Colored Me Thrilled to Get Dressed Again

An interesting new phenomenon has infected my dressing behavior and in my head, it sounds a little like this: So, what should I wear today? How about white jeans and an ivory sweater, then I could balance the light with a heavy pair of black boots. But where is the color? Where’s the life? Do I have an orange sweater? Oh! Here’s an idea, how about a yellow turtleneck, under an orange sweater, with a red mini skirt? Yeah. That sounds good. I’ll wear black tights and black brogues. Oh what the hell, do I have green shoes?

I have green shoes.

Okay! I’m off.

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For a long time, I rejected color, instead retreating to navy sweaters and black jeans or shades of white worn together. Typically, when a shift like this occurs, it’s a cohort of designers who are to blame. They have the power to present beauty to us however they please and as a result of this power, new taste cues are planted within the soil of our predilections. We’re often manipulated to believe that we’ve arrived at these ideas on our own but that is very rarely true. But where do the designers pull their proclivities from?

At the Fashion Group International awards last month, Alber Elbaz (now famously) delivered a sort of sermon on the way in which being a designer has changed. He said, “We became ‘creative directors,’ so we have to create, but mostly direct. And now we have to become image-makers, creating a buzz, making sure that it looks good in the pictures. The screen has to scream, baby.”

This presents the startling question of whether all the colorful clothes being spun out by designers are a response to social media. They certainly do photograph better, and make images impactful. A black turtleneck, no matter how stunning and beautifully crafted, just doesn’t translate the way that, say, an orange sweater — both cheap and not — does.

So maybe the way we collectively think about getting dressed is changing. By the rules of the following philosophical thought experience, if a tree falls in the woods, nobody hears it. Does that mean that if an outfit exists in the wild but is never documented, it’s ultimately never worn? The “image” may very well be eclipsing the facts of existence: the experience of actually wearing something — of connecting with it and to it. If you get the good picture, you got it — all of it — period.

This is a strange conundrum because you really have to wonder whether what appears in the image can actually trump the quality of what exists in real life. And perhaps further, what is real life? How can we define concrete reality as one thing in 2015 when social (or is it mainstream?) media — virtual reality — has become the most vital ingredient of our lives? Today I’ll stick to charcoal gray.

Feature Image Shot by Emma Summerton for W Magazine

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