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Being a Fashion Design student I never thought that clothing is superficial, because it defines who we are. For me clothing is absolutely a way to express my feelings regarding something, my individualism, and maybe a note of personal appearance. When I am in love I dress pink, when insecure black, when confident weird, and so on. We dress accordingly to our thoughts, emotions, mood, gender, nationality and sexuality. Reading this book, I had a better understanding what clothing really is, and how we manifest ourselves through dressing in a specific way.
Daniel Miller says that ‘we choose clothing as signs or symbols that represent us’. But he also says that the way we dress can lie about our personality. Sometimes our style is absolutely the opposite of what we are. The true inner self tries to hide itself from the reality, which create the illusion that if you dress, in a different way than what you feel, you will create a different appearance. You will be protected from judgement. ‘A person today should not be judged by what they used to do, but they are now’ how we choose to dress doesn’t necessarily mean who we are, but it might mean who we think we are. Like the better you dress the worse you can behave. Daniel Miller tries to explain in his book, that Trinidadians have a special understanding of fashion. They are not ‘fashion’ they are style. They are not only buying clothes, but the way they wear it, tells much more about a personal artistic vision and self-appearance than a better part of European. To them we cannot refer the superficial idea that women are obsessed with shoes and dresses. Even if Trinidadians ‘are good at dressing good’ they still inspire freedom, and they choose to express themselves throughout clothing, not only be fashionable. For Trinidadian was so important style and surface appearance. Why? Because they never left home without looking ‘fabulous’. As Miller says, no matter if there were no electricity or running water in their homes, it could take hours for them to get ready for a party. Of course, the first impression, that is the surface, the clothing is important. Through this we can observe if a person respect himself, if he is an open-minded or inhibited, we can say where he is going, is he a worker or a student. If a worker we can approximately understand what he is working and if his life is a mess. We can predict someone’s life observing their clothing, so of course, clothing is not superficial.