The effects of cities on people have always fascinated me. Cities have a structure that can affect us whether we realize or not. It affects our food, the way we speak, even our personality. The thing I think about the most these days is the effect of cities on fashion.
I think about it a lot because I am not sure if fashion affects the cities or the cities affect fashion. Maria Skivko's thesis "Fashion in the City and The City in Fashion: Urban Representation in Fashion Magazines" presents us great answers to this question. From these answers the one that impressed me the most is the “branding situation”. An urban fashion trend puts a new label on the city and influences their personality. A name of the city is not only its name, but also a brand name. Let's think about the most important fashion centers in the world. Paris, New York, Milan... If we take that familiar feeling that all of them create in our minds and turn it into a person, I'm sure we can easily visualize what she's wearing. From this point of view, we see that fashion affects the city. Now let's think the other way around. How does the city affect fashion?
The case of the city influencing fashion is more material. Because of the climate of a city, landforms, textile products, socioeconomic status of the population, employment status and types, of cities push people to think very differently when shopping. We cannot expect a fisherman living in a two-story house with a garden in a coastal city and a businessman living in the tallest buildings of a metropolitan area to have the same clothes for "going to work".
The thing that my mind focuses on the most is actually the fashion sense that emerges between the City, the humans that inhabit it and the feelings they experience. These three factors and the way they interact creates a situation that actually affects our relationship with the city. I can't stand being in a place where I never feel like I belong visually, and I've realized that it's not just me that thinks this way. We want the places we visit, travel and wonder about to have an effect on us. We want the experience to change us, almost making us a part of the environment. In fact, we want to be constantly interacting with the streets we walk, not watch them from afar. In short, we want to be a part of the city. A small and effective step in doing this is Fashion. Going to New York and wearing crops from the kids section and every silver accessory we that we can get our hands on, on our maxi skirts on the Lower East Side, or going to Paris and wearing a striped t-shirt over ankle trousers makes us more of a part of the city and allows us to romanticize the places we visit.
When we think about this interaction, we realize that fashion is a way of reflecting personality, and we see how cities are connected with the little things that make people human. These little things should never go unnoticed by an urban designer, in fact it should even be the things we focus on the most. These little things help us think about the city and its people at the same time. The next time you change country or city, look around you, look at what you are wearing, and I am sure you will sense a change in yourself. When you realize that you are in harmony with your surroundings, remember that the feelings you feel revolve around the city and affect everyone. The city and its people always strive to be a single concept. We urban designers just help with that.
Urban Vouge! Let your body move to the citttyy, mooovee to the cittyy!