Vintage Clothing.

Historical depictions of dress and apparel conveyed through flat surface does not accurately portray everyday dress of a time, period, or geographical location.

Pre-historic cave paintings, Sumerian wall carvings, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Medieval stained glass windows, a Paul Klee Cubist portrait, or even fashion photography of the last 100 years or so, a Lee Miller solarized image for instance, can all register unrealistic, abstracted, imaginary, or stylised representations of dress.

Today’s NFT and digital-only blockchain fashion is no different. This, too, exists as an ideal, is 2-D or screen-based, is conceived to be both traceable and tradeable, but will also diminish or lose popularly as its moment passes.

This can tell us that ‘representation’ does not necessarily convey certainty or truth, whether as silhouette, scale, materiality, texture, or colour. Like literary fiction, we see that ‘described’ clothing or attire does not necessarily convey reality, but rather agency.

Thus, the conceptual state of something remains as fundamental to its integrity as any physical characteristic. Where a garment might depreciate, wane or perish, existence as ‘spirit’ can still endure strongly in the mind, individually and/or collectively.