How Juxtaposing Fashion Worlds made me start a ‘Blog’

Keeping a foot into Fashion Journalism could just be a consequence of analyzing the butterfly effect.

“They study four years in Fashion, and will come up to me and say “Oh I’m writing blogs, I’m a blogger”. God knows what goes on in their minds.”

Those were the words of my Professor two years ago as he gave us two hundred-something images to work with on an assignment due on nvm-not-going-to-make-it date.

Sitting there listening to his intimidating lecture did make the class of 40 twenty-year old’s immediately agree with him.

I was reminded of my first semester in college, where another professor made us create a blog with five 50-word articles (yes, just fifty). That was all we were taught in the name of ‘Fashion Basics’. I’ll give credit for the immense amount of pragmatic approaches he took ( taking us on photography sprees and talking to people on the streets), but we as a class definitely got the short end of the stick when it came to fashion terminologies.

Oh how ironic it is now. With the pandemic in our lives and me being in a third-world country proudly (and rather foolishly) studying Fashion Communication as my major calls for me creating a ‘blog’ to present and amplify my editorial skills.

That stack of Google Drive images became my starting point in researching fashion. My teacher is spine-chillingly strict, so it was highly unlikely for him to appreciate anything we did as students. Yet for that semester, maybe he had a change of mind.

The brief was to ‘Observe the images and juxtapose them in groups’ and I immediately knew he wanted more than that. Thus, here are the snapshots of the presentation I submitted. Albeit not fancy, it does have fashion and Bollywood history, and one cannot separate the two within desi lands.

With fierce and compelling statements still being used on our Twitter feeds for feminism and gender equality, it was not quite surprising to see the objectification and patriarchal burden women of the limelight would have had to face a few decades earlier. With the many outstanding and confident roles these actors have played, it is a shame to read how they are only known for their early tragic demise.

How bold of me to put the Saint amongst a bunch of nobody’s right? Not quite. Cultural appreciation (the optimistic counterpart of the locution we are not taking into discussion) has by far been a major method to tie vastly contrasting ideals together.

The two star screens of film and entertainment genre, Hollywood and Bollywood have been copycats of each other for a long time. Yet, it’s shallow to consider the act as a negative connotation.

Looking back, all the signs of me going in the direction of journalism in fashion were there: from me being forced to make a blog in first semester to juxtaposing research-worthy images in third, creating a complete magazine from scratch on my own, to falling in love with the idea of editorials and fashion collections. I definitely could not cover the complete Fashion Juxtaposing here, but the exercise made me feel how miniscule my knowledge is with regards to this overtly glamorous world.

Here to make things a little less overwhelming for all like-minded fashion enthusiasts, the plan is to publish quality content, authentic opinions, and most of all, a panel for transparent discussion. Since I am studying Fashion Communication from National Institute of Fashion Technology, I do have a Writing and Design portfolio to give my above statements a bit of weight.

With this article I feel this ‘blog’ will be a good start. This space will be utilized to document all things fashion, including the wholesome critique of me and many others. I would love to hear how others caught interest in fashion.

If ever my professor reads this, I know that he would explicitly comment: “You are just giving information, not food for thought”, and to that I say “Yes, of course I am still an amateur with my statements, and I am here to be corrected.” I cannot be the advocate for other numerous fashion bloggers of a similar strata to mine, but I can positively state that I did this for the sole reason of grasping every research piece which makes me believe that this industry is not just about rich people buying fancy clothes and walking in them.

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