Pratical vs. Aesthetic

There has always been an unspoken debate within the fashion world, and yes, it does go all the way back to the medieval era and even earlier.

It’s such a broad term — fashion, that is — and it’s incredibly fascinating how time periods could be categorized by what they wore. And yet, the lack of accurate fashion history still provides enough to show a pattern, two-sides of a quilt, you could say. There’s a distinct line that separates the two most important and most opposite qualities of fashion, two ideologies that we’ll be discussing right now: practicality and aesthetics.

Practicality in fashion is exactly what you think it means: cozy, comfortable, and doesn’t get in your very busy life. As society becomes more and more modern, we’re seeing more practical fashion trends like athleisure and the rise of thrifting. Even without these kinds of individual trends, catalogs of seasonal trends always make it to the paper, allowing people to choose styles that they like that match the incoming weather patterns. People of all ages would roam around wearing layers in the chilling months of the year and vice versa.

But not all people are prone to weather practical clothing. Before modern era fashion, dressing for the aesthetic of it all was the IT trend. Not all corsets were made to help back pain, not all robes were meant to be used solely after a shower, and makeup was (and still is) a staple of tying the whole outfit together. People of these times wanted to be eye-catching, to gain attention, to experience what it means to “be beautiful” by suffering just a little for the sake of fashion. Beauty is Pain is a common saying we hear from time to time even now and it doesn’t always mean wearing a smaller size. No, sometimes that means wearing a specific aesthetic theme throughout the year that can’t exactly face dangerous weather. It’s to fit in with the current, impossibly quick trends that don’t fit you. Extreme versions of aesthetic fashion, like all things tangible, can be painful.

The preservation of self has never been an issue that would be brought up in terms of fashion, not like today. Being able to feel like yourself in your own skin and in your own clothes is becoming more and more of a priority than fitting in with the standards, at least based on my own feed on social media — another big place of being able to share experiences and even more diversity in fashion unlike before. Practicality and Aesthetics have always been able to overlap, but personally, I believe this movement of being able to live without worrying about what others want you to look like — to wear what you want, to look and feel like yourself is more important than any trendy craze.