I Will If You Will

The photos I have of Mom etc. are, obviously due to the time frame, in black and white, so I do a lot of research to find out fashions colors of that time. And this has me thinking about what "fashion" is. Usually, it comes to mean : What Everyone Is Now Wearing", right? But, and here's where I'm going with this, WHO was the 'first'? The first to be wearing that particular, oh, skirt or shirt or what have you? Most of us would say it's the fashion moguls, designers, etc. that call the shots here - but I'd think you'd still have to have a sort of consensus of agreement on what is cool. But it has to be the 'brave' that make the leap to adorn themselves in what, for all others, seems...um...strange at the time. And the whole thing about wearing 'what everyone else is' ; that is an odd idiosyncrasy we humans participate in. And really that's what "fashion" seems to be : "What Everyone Is Now Wearing"; and it seems to be what has been going on for a long long time. I can picture some cave woman artfully draping her mastodon fur across her shoulders then having the rest of the tribe think " Wow. 'Shoola' looks fantastic like that and by golly the Hunter Boys sure pay more attention to her so I'm going to do it too!"

But there still is the FIRST one to do it.

Kind of like Art in a way. If you look at paintings through the years, there is always a "new" style or method an Artist employs and the next thing you know, Hey Presto, the whole fleeping flock rushes to do it just the same; ESPECIALLY if that new style/method becomes popular. Witness the surge of "way colorful, perspective wonky" painting currently a craze.

Of course, there's the other side of that equation that has the Artist ridiculed for the new direction until some far off time when the ordinary souls finally 'get it'.

I read somewhere that there is nothing really new under the sun; that we all take whatever has gone before and just reinterpret it.

Maybe so.

Still, there has to be that first.

Maybe I should start wearing my paint splattered clothes more often to town.

You never know......