The most amazing thing about fashion is how inspiration can be pulled from everything around us. The music we listen to. The art we fill our eyes. The juxtaposition of words in the books that we get lost in. The movies we watch and the characters in them that rub off on us that we can’t help but take them home with us in little ways. Lately, cinema has been my #1 way of being inspired with fashion. And I think that it in a way touches upon every sort of sense we can have as humans. There’s the soundtrack, light and color editing that lends to the mood. There’s the composition of objects within the frame, and the way the camera moves from one character to another, jump cuts, or just stays still. The character dressing as a reflection of time period and personality, and of course the dialogue and mannerisms that help us dig deeper into the layers of the story as the film goes on. I find myself paying attention to all these little details and finding stories within stories within these films, that when I come home I find myself reflecting so much, and in turn feel inspired to recreate in my own way the aspects that I loved the most or found the most interesting about the film into my wardrobe.
What I love most about cinema, is that the possibilities are endless. To me, there doesn’t need to be a strategy to filmmaking. There doesn’t need to be a box for ideas to be contained in. I feel this way about any sort of art form, but to me cinema is special because it represents so much of the limitlessness of the human mind: how and why the story was brought to life and how we interpret what we see before us. I love that I can be watching a film where I don’t even understand hardly at all what is happening, but that I still get a feeling from it that leaves a mark on me and that I can take away to ponder about on my own. This intimacy, between the viewer and the film itself, is very special. The most important thing about a film, is what it means to the individual watching it. And it can have a million different interpretations, many of which cannot even be explained in words, but mostly in feeling. Bringing this feeling to my approach to fashion has always felt therapeutic to me, and makes getting dressed feel more interesting and exciting and purposeful. Even just a color, a pattern, a combination that is a nod towards the mood that I have felt from a film I just watched makes life feel special. And this doesn’t just affect my approach to fashion, it affects how I photograph what I am wearing, how I creative direct my work, and how I choose to experiment by going in a direction different from before, and how I understand the world. Cinema to me adds an extra challenge and depth to my perspective on fashion, and overall it has helped me grow as an individual. I am still growing because of it, and I always will. Cinema has helped me develop into a person who is more open to the world around her. To see from other’s perspectives and put my feet into shoes I have never worn before. To be unafraid to take risks not just in fashion, but in my everyday life, because the way my story will be told in the future, no matter how it is interpreted, it will matter. Our stories are art, and cinema has taught me this. And in fact, the stories we tell through fashion is art, too.
I think I’ll make a list of some of the films I have watched recently that have really inspired my personal style. Would you guys be interested in that?
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