“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society,” Mark Twain once quipped. You cannot disagree with that statement because fashion is power – the power of clothes, which has its own attributes and place. Despite freedom and a certain frivolity, fashion dictates its own conditions. It rules the catwalks and the streets.
Street fashion has its own laws and geographical distribution: for example, things that are fashionable in London are not always in vogue in Moscow, and Kyiv fashions do not always correspond to Paris’s. However, as the Mecca of fashion, Paris always fascinates us.
Those of us who would like to see, even second-hand, what young Parisians look like now have a splendid opportunity to do this. For an entire month the French Cultural Center will be hosting the show “Dress Code/Paris,” featuring the works of the famous photographer Stephane Gizard. The motto of the show is “Ce que je dis, quand je m’habille” (What I say when I get dressed) in many countries throughout the world.
Gizard got hold of a camera when he was seven. He was lucky to get an early start on his career at a very tender age. At the age of 20, he was already working at magazines and agencies. Gizard created landmark portraits of famous stars, like the actors Christopher Walken and Peter Falk, and the singers Lionel Richie and Alanis Morissette. Then he decided to go out on the streets with his camera and try to penetrate the unknown, strange, and mysterious world of young Parisians.
They are around 17 years old. They are brazenly free, like children, but are already able to conform wisely to the adult world and live by its laws. The master photographer peers into the faces of girls with hard, piercing stares and boys who, without any complexes, show their effeminateness and probable sexual orientation.
Everything is turned upside down in this world, the parents of these youths might grumble, but the wisest of them understand that each generation has its own view of life, its own values, conventions, reactions to events, and demands of their surroundings. Gizard has tackled a difficult problem: to show not only the clothing that young people choose, but in a very Chekhovian fashion to convey their thoughts through their clothing.
The professional eye of the photographer picked out faces and figures in the crowd. He stopped his models on the street, and they did not turn down his offer of a photo shoot. On the contrary, like all teenagers, they enjoyed exhibiting themselves and showing off their style and ability to pose. They were flattered that such a respectable photographer had picked their clothing, hairdos, accessories, and make-up to show to everyone.
The personal traits, characters, and personalities of these boys and girls are revealed from deep within their souls, and they yell at you through their accessories, scarves, and hats. You just have to learn how to read their language and think about its composition.
In his photos Gizard demonstrates to the entire world what young Parisians are saying with their clothes-these revolutionaries of style, rebellious seekers of their own egos and their own dress styles, who despise standards, gently mocking haute couture and conservative brands, even the most respectable ones. Truly, fashion is a fast-paced kind of art that always breaks stereotypes and creates new standards of beauty. We define our own style in order to avoid losing ourselves in the endless current and disappearing into the crowd. In this respect, young people are most progressive.
Gizard has once again proved that you can be a vivid personality only if you are not afraid to let people judge you by your appearance. The power of imagination and creativity are the things that people often lose over time, so the French photographer rushed to capture faces and clothes, as well as freedom, boldness, youthful enthusiasm, protests, and extraordinarily subtle but original tastes. The power of fashion is inside all of us, and when it is subordinated only to one’s own personal laws, it becomes more interesting and edgy to play around with it.
