2. Fashion

On Timeframes & the Subjectivity of Comfort

It took me considerably longer than I had anticipated to save up the funds to print this fashion issue. As the months went by I realized I had an issue with fashion: What does it mean to be current or seasonally accurate when something is realized many months after its conception? Big fashion houses forecast like 3 years in advance. How can anyone know what they will be into in 3 years? Our cells regenerate at such a rate that our bodies will be composed of 50% entirely different matter 3 years from now! I only know what I want to wear the day I put it on. Fashion is the most personal and subjective of expressions.

It’s funny what things make you feel like you are expressing yourself. I tend to think I’m making a statement when I wear my pajamas to the grocery store. Am I a Big Lebowski style wasteoid or cutting edge normcore? So easy to keep ‘em guessing! I guess the point is that being comfortable in your body–and, by association, the materials covering it–is the essence of fashion.

Comfort is subjective also. In the 1980’s someone asked Michael Jackson why he wore tape around his fingers during performances. His answer was that it was comfortable. I totally get that. Sometimes the most comfortable thing is to wear a complicated skintight onesie, other times it’s jammie-jams in Ralph’s. I have had whole months where it felt right to wear a roll of blue masking tape like a bracelet on my upper arm. You have to just honor these impulses without judgment.

Kate Johnston
Los Angeles, November 2014