Fashi[c]on[s] Through Time [Image Curation]

My first group project involved a lot of people. Christina, Laura, Kyle, Olena, Simon, and I had a lot of different ideas that all revolved around fashion through time. I made the suggestion of showing how celebrities influence fashion and instantly become icons with their clothing, and our image slideshow began to work out. Each of us had a time period (two decades each), and we had to pick a female and male icon for each decade. Kyle and Laura offered to make the slideshow, so we all sent our images to them. I didn’t get to see the slideshow until we showed it to the class, and when I did see it, I was extremely impressed! The fashion icons ranged from Grace Kelly to Paris Hilton, and James Dean to 50 Cent. I also like how they added popular fashion designers in text throughout the timeline as well, much of which used celebrities as their muses.

I choose to do the 80s-90s. I am a big fan of the 1980’s, mainly because I believe a lot of the fashion that is popular now greatly stems from 80s fashion. I think the era was a time of experimentation with clothing, and everything was big and bright. Two of the greatest musicians of that time, Madonna and Michael Jackson, had a big affect on fashion. Simple images of a white glove or a cone-shaped bra have a lot of meaning in the world of fashion. I think the key to fashion icon is their ability to turn one simple item of clothing into a necessity or an iconic image. Compared to the clean-cut clothing of the decades before, the 80’s introduced wild and outrageous fashion that matched the attitude of the time. Madonna made a lot of unpredictable choices and sung about taboo topics, and her fashion matched her attitude completely. The picture of her is on stage, with her hands in the air in a dominant stance. She was looking for attention, and her method of dressing definitely let her achieve this.

For the 1990’s, I choose two people who dressed very differently from each other. Princess Diana and Kurt Cobain were my fashion icon selections for the 90s. The point I’m trying to prove with my selection is that there were many people who followed different cultures, and therefore dressed differently. The 90s is known as the grudge era, which was greatly due to bands like Nirvana. They weren’t thinking about their clothes, they were moved by their music. People adopted this attitude and the grudge way of dressing became popular. At the same time, Princess Diana was the “peoples princess” and a lot of people looked up to her for being such a good person in many ways. She had a classy style that could be compared to Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn. She was put together, and a lot of women who strived to excel at all areas of life, similar to the Princess, copied her way of dressing. Her picture of her standing in an elegant pose, hands clasped together. Along with her clothing, her pose makes her look very elegant as well.

I think the reason why celebrities can easily become fashion icons is because the public frequently sees images of them. When people are looking for fashion inspiration, it is not that difficult to find, considering the public are usually bombarded with pictures of celebrities. If a person enjoys a type of music or specific movies, it is no surprise that they may begin to admire the musician or actor. Mimicking their style is just a form of flattery.


We were not able to upload the image curation on Youtube due to technical difficulties.