The fashion business is disparaging to feeling love. As a design theme it is plentiful. Romance provides charming motifs and enchanting runways, digestible even to those disdainful towards fashion. There is communal soft spot for the symbol of love - a heart. We see it, know what it stands for…but do we feel it?


Heike Jenss looks at clothing as a “temporal anchor” in an ever expanding experience of one's self. As we are all material subjects, clothing is a way for us to locate our being and becoming. If we look at fashion as the conjunction between someones presence and their essence, the more a garment is worn, used or felt, the more fashioned it is. Luckily, memory through clothing is tangible. Wear and tear give example to ageing- textiles rip and stretch, fibres loose colour, and with time, our clothes break down in different ways dependent on the environments they engage with. As an unworn garment departs from its pure state, its virtue is stained by experience and happenings. These experiences are made noticeable through imperfection; Worn stories become permanently ingrained in the anatomy of these garments. It’s nice to imagine our own wardrobe as material bank of essence. We can look at getting dressed as the practice of remembering as we style ourselves by piecing garments together.


There is an argument that many do not prioritise fashioning, that the fact or awareness or such is obsolete. Perhaps for most, the material subject isn’t necessarily concerned about creativity, rather more attentive to  necessity, utility and affordability. However, in the absence of creative consideration, we are presented with just as much information as in its presence. When garments are worn, we embody it as much as it embodies us. Sensory stimulants such as touch or colour navigate the language of self imaging by translating the emotional features of our past experiences. For example, if someone enjoys walking to work but is confided to a strict uniform, perhaps they will prioritise the bounce of a shoe for comfort instead of its aesthetics, or one that adds a pop of colour into the otherwise mundane outfit. Mostly, a garment is worn because they bring comfort to our being; that is why we want to wear them. This comfortability comes from a memory of familiarity and ease. If we piece together these clues, we can start to decipher someones union as a material subject. Subsequently, a personal language of essence is translated into a physical presence and fashioning remains relevant as a passive subject.


Emotion can be used as a post-narrative spacefor memory to travel through. It is the factor that connects memories with value - not only did something happen, but it made you feel something. This is where I would like to bring in Love. In whatever definition you give to the word, Love is described to be an intense feeling of deep affection. Material objects are vectors for the transition of emotion. For example, if I were to be given an old photo of my grandma - not only would I feel lovingly towards her as the subject, but also love physical presence holding the photo as it is a vector by which I get to carry a piece of her. Just as a photo, clothing is a vector we experience emotion through. 


The relation to love here is still equivocal - for if we attach emotion to our clothing, why does that emotion have to be a loving one? 


It is not that it has to be, but more so that it ends up that way. The sharing of emotion is crucial to the formation of identities and relationships. Because is it the first material subject present when we interact within different environments, fashion is pivotal as physical vessel of remembering and translating our personalities successfully.. Consciously or subconsciously because of the perpetual cycle of remembering and forgetting, the memories that we tend keep are the ones you connect to most, and so through a process of elimination, they produce your essence. So, if love surrounds the experiences that we keep in our memory, then it is the emotion dictates our essence. And if fashion is the conjunction between one’s emotional essence and their fashioned presence, then fashion is love disguised.