Fashion is more than just the art of looking good. A thinkpiece from The Tartan, for example, found that simply the colors you choose to wear can influence your mood. Dressing yourself can also serve as a mindful practice that impacts your well-being. Thanks to the concept of “enclothed cognition,” studies find that donning certain pieces—like a blazer to the office—can help boost factors like performance and productivity.
More importantly, however, fashion is a means of self-expression. Your sense of style can showcase your personality, help you stand out from the crowd, and ultimately help you feel even better in your own skin.
But how do you create a style that uniquely speaks to you? One great way to start is by drawing inspiration from various sources. By getting your ideas from stylish people like Tyson Wong and other fashion icons you look up to, you can pick up various tips and tricks for everything from figuring out what to wear when seeing your crush to outfits that show off your favorite tattoos.
However, that’s not the only thing you can do. To more effectively come up with your own sense of style, it can help to first build your aesthetic sense—and picking up a few essential reads can help you do just that.
Reading for fashion
You may be wondering: why not scroll on Pinterest until you find styles you want to emulate? Though doing so can be helpful, the issue lies in how you pick looks in the first place. Beauty is subjective and hard to pin down, so how exactly do you determine what looks good? That’s where having an aesthetic sense can help. Learning the basics of beauty, art, and design can guide you in making more informed decisions about what will work best for you fashion-wise. The best part is that the choices you make with your aesthetic sense will be unique and won’t come from anyone else—meaning you’ll be creating a truly distinct fashion style that no one else has.
The study of aesthetics is deeply rooted in the philosophical, and thinkers have been discussing them since the time of the Ancient Greeks. That makes books the best way to learn more about them. Fortunately, the best works you can browse don’t have to be difficult to find or afford.
With modern book formats and the platforms that offer them, access can be as simple as taking out a subscription plan. The digital library on Everand provides users access to thousands of titles grouped into categories, including those dedicated to art, fashion, and philosophy. That means you can easily find the works you need, whether it’s Alison Lumbatis’ Ultimate Book of Outfit Formulas or Pauline Brown’s Aesthetic Intelligence. These same books can also be found at your local library, where you can borrow them in person or even remotely via the Libby app. Here, you can access thousands of titles—including those mentioned above—with just your library card. That’ll make it easy to grab any of the following essentials for building your aesthetic sense:
Essential reads for your aesthetic sense
Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement
If there’s one thing celebrated philosopher Immanuel Kant is known for, it’s being systematic. He’s most famous for his three critiques: Pure Reason, Practical Reason, and Judgement. In each one, his intellectual curiosity breaks down various basic concepts, and that systematic analysis is exactly what can help you build the very foundations of your aesthetic sense.
In Critique of Judgement, Kant poses the all-encompassing question: what is beauty? He starts with the basics: we take in information about the world, and our senses try to decipher it. The way we perceive and understand things is ultimately influenced by concepts we already hold in our minds. If we’ve been taught to believe flowers are beautiful, we’ll find them so.
Sometimes, however, we’ll come across something we haven’t before, and we’ll still find it beautiful without our senses completely understanding why. Kant calls this harmonious play, and picking up this essential read can help you learn more about why that happens. Once you’re finished, you can use that concept of harmonious play to form an aesthetic sense that helps you adequately judge various fashion styles—and pick out those you prefer the most.
Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful
With this inquiry, British philosopher Edmund Burke proposes that you do more than just critically assess styles with your aesthetic sense. He reminds you to slow down, too. Don’t be in a rush to find the looks you want to incorporate into your unique sense of style. Stop to smell the roses, and you’ll better appreciate and enjoy the aesthetics you’re viewing in the process.
By reading A Philosophical Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, you can go through various aesthetic categories and learn more about the different emotional and sensory responses they can elicit. In essence, this essential read can help you further refine your aesthetic sense so you won’t just be picking styles that will look good for you. Ultimately, you’ll pick up a knack for finding pieces that help you feel good, too.
John Dewey’s Art as Experience
Take Burke’s suggestion a step further by developing an aesthetic sense that also considers your personal growth. Let’s go back to the concept of enclothed cognition. Research from Northwestern University defines this as the influence of fashion on your overall psychological processes—which includes not just your emotional well-being, but how effectively you can think and perform on a daily basis.
You can learn how to enhance the effects of enclothed cognition with Art as Experience. In this essential read, American philosopher and psychologist John Dewey will teach you how to actively engage with pieces of art—like the clothes you wear—in ways that stimulate your intellect and thus help you perform better at whatever you do. By curating your aesthetic sense in this direction, you can more easily leverage your wardrobe to this end and come up with a unique fashion style that more effectively bolsters your overall well-being.
Guy Debord’s Society of Spectacle
Modern fashion is often dictated by cultural trends, tying back to Kant’s observation of how preconceived notions can significantly influence what we find beautiful. Unlike in Kant’s time, however, the trends we see today stand out for one important reason: consumerism. We live in a society where it’s common for people to express their loyalty to specific brands and designer labels through what they wear.
If you want to learn how to develop an aesthetic sense that doesn’t rely on what’s hip—and isn’t influenced by the targeted advertising you see from certain brands—it’s worth picking up The Society of Spectacle. French theorist Guy Debord wrote it through a Marxist lens, which is why it can be an essential read for appreciating aesthetics outside the context of consumerism. This analysis of the Barbie movie is a great example of Debord’s insights in action. It finds that, though it masquerades as a film about women’s empowerment, Barbie is essentially a Mattel advertisement.
You can apply that same kind of analysis to fashion after reading this work by similarly opting for clothing beyond the brands they come from and the social prestige they offer. With your refined aesthetic sense, you may instead find yourself selecting styles and pieces that truly appeal to your preferences instead of helping you hop on whatever bandwagon’s currently being advertised by fashion brands.