The inside is good and real. The outside is bad and deceiving. Heart, brain and soul forever over appearance. A noble coat cannot hide a rough heart...
..but is what I look like not part of who I am? Am I then most genuinely me when I am naked?
While it governs a great deal of our lives, being too occupied with the way we look has been forever frowned upon. When people are asked about their thoughts and feelings regarding the way they dress the preferred answer would be 'not bothered' rather than admitting to ascribing any significance to it.
In his 1959 Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Goffman compares our public life with being on stage:
When [...] ‘an individual appears before others he will have many motives for trying to control the impression they receive of the situation.’ (p. 15)
‘It is probably no mere historical accident that the word person, in its first meaning is a mask. It is rather a recognition of the fact that everybody is always and everywhere, more or less consciously playing a role…’ (p. 19)
We might indeed appear genuine in a certain outfit (or no outfit) and fake in another. In any way there is no doubt that the testing out, the engaging in different identities, in different looks is just part of who we are or who we might become in the future. The science of our clothes is not fashion but rather the study of the sum of materialized identity snap shots.
What I have gained from the Dressing Diaries so far is: 1. even the most hated, boring t-shirt, can bear a striking story, 2. 9 times out of 10 'I've just thrown this on' will reveal itself as a blatant lie and 3. you can learn some interesting and sometimes puzzling facts about yourself merely through getting to the grounds of why you are wearing what you wear...
self-expression??fuck that..I believe I only ever wanted to impress that boy..
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