The Rise of Fashionistas

Photo courtesy of Change! Magazine. Photographer: Mahatma Putra. Model: Astrid. Make-up Artist: Alya. Fashion Stylist: Arfa Suci

So, what is fashion?

Literally fashion was translated as a mode for people to dress, and fashion always come to the term of noun. It is a thing that cycling around the era, something abstract that tells people how to dress properly and in the end is accepted as a trend. Fashion is a trend on how people should dressed around their time, and the person who could afford to follow the trend literally -some called them the ‘fashion victim'- called fashionista.

Quoting from wikipedia:

"Fashion is the style and custom prevalent at a given time, and it commonly refers to current clothing styles." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashion on September 6th, 2010.

Even the open-source encyclopedia mentions it ignorantly, forgetting its own roots and history, and deviate from the origin of itself.

From Oxford English Dictionary, we could find that the etymology of fashion was from the Latin word factio, means making and doing, and the word facere means to make or to do. It was a ‘verb' not a ‘noun.' It was a performance not just a condition or a mere clothing trends.

According to Heidegger, existentialism is a term to refer a verb of become exist, and humans find their existence through the essence of other things around them. They could see the essence of thing, but they could not see through themselves, to look for the essence for themselves.

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I was alone in the bathroom. I unzipped my thorned jeans, lifted my tie-dye shirt a bit, lowered my square-patterned boxer pants, and finally I peed. After that, I was preparing myself to go out while my bag's belt twisted by my own headset wire, which I usually connect to my mobile phone, to listen to my choice of music. In the end I must placed my shoulder belt bag around the back of my hip, and left the bathroom.

I startled for a while. I was very conscious at that time. I realize that I, myself was full of attributes, and I never be what I am without my attributes, whether it was real or abstract. I was happy to know that I am a mere human. Ironic. Are you happy as a human?

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That was my personal experience. It was a recalling moment of a memory, a moment some kind like a "wrong" de-javu. I have been on that bathroom before, and maybe I will always be. Ever since I was a boy, I often asked myself for who am I and how can I become me. I knew nothing about existentialism back them, but I knew that I was in need to search where I was from, and most importantly the origin of myself.

Consciousness born in a different way for each person. Some people realize their existence when they knew that they were only a person given in the situations and attributes by some higher power, like god or destiny. In the other hand, some realize it when they knew that all they had to do was to create their own identity, free from an imaginary form of a creator or fate who ‘gave' them their attributes and situation, they are the people of freedom, they have choose, not be chosen by. Actually, it does not matter what was the choice, as long as the result was the consciousness. The choice could be the topic of another dialectics.

So, fashion is a state of people consciousness in how they express themselves to exist. Fashion is more than just a trend or how people should get dress according to the trend. Fashion is a condition when people realize that there is something in this world that can represent them, or honestly, something that can build their image and perhaps their character and their life.

Secondly, fashionista was the avant-garde of a fashion. They are a person who could presents themselves well, fits with what are the truly things they want to express. They are the creator, the one who invents the essence of being, able to understand what was the society wants and translated it into a fashion object, or maybe subject, if they are treat them like they've treat their own body. They understands semiotics very well and able to speak it through style, mainly from the attributes they wear. To express it to others with certain symbol -such as color and shape in this matter- to provoke society, whatever the purpose they have. In the 60's people used bright colors to present themselves, especially in western countries. That was the era of the darkness, it was post-war society in Europe and America, everything was sad and gloomy, and fashion, in this matter, gave them hopes through colors, bright and funky colors. The person who invented that style in the 60's was the person who had woke the society's consciousness of the dark era and they had to do something to make some changes, that person was the fashionista of the 60's era. That was just one of the example of the fashion-power.

So, it doesn't really matter if fashion was translated by the society as an object or subject; the hipsters will accepts it and conveys the message virally. Conclusively fashionista is the person who wakes other person's consciousness through their attributes.

They could wake almost everyone's consciousness because they were conscious at the first time. They knew and they loved it. They treated the conscious feeling like they have guarded and served themselves. They have united with them.

If we go back to the existentialism, we could find that the essence of things could be found when we were outside of them. Humans found their meaning and love for themselves through others. To love others made them unintentionally loved themselves. They wouldn’t create a line between ‘me’ and ‘them’, they become one. The way human to exist is through love, to love others. Maybe. This mumbo-jumbo was nothing but my personal opinion.

Personally, I think there are none in this world who could describe the fashion. Actually there are no definitions of everything, because once you defined it, the things you defined lost its meaning. Definition always develops following its time, but through existence we could overstep the time. This, my writing too, was subjective; I did not know whether these fonts will also adventuring that far time. This was nothing but a sprinkle in the fountain of postmodernism.

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*Inspired by a conversation with Dwi Ajeng Asmarandhany & Anindita Dwi Puspita