As the beginning of the first semester commences, many students are frantically starting homework assignments, studying for pop quizzes, or in particular, worrying about what to wear the night before school.
Fashion has become a source for prospective students- whether to throw something on to survive the summer heat or to showcase one’s own creativity through multiple looks.
“I feel like fashion and art is kind of the same thing,” Jada Tann (11) said, “I would say fashion is a form of self-expression, basically.”
Tann is one of the several individuals who take advantage of displaying a fashionable version of herself day-to-day in physical settings and even on social media platforms.
“So on social media, I really like to focus on how I style my outfits because, you know, it’s easy to set up a regular outfit like anybody could do that,” Tann said, “But I like to show different ideas on how to style the outfit and how to incorporate your personality into that outfit.”
The personal styling and freedom to pursue fashion becomes a new realm of possibility for students to seek and make the most out of to model the most unique mannequin: themselves.
“[Fashion] ties in maybe your identity, whether it’s your culture, your religion,” Heaven Kerorssa (12), President of Smoky’s Fashion and Design club, said, “What you’re comfortable in basically just identifies who you are.”
For Smoky students, fashion becomes an aspect of a multitude of things, including personal culture.
“99% of fashion club is Habesha,” Kerorssa said, “I kind of want to incorporate those cultural things and kind of, I want to say, steer away from Western clothing.”
Whether it’s individuality or culture in pursuance of associating oneself with a garment, fashion is unlimited to setting and breaking standards.
As the field of fashion is dominated by women’s looks, menswear is also an expressive statement from runways to hallways.
“Menswear is important because I just think that men who dress well are already breaking such a stereotype that masculine men don’t care about looking good,” Ilias Alaffi (12) said, “It’s such a quote-unquote, ‘girly’ thing, but just by dressing up you’re breaking that stereotype of ‘fashion is for girls’.”
Who knew that silhouettes of clothing could break gender norms and pave a new way for inclusivity?
“I think that more guys should be looking more into fashion. I feel like if it wasn’t such a stigma if fashion wasn’t so ‘girly’, I think that more guys would be into fashion,” Alaffi said.
In the eyes of a Smoky student, fashion means an opportunity to embody an authentic version of themselves, represent their culture or create a new chain of the once less-portrayed.
Needless to say, a simple head-to-toe look is a symbol of an idea to explore more within one’s own character.
