Among fashion insiders, there is a lot of pressure for innovation and individuality. For how can you become a known entity in the sartorial circuit, if there is nothing to know? I've always wondered how people who wear mostly name brand current fashion ever hope to accomplish this. You'll end up seeing the same Gucci belt, the same Supreme sweatshirt, in every fashion outfit-of-the-day post on the internet. How can this be fulfilling to anyone within the fashion scene? When you are just a copy of a copy of a copy?
One way to combat the monotony, is juxtaposition. When you wear the same item that everyone else has, but in a different way, the look then becomes unique. If you ever see a photo with a jacket hanging artfully off one shoulder, or the act of mixing sportswear with designer, you've seen juxtaposition in action. This change in scenery can almost be a shock to the senses; such as when women first started wearing men's trousers, or men now wearing women's skirts.
Either way you look at it, juxtaposition is a huge fundamental to fashion and forward trends. This element of surprise, this cerebral disturbance to our entrenched expectations, forces us out of the mental fog of monotony and places us more firmly in reality than anything consisting of normal expectations could ever do. For we often live life almost like reading a script that someone else wrote, and even something like a little change in wardrobe can make us feel like we took back the pen.
