that's SO not in anymore...says who?

In one of this week’s article, "Fashion as an Institutionalized System," by Yuniya Kawamura, I realized something about how my compact challenge has been going. Every season we see the "in" styles, but who defines what is in style and what is out of style? The answer is simple: us. We define what is "in" style by the clothes we buy or the clothes other people buy. Fashion experts seek to be the first to create the next "in" thing but overall, there is not one specific person who decides what is fashionable or not. People, media, even magazines [image on right] tell us the way that we can keep "in fashion" and keep up with the latest trends. In Kawamura’s article, she discusses how we learn from the fashion system that there are certain ways we have to dress for certain occasions. If it’s a fancy thing, we have to dress up. If we’re just going to school, we can dress casual. Different clothes for different events. People, companies, and things have determined what specific things we need to wear for certain things we attend. However, is this really necessary? As a community, we spend so much money on clothes that we probably don’t need all because we feel we need them for a special occasion. If we buy a fancy dress for a special occasion, then suddenly, we wear it once and never again. All because of the special occasion we spent a ton of money on something that we’ll probably never wear again. WHAT A WASTE! There’s no law that states that we need to dress up for certain things, and yet we constantly are buying things for that one special occasion because the world around us makes us believe we need to. In the article, "The Aesthetics and Politics of Japanese Identity in the Fashion Industry," by Dorinne Kondo, she discusses how in the first at the Shirokiya Department store, fourteen people died because the kimono prevented them from making a quick escape. It just seems like these girls were probably wearing a kimono because at the time, that was the fashion and that’s what everyone was wearing. Because they felt that they needed to wear it too, they wore them and because of that, they ended up dying because of how bulky the kimono can be. If they hadn’t let the fashion world get to them, they might not have died because they might have been wearing whatever clothes they felt like wearing. Even though it isn’t one specific person telling us what is fashion and what is not, we still let the fashion world or others around us dictate what is "in" fashion and what is not, and because of that, sometimes it can be harmful.