{"id":74,"date":"2025-10-17T02:33:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T02:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/?p=74"},"modified":"2025-10-17T03:15:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T03:15:02","slug":"dressed-by-culture-how-fashion-builds-belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/blog\/dressed-by-culture-how-fashion-builds-belonging\/","title":{"rendered":"Dressed by Culture \u2014 How Fashion Builds Belonging"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Fashion does not exist in isolation; it is influenced by culture, history, and community. For instance, from Indigenous clothing with intricate beadwork to hip-hop streetwear, all clothing contains many layers of collective meaning. What we wear is likely an indicator of the people, traditions, and spaces that shape us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fashion, according to McRobbie (2020), is \u201ca dialogue between personal identity and cultural belonging.\u201d Clothing styles are not arbitrarily pulled from the ether; they emerge from cultural references like music, film, geography, and social influence. Take, for instance, the rise of streetwear globally, thrift shopping vintage clothing, and culture-producing fashion that combines traditional dress and modern styles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Streetwear was born in the 1980s by Black and Latino youth in Los Angeles and New York, synthesized from elements of hip-hop, skate, and graffiti culture (Mears, 2021). It began as a rebellion and an expression of community, and then transformed into a global style embraced by luxury brands. What was once counterculture now finds itself in high fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Growing up, my sense of style was shaped by the influences of the people in my community &#8211; friends, trends in the community, and social media creators who were proud to use fashion to express themselves. That feeling of belonging is the true value of fashion &#8211; it puts us in a bigger story outside of ourselves, and even enables us to express individuality in that story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sustainable-fashion-demographics.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-89\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sustainable-fashion-demographics.png 800w, https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sustainable-fashion-demographics-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sustainable-fashion-demographics-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sustainable-fashion-demographics-768x768.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Even online, digital communities can emerge around a common aesthetic &#8211; whether sustainability, gender-fluid aesthetics, and so on. Clothing can become a way to communicate with one another, linking us together even when traveling in different parts of the country with different harmonies or cultural beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fashion is about relationships or connection, not fabric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Who influences <em>your<\/em> style the most\u2014your culture, your friends, or your favorite artist? Comment or post using <strong>#DressedByCulture<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>References:<\/strong><br>McRobbie, A. (2020). <em>Feminism and the Politics of \u201cResilience.\u201d<\/em> Polity Press.<br>Mears, A. (2021). <em>Fashion and Cultural Studies.<\/em> Routledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fashion does not exist in isolation; it is influenced by culture, history, and community. For instance, from Indigenous clothing with intricate beadwork to hip-hop streetwear, all clothing contains many layers of collective meaning. What we wear is likely an indicator of the people, traditions, and spaces that shape us. Fashion, according to McRobbie (2020), is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creativeml.ca\/myblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}