Fashionable vs wearable clothing

Clothing from high fashion runway shows aren't for everyone, but everyone wears clothes. Most people would say they aren't "into fashion" or don't "understand" fashion, but they still have opinions on what is fashionable or what they would wear, often differing from professional fashion designers. After struggling to word this social phenomenon, I've come up with the following (loose) "definition" of fashion in the context of clothing:

Whether an item is fashionable or not is a function of the artistic merit of the item with consideration to the time and social context it was created.

However, we will actually look at this definition another way as most people just don't care about the artistic merit of their clothes (myself included). I believe most people actually care about the "wearability" of their clothes and conflate the terms into "fashion" and artistic merit above. This blog post is my attempt to disentangle the terms and provide more depth on the topic of fashion everyday vs fashion on the runway.

What is wearability?

Most people do not care for the artistry (which is the heaviest weighted parameter of fashionableness applied to haute couture) of their clothes. Instead, they look primarily for wearability, in combination with personal values.

What is wearability, and what makes a given article of clothing wearable or not wearable? I think wearability has the following variables:

Appropriateness for a given social context
- Appropriate in multiple social contexts is more wearable. appropriate in fewer social contexts is less wearable
- ex. bright red suit is fairly inappropriate in most social contexts, business or casual. Unless you're Santa, in which case it is insistingly appropriate.
- ex. t shirts are more wearable than g-string bikinis. Unless the wearer is underwater at a beach, in which case the opposite is true.
Functional (physical situational comfort?)
- Being comfortable is more wearable. Less comfortable is less wearable
- ex. t shirts are more comfortable than wearing a suit of armour. Unless you're engaged in battle, in which case a suit of armour is more comfortable in a swordfight.
Achieves personal goals
- ex. helps me get more compliments from the opposite gender; conceals bodily features that generate insecurity; moves directionally closer to the end-game wardrobe that is aesthetically desired

I think all factors are important in the decision to purchase and wear clothes, and that the factors change over time due to changes in personality. For instance, a person's fashion goals could change from getting compliments in order to generate confidence, to identifying and aligning towards a personal image.

Other reasons may include changes in wardrobe that impose higher granularity.

An example would be owning multiple tailored suits with summer weight or winter weight fabrics, or for different occasions. If I already have a charcoal 3-piece suit, maybe I want a 2-piece navy suit next (lol).

So I think wearability is an entirely independent term from fashionable, however I also believe wearability has an inverse correlation to art (fashion). This is the reason people mistakenly conflate wearability with fashion. They are similar, correlated (inversely), often used together contextually, but represent different ideas.

Examples, counterexamples, humourous thought experiments

Here are some examples of "clothes" to think about the difference between wearability and artistic merit:

Lady gaga's meat dress
- Probably not wearable. Primary use is artistry and looking like beef jerky.
A literal trashbag
- In context of clothing can be re-engineered as wearable and potentially artistic. Out of context not considered clothing.
Iris van herpen haute couture exoskeleton
- Not wearable. Primarily for artistry.
Dior Air force ones (sneakers that resell for 10k USD at the time of writing)
- Designed to be worn but conventional use is not to be worn but sold and resold.
G-string bikini
- Wearable, appropriateness is context dependent.

All of these examples can be considered "fashionable", however they have varied wearability depending on context, designed and conventional purposes, and personal preferences.

The following are subjectively labelled data pairs to give an idea of the relationship between wearability and art.

Ignoring the 4 data points in the bottom left quadrant, the relationship is inversely correlated (though I am the one who supplied the data so this relationship reflects my personal opinions). Clothing meant to be worn by lots of people has less room for artistry, and clothes meant for art are less wearable. They serve different purposes but are highly conflated.

This is why if somebody is "into fashion" it's still vague. They can be interested in haute couture runway, or they could just like dressing well and looking good among their peers. Or both. Or neither and fashion evokes something wholy different from what I have described here.

Anyways, we should appreciate fashion shows for their artistic merit in the same way art galleries display paintings for their artistic merit. Their purpose is not always to sell more items or to design specifically for wearability (although some people do wear runway pieces, perhaps because they have found alignment with the artist/designer's ideas and their own personal ideas on aesthetics and fashion. An analogy would be buying a painting from a museum.).

Appendix: uncategorized counterexamples

Astronaut's space suit.
- purpose is 100% function
- Can you style it?
  - If you can't (because of regulations or "space law") is it not fashionable?
  - If you can, does styling an astronaut suit make it more fashionable? For instance putting a black stripe on the arm.
  - BTW I'm waiting for someone to make a black spacesuit.
- Real answer: https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/eva/white.html