“The moment a garment ceases to be worn, it no longer
exits.”
That’s one little sentence in the book “Fashion: The
Twentieth Century” by Francois Baudot that really made me stop and think. Maybe because it resonated with my goal
as a fashion photographer to take clothes from the rack and transport them into
the light of day and give them life.
A fun life, a hard life, a frivolous life—each shoot is different, but
the goal is always the same.
It’s strangely philosophical to think, though, that clothes
aren’t even really clothes unless they’re being worn. Sitting there in a dark closet, they’re really just pieces
of fabric, the same as if they were sitting in a land fill someplace. Only when taken out, and put against a
person’s skin, do they transform into being clothes and fashion and style.
And to be fully realized, they have to not only be worn, but
seen by others (or at least one other person in the case of certain types of
garments). Although there is
the solo, tactile experience of feeling clothes against your skin, and that
counts, too.
So…what does all of this extra thinking have to do with
fashion photography, when I already have (I think) my main goal? Maybe it’s one step deeper into
understanding what it is I try to capture and show with it. It magnifies the difference between
clothes on a hanger and clothes on a person, and helps illuminate what that
difference is, and how in evolves and changes while also staying the same.
But I’ll still have to think on it some more…
