Fashion As We Know It – Jonathan
An analysis of the ways in which societal advantages have been favored over fierce diligence.
(through the eyes of an 18-year old Latino from the Bronx)
During my second year of high school, I truly began to give thought to the importance of how one presents themself. I was at a point in time where (naturally) my peers began to familiarize one another with who we were and where we came from, and I had begun to do the same with them. Before we knew it, our pubescent subconscious formed a perception of the character of everyone around us. Having found the material that showed me how to question the systems of oppression through books by Toni Morrison, or movies by Spike Lee, to name a few, I simultaneously questioned how it has impacted an entity that exists beyond me. The entity, that is, consists of persons of color from big cities or small, queer or straight, past or present. I asked myself, “if I’ve had a door closed on my face for not living in the richest zip code, what about the next person? If I’ve experienced discrimination because of one of my identities, who’s working to ensure that someone in the next generation won’t experience the same?” Frankly, it was unsettling to not have a definite answer to those questions. For my senior project, I embarked on a journalistic crusade looking into the lives and careers of a few of the fashion industry’s most eminent and distinguished figures. Interview after interview, articles followed by documentaries, these artists, designers, photographers, and more are most commonly asked about their favorite fashion moments, or who wore the best look to an event, rather than their testimonies of having overcome any systemic hurdles thrown their way. It became clear to me that maybe I should try and do the work to solve one of the questions that I had at the beginning of the experiment.
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