lack of style.

You don’t need to follow fashion, but style is another thing.

Style, not fashion

And so, style is the concept to explore, to value more.
Style may have something to do with fashion, but you cannot identify it with fashion. Both are not equivalent concepts, yet they may intersect. Where fashion flaunts, style whispers. By the way, they cross each other less and less frequently.

Style is about gestures and manners. How you speak, how you live and what you wear. It’s about taste, dignity, and choices made with an effortless posture. It’s an elegance of thought reflected outside. In the end, style is about who you are.

Cool style is doing things when other people don’t. Those unconventional choices that your attitude puts into place with ease.

Most importantly, you can buy fashion, but you cannot buy style.

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Researching the new

Fashion research for a niche audience

Researching the new, exploring alternative concepts in fashion design has always been our passion, a kind of innate attitude or a real fixation.

Fashion design: niche vs mass market

In terms of fashion design, what is considered new by a niche audience is not what is new for the masses.
New means something original, singular. Something unusual. Probably or at least possibly, never seen before.

For a niche audience, new refers to what designers, or at least the really creative ones, pioneered first, expressing their vision and sense of style in a way no one has done before.
For the masses, new means what brands have taken from the few creatives, repurposing it under their name.
We can’t count the times some agents proposed to us collections we already had the season before in our boutique, just with a different label.
If you are part of that niche, that re-proposed soup is not for you. You respect the original ideas, you need creativity because you understand its value.
Unless some brands are filtering existing concepts in a new, creative way – but that doesn’t happen frequently. Copy & paste is the easy way out.

Researching the new in fashion

The concept of new in the fashion industry doesn’t exist anymore. It was pretty clear before the pandemic, it’s both frustrating and discouraging now that we are in the middle of it.

Some brands that were modern 30 years ago are still the ones we would wear now. Perhaps they already did anything and everything. So many others seem just part of an old era, outdated, they lost meaning.

While we see collections without identity, lacking idiosyncrasy, still copying & pasting from others. Grasping the occasion to reset and restart with new ideas would be a smart move.