Mert & Marcus, 2006
Fashion, taste and style are somehow always in dialogue but not the same. Fashion is the contemporary moment -- the collective consciousness as expressed by designers in design objects that reveal a point of view on the moment. Taste is the preference for particular design objects, to the extent that the best taste is considered preference for that which is most well made. Style is the most difficult aspect of clothing and expression. There are dressing codes that are combined and called styles, that are associated with certain groups. But the essence of style, whether it's fashion, music or conversation, is a free use of the proper. As Holderlin described it in language, it is the freedom to break rules. Style expression is in constant movement around what is expected. So it is in style that we have the question of existence, of being.
“It is not the author's viewpoint,” writes Wolfgang Schirmacher, “or his or her aesthetic judgment that style expresses. Style is a game playing with time and language in which you discover and forget the self. Style is neither an identification tag nor a tool of power but a composition never made before, in a language free of fixed meaning but still meaningful to you.” Style is a play with what appears. It needs both openness and selectivity. A consistent selectivity begins to appear like a pattern, an identity, rather than being.
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