Identity: Look modern. Forget fashion and all its baggage.

I’ve been thinking a lot about identity lately. Reading books like Transorientalism in Art, Fashion, and Film: Inventions of Identity by Adam Geczy, and Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion edited by Giovanni Matteucci and Stefano Marino has been supplemented by a workshop with George Aye at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis and thinking about the upcoming Ai Wei Wei exhibit at the Wash U Kemper Museum of Art – all within the context of the global discourse on migration, immigration, and exile.

So, thinking about my own identity as I prepared for my day today, I was struggling with my appearance. I wanted to feel like I look… young but not too young, my age, but not too old, hip and not ridiculous I had a hard time articulating to myself what I want to look like! I settled on “modern and connected and put together.” A statement from my reading comes to mind; I wanted to please what I think people will think other people think about my appearance.” That is, I wanted to be what some people call, ‘in fashion.’ I have read that fashion is “age therapy” and “self-esteem therapy.”

I am starting to have an aversion for that word (Fashion) and all the baggage (no pun intended) it brings to the table. Going forward, I’m going to try to forget fashion and all its baggage. My goal is to cultivate a modern, connected and put-together persona. Ironically, I predict that fashion will happen in that environment automatically.