I had just finished interviewing my friend for a series on talented black women (coming soon) for National Women’s month and we got to talking about fashion. I asked her a question, “Why do designers make abstract clothes that nobody is going to wear on the street? What’s the point?”

I figured since she is a fashion design student and has done a fashion show herself that she would know the answer to my question.

What she said changed my perspective on fashion.

“Fashion is art”

I had never heard fashion explained in this way. I didn’t even know fashion could be considered art.

But what is art anyway? Is it a drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture? Art is all these things and a little more.

“Art is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination” — Oxford Dictionaries

Art doesn’t just appear in a museum or on a slab of a canvas. Art is everywhere. It’s in the music we sing, the words we write, and the clothes we make.

It’s an expression of our creative imagination whether it be simple or abstract. Art isn’t defined by a group of thought leaders or Merriam Webster’s Dictionary. Art is whatever you deem it to be.

Fashion is art. It’s a form of creative expression carried out by a designer and put on our blank canvassed bodies.

When we start to look at fashion, and any other creative skill, our perception of it will change and we will have a better appreciation for it.

Thanks for reading..