Writing and Art by Rachel Gorman-Cooper
Since my visit to the Met’s In Pursuit of Fashion exhibit last year, the summary stuck with me. Designer Sandy Schrier intended for the fashion in the exhibit to be art, never worn or bought. Dumbfounded, I read her wisdom- blocking dozens of strangers from approaching the display case before me. I had never understood fashion in this way, yet it seemed as though I was always meant to. From a young age, I have seen clothing as a costume. Rather than wearing neutral tones, I wanted to wear pops of red and orange. Rather than match, I wanted to mismatch. Clothing took on a costume-like meaning when I feared wearing certain things to school, like clogs, dresses, or scarves. I feared this because everyone around me was wearing clothing, while I was wearing costumes.
But the truth is, whether I get to wear statement pieces is of little importance to me. As long as I get to catch a glimpse of a tiered, tulle dress in the latest fashion section of the New York Times, I am satisfied. Fashion is just another way of expressing ideas, the way paintings and sculptures do. Some wear their ideas, while others situate them behind glass windows and in the safety of a magazine page. This spectrum represents the High Fashion Industry- one end being Ready-to-Wear, the clothes you can buy in stores, and the other being Haute Couture, the clothes that stay on the runway, sometimes reaching stores.. But for prices that are hardly accessible.
Citrus preaches the wide range of definitions that fashion can wear. While the casual, practical, everyday definition of fashion has value, so does the over the top, maximalist, and purely stylistic definition. My column, “Not For Sale,” represents this highly criticized and widely misunderstood sect of the fashion world.