Fashion Week is a time of assessing what makes someone an iconic symbol of style, yet it hardly makes an impact on students at BYU’s wardrobe choices.
Fashion Week began in New York on Thursday, Sept. 6, and will continue in London, Milan and Paris until Oct. 3. Each city will host designers’ latest and greatest apparel choices for their designated week. During the next month, designers such as DKNY, Lacoste and Rebecca Taylor will showcase their fall collections.
Sean Burton, a 24-year-old from Draper, majoring in molecular biology, discussed how Fashion Week has little to no impact on his clothing choices.
“To me, Fashion Week represents vanity,” Burton said. “As long as my clothes are clean, I am good to go.” Burton later stated that people should concern themselves with maintaining a happy, healthy appearance and steer clear of materialism.
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Kim Reid, the College of Family, Home and Social Sciences outreach coordinator, views Fashion Week differently than does Burton. Reid believes the high-end designers have creative ideas for our clothing rather than promoting materialistic values.
“I view it as an art form, but not one accessible for students,” Reid said. She then stated that the clothes are pleasing to the eye.
Reid concluded her thoughts about Fashion Week, stating her disappointment in designers’ lack of representation for other body types. Reid discussed how the typical rail-thin model is not representative of the world.
“I am surprised that fashion hasn’t branched into other body types because there is an accessible market for that,” she said.
While some students and faculty view Fashion Week as vain and unrepresentative of the majority, some students find high-end fashion extreme and unattractive.
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Amy Posey, a 20-year-old from Sandy, majoring in exercise and wellness, thinks people can take the upcoming styles and tweak them to fit their standard of dress. Posey wears jackets over sleeveless tops and tank tops under low-cut shirts.
“How you dress sends a message of how you view yourself to other people and how much you respect yourself,” Posey said.
Many designers create clothing that does not reach the Latter-day Saint standard of dress. BYU students adhere to an honor code that includes dressing to that expected standard.
BYU president Cecil Samuelson gave a campus devotional on Jan. 13th, 2004, about the importance of dressing modestly.
“The great challenge we all face as we live in the world but are not part of the world is that standards of modesty, dress and personal conduct have rapidly changed from a societal perspective but are constant in the eyes of the Lord and His Church,” he said.
