Curating + Collecting

BG IMAGE FROM GOOGLE

I've been meaning to write more deeply about fashion for forever now, even though sadly I never got down to it. It's not that my classes are harder now than ever per se, except for the fact that I'm getting increasingly involved in school, whether it is joining the debate team for the first time or writing more for the school newspaper. Surprisingly I have actually gotten inspirational fodder for the blog from my school-related, more academic activities, especially from the art symposium my school just held two weekends ago. The symposium created around an Old Master drawings collection from an anonymous collector/alumnae who had temporarily lent her works to be shown at the school museum. All of them were world-class museum grade-worthy and it's unbelievable that they would be under the ownership of just one (albeit extremely wealthy) individual. There were a series of lectures by professors from my own school, scholars from the British Museum as well as professionals such as art dealers from the likes of Sotheby's, all talking about the different processes of collecting and art of curating. 

It's an incredibly long and laborious undertaking to track and find pieces from around the globe, lest putting it altogether to make some sort of cohesive sense. You see this most prominently in the art world, however it is also  equally important in the fashion world. The closest example found in the fashion world to the ones in art, are probably buyers for department stores such as Barney's, for premier fashion magazines such as Vogue, or for smaller boutiques such as Opening Ceremony and even for large established online retailers such as Net-a-Porter. These individuals try and forecast what their consumers would want to buy and cherry pick from the best fashion week has to offer. We witness this happening on a large scale and feel their effects on a daily basis (as avant-garde fashion trends gets watered down and trickle to your local Forever 21), but never do we stop to think about how we too can be our own connoisseur in curating our own wardrobes. 

It leads me to wonder why aren't more young women taught to be more self-aware and selective in their approaches to new acquisitions? Regularly you see fashion advice dispensed to young men on building the wardrobe, finding the foundations, on menswear sites such as Put This On, though you rarely see any female equivalent. Is it because the idea of curating a wardrobe a predominately male take on fashion, or is it simply because generations of young women have been instead brainwashed to seek the latest trends and stay au courant? That is not to say that there has been a complete lack of effort from the fairer sex in spreading good old school fashion advice, such as Amanda Brook's I Love Your Style. Online, my fellow style blogging brethrens from 0000 to Assembled Hazardly, Un Petit Bijou, Out of the Bag, Les Anti-Modernes, Sam is Home, Empty Emptor, Lost in A Spotless Mind and Dead Fleurette (apologies if I have missed any) have also tried to promote the idea of a capsule wardrobe in a similar manner to the gents of Put This On and the like. I must thank these ladies for their wonderful contributions to the web, yet it seems that such bloggers remain a niche in the fashion blogging landscape and that the idea of curating your wardrobe has yet to seep into mainstream collective female consciousness. 

So how do we rectify this? What kind of hurdles must we leap over for this phenomenon to take off en masse? Does the art of curating one's wardrobe only pertain to the rich and educated élite? Hopefully in the next few posts (and potential series? if you would to do a guest post and share ideas, you are more than welcome to email me) to come, I, along with you dear readers, can initiate a series of important conversations to begin to tackle such a problem. 

P.S. Totally by chance, the Frieze Art Fair is currently taking place in London. Check it out here, or even better, in person.