I’ve been waiting for this epic conversation for weeks. I made three different shirts, changed pants about 50 times, and put on a swimsuit under my clothes, just to be prepared for anything.
I was waiting for the conversations I would be having at Coachella without words. Our culture is so visually based that it seems I am always communicating with my fashion: fashion has a language all of its own.
There are a million ways of making meaning with clothing.
At Coachella this weekend, for example, I noticed that to become even more captivating, the artists would change their clothes on stage. I only went on Friday, but everyone from Rufus Wainwright ““ who removed a long tunic to sit at the piano in shorts ““ to Bjork changed outfits during their performances.
Bjork had a more extravagant change than Wainwright. She came onto the stage with an intense hat on, which cloaked parts of her dress, later to be revealed as the cutest cave-person rendition of a hula skirt, complete with “Donnie Darko”-style bones drawn on it and brightly-colored flowing panels of individual strands of orange, green and yellow.
Kevin Barnes, singer-guitarist of Of Montreal, changed outfits four times, going from a silky, white, elegant long-sleeved shirt, to ending in pastel blue short-shorts and fishnets with a collar of flower petals, even standing on a ladder due to the length of a dress he had on toward the end of the performance. He completed the outfits with circular blush and vast, perfect smears of turquoise eye shadow framing his eyes.
As viewers, we find the changing of clothes more visually stimulating, which is fascinating because it’s still just the same artists singing a different song, wearing a different outfit.
They’re changing the outfit to change the mood of the performance. And how could they not? Fashion and music tend to go hand in hand.
Fashion has long been creating meanings about our culture. And it’s not just rock stars making assertions with their fashion (many of which can be observed from the scantily clad individuals walking around Coachella); we’re on stage, too. About 60,000 other people are checking you out as you walk between acts.
People dressed accordingly, both for the heat and for the visual conversations they had been wanting to have with their weekend audience.
And even at Coachella, we put the most fabric where we don’t want to feel the most naked. If we didn’t know what “naked” meant in our culture before we got dressed, we certainly would after. Butt pockets cover your rear, while zippers have extra fabric, keeping you from feeling exposed. Shirts have breast pockets and women often wear bras with shirts with bras already built in, all underneath another long-sleeved shirt.
We live in such a visual culture that of course we communicate through appearances. Watching television to see faces and actions, needing graphs and charts to simplify written information, and observing science experiments for visible results are some of the ways in which we learn visually.
Really, you’d have to see it to believe it, but this is what makes us wrapped up in our appearances.
At Coachella, I watched the self-conscious masses (myself among them), carefully displaying their nice swimsuits, piercings and tattoos through the skimpiness of carefully chosen clothing, trying to win the respect of people they would probably never meet or even talk to.
Being so acutely visual allows us to make fashion statements like “I look more interesting than you” or “I’m completely normal and good-looking” or the less common “don’t you wish you were weird like me?”
But these meanings, taken out of context, mean nothing.
Take myself for example.
I made sure my pink-streaked hair was extra bright before going, so that I didn’t look like every other blonde girl there. I wore interesting but weird shoes for people to know that I don’t take myself that seriously. I made myself a cut up “I heart NY” shirt, in true counterculture enthusiasm. It was cut way skimpier than anything I’d wear around UCLA.
Concerts are just another place to show a different side of our fashion sense: the more heat-prepared, funky, skin-baring side.
If the pink hair was subtler or the shoes happened to match, it would totally change the meaning of my clothing. I might look more serious, even job interview-able, maybe. And that’s not the conversation I wanted to have on Friday.
So look for the pink hair if you want to discuss fashion. In the meantime, I’ll be waiting for another epic conversation we’ll be having at the next music festival I go to.
Bad at small talk with your fashion? E-mail Rood at drood@media.ucla.edu.