Lecture Script: Fashion, Design, and the Dialogue with Consumers

Introduction (approx. 600 words, ~5 minutes)

Every morning, whether consciously or not, each of us performs the same ritual. We stand in front of a wardrobe, a mirror, or even just a small set of folded clothes, and we ask ourselves a question: what will I wear today?

On the surface, it seems like a small act, something routine. But in truth, this decision is one of the most powerful rituals in our daily lives. Clothing is more than just a piece of fabric covering the body. It is identity. It is culture. And it is going to decide for our mood and behavior.

As designers, we are often taught to think about fashion in terms of creativity—silhouettes, fabrics, concepts, proportion, and aesthetics. But if we look closer, fashion’s progress comes not only from what designers imagine but also from what consumers demand, repeat, and normalize. Fashion is as much about consumer behavior as it is about design imagination.

One of the clearest examples of this comes from the story of jeans. In the 1870s, in Reno, Nevada, a miner’s wife went to a tailor named Jacob Davis with a simple request: her husband’s work pants kept tearing at the pockets, and she needed them reinforced. Davis experimented with rivets, attaching them to the pocket corners, and the result was a garment durable enough to withstand hard labor. He later partnered with Levi Strauss, and together they patented the design. That one consumer request—a demand for stronger pockets—gave birth to the modern blue jean, a piece of clothing that remains one of the most universal items in the world.

This example reminds us that fashion is not a one-way channel from designer to consumer. It is a dialogue, a conversation. Consumers ask, demand, and shape; designers interpret, create, and refine. And the cycle repeats.

So today, I want us to think about fashion and design through four guiding questions:

What are the core components of clothing design?
Where do design and style ideas actually come from?
What are consumer decisions based on, and how many of them are truly autonomous?
And finally, what does all this mean for us as consumers as we prepare to purchase our next clothing item? What information do we need to reduce our mistakes and reduce the external influences?

Section 1: Components of Clothing Design

Let’s begin with the fundamentals: what makes up clothing design itself.

Clothing, Drawing, and Sculpture

Clothing, in its deepest sense, is not only protection or decoration. It is art made wearable—and it's made with the precise mathematical calculation with the precision of a millimeter (that's why I believe fashion does not have nationality; it's math and human vision and feeling at work). It is built on two primary components: drawing and sculpture. To create any garment, the designer, after first making elongated sketches, which is only abstract representations of what we will create, has to mathematically create shapes and forms that, when stitched together, create that piece of garment. That's why fashion does not have nationality. Then comes sculpture—fabric draped, cut, and shaped into three-dimensional reality on the body. In this way, every piece of clothing is a union of imagination and construction, of art and craft.

Out of this foundation emerge the five essential design components—the language through which clothing communicates to our eyes, our minds, and our emotions.

Line directs attention and creates mood. Vertical lines suggest strength and height, while horizontal lines suggest calm and stability. Diagonal lines show direction and energy, while curved lines are soft and have flow.
Shapes are made with three geometrical shapes: square, triangle, and circle. Each of these tree shapes evokes a certain feeling and emotion in us. Squares represent stability and safety, while triangles are directional, and circles are celestial and wholesome.
Color is the most immediate emotional trigger—warm tones can energize, cool tones can calm, and bold contrasts can demand attention.
Texture appeals to the senses and suggests meaning: smooth silk can feel luxurious, and rough denim practical and enduring.
Proportion balances all elements. Whether following the golden ratio or breaking it deliberately, proportion influences harmony, elegance, and even our judgment of beauty.

Together, these components do more than clothe the body—they shape perception, signal identity, and influence cognition and behavior. Clothing, born from drawing and sculpture, becomes not only an outer layer but also a living language that connects psychology, culture, and society.

There are three broad components to keep in mind.

Firstly, let's discuss the functional aspect. This is the most basic purpose of clothing: to protect, to comfort, and to serve utility. Whether it's a waterproof coat, an insulated jacket, or a performance sneaker, function always comes first. Without it, a design risks becoming impractical, no matter how beautiful.

Secondly, consider the aesthetic aspect. This is where designers spend much of their energy: silhouette, line, color, fabric, texture, and detail. This is the creative shaping of form. It’s what captures attention, sets trends, and communicates mood or brand identity.

Finally, there is the symbolic element. Clothing is also a system of signs. It carries cultural meanings, expresses identity, and signals values. A tailored suit communicates differently than ripped jeans; a traditional garment carries heritage that a minimalist t-shirt cannot.

The most important thing is that these three components—function, aesthetics, and symbolism—are never separate. They interact constantly. Sportswear, for example, succeeds because it blends comfort and functional performance with aesthetic appeal and symbolic identity. As designers, our challenge is to hold these three dimensions together so that clothing is not just beautiful but also wearable and meaningful.

Section 2: Case Study—Angelino’s Philosophy & Human Representation

When we look back to the very earliest art, like the cave paintings at Altamira in Spain or Lascaux in France, what we discover are walls filled with animals. Bison, horses, and deer painted with extraordinary energy. But humans? Almost invisible. And when they do appear, they’re little more than stick figures or abstract shapes.

Why? Scholars suggest several reasons. Some believe depicting humans carried a taboo, while animals held ritual power for hunting and survival. Others argue humans represented themselves indirectly—with handprints, signs, or hybrid creatures. But the truth may also be simple: animals dominated their lives, so they dominated their imagination.

Around thirty thousand years ago, although in sculpture we find these, tiny sculptures began to appear—the Venus figurines. These carved stone and ivory figures exaggerated features of the human body, often linked to fertility and symbolic power. For the first time, the human form became the focus of sculpture.

By five thousand years ago, in Mesopotamia, we see one of the earliest known human sculptures: the Tell Asmar Votive Figures, discovered in what was once the Sumerian city of Eshnunna. These stylized statues, with their clasped hands and wide, eternal eyes, stood in temples as worshippers in perpetual prayer. They show us how humans began to see themselves not just as hunters or survivors among animals, but as spiritual beings with presence, agency, and power.

This is exactly where Alex Angelino’s philosophy connects. He argues that civilization rises whenever we place the human form back into art—through drawing, sculpture, proportion, and representation. He points to the Middle Ages, when human representation became abstract or absent and progress slowed. Then, in the Renaissance, when the human figure returned to the center of painting and sculpture, innovation exploded.

For Angelino, fashion belongs to this same tradition. Clothing is essentially drawing and sculpture on the body—lines sketched in fabric, forms shaped in three dimensions, and proportions calculated for harmony. To represent ourselves—whether on cave walls, in carved stone, or in fabric cut and sewn—is to accelerate progress. Representation, he says, is not decoration. It is civilization itself.

Not every designer shares this grand view. Many approach fashion pragmatically, focusing on markets, trends, and consumer demand. But Angelino’s philosophy invites us to see our work differently: as part of the deep human story of representation, identity, and progress.

Section 3: Angelino on Individuality

Another key part of Angelino’s philosophy is his belief that there are as many styles in the world as there are people.

At first, that sounds impossiblBut he means that even if two people wear the same jacket, they won't wear it the same way.ay. Body type, culture, personality, and lifestyle all transform how that garment is styled and perceived.

From Angelino’s perspective, every person becomes a kind of co-designer. They take garments created by designers and reinterpret them, remix them, and inhabit them in unique ways. Fashion, therefore, is not a one-way process. It’s not dictated only from runway to consumer. It is a dialogue—billions of dialogues happening simultaneously, each person expressing a style that is theirs alone.

For us as designers, this idea is challenging. It means we are not here to dictate but to enable. Our role is not to impose a style but to create collections, garments, and aesthetics that allow individuality to flourish. Fashion, in this sense, is not about control—it’s about possibility.

Section 4: Consumer Decision-Making

Now let’s shift from Angelino’s philosophical view to a more practical one: what actually drives consumer decisionsMultiple forces influence people's clothing choices.es.

There are psychological factors—the desire to express identity, mood, or aspiration. Clothing becomes a form of self-presentation, a way of telling the world, “This is who I am, or who I want to be today.”

There are social factors—the influence of peers, media, influencers, and culture. People rarely choose in isolation; they choose within communities and systems of meaning.

There are economic factors—price, accessibility, and perceived value. No matter how strong identity or social influence may be, affordability and availabilisignificantly influence consumer choicedly.

So how much of this decision-making is autonomous, and how much is guided? That’s the critical question. On one hand, we like to believe that clothing choices are free expressions of individualitHowever, trends, marketing, social norms, and economic systems shape much of what we choose.ms.

Fast fashion illustrates this tension. Many consumers think they are choosing freely when they buy a shirt at Zara or H&M. In reality, their options were already shaped by a global system of design forecasting, supply chains, and pricing models. Choice feels free, but it is guided.

For designers, understanding this balance is crucial. Fashion advances not simply through creativity but through consumer behavior—through what people demand, adopt, and repeat.

Section 5: How We Created Math

Before we conclude, I want to circle back to one of Angelino’s recurring themes: proportion, geometry, and the golden ratio. These mathematical concepts are central to design—but it raises a fascinating question: how did we, as humans, even create math?

Math didn’t appear fully formed. It grew out of daily needs. Early humans had to count animals in their herds, measure grain for trade, or divide land fairly. Some of the earliest artifacts we have, like the Ishango bone from Africa, are tally marks dating back over twenty thousand years—evidence that humans were keeping count long before formal math existed.

As civilizations grew, they built systems. The Babylonians created a base-60 number system—that’s why we still divide hours into 60 minutes. The Egyptians developed fractions to divide food and farmland. The Greeks formalized geometry to design temples, align columns, and explore proportion.

Over time, math became more abstract. Pythagoras studied ratios, connecting mathematics to music and harmony. Indian mathematicians invented zero, revolutionizing calculation. Algebra and calculus later emerged to solve problems in trade, astronomy, and engineering.

So math was not discovered in nature like a hidden treasure, nor invented out of nothing. It was built, step by step, as a human language for describing patterns, quantities, and relationships.

This brings us back to design. Angelino is right that clothing combines drawing, sculpture, and mathematical calculation. In fact, math and design share the same origin: the human instinct to measure, balance, and create order. That’s why proportion and ratio still resonate so powerfully in design. They connect us to something ancient—the impulse to make sense of the world through structure, harmony, and beauty.

Conclusion So let’s bring this together.

Fashion is not a one-way process from designer to consumer. It is a dialogue. Designers imagine, but consumers demand and shape. Function, aesthetics, and symbolism form the components of design. Cultural history and consumer habits determine what survives and spreads.

Alex Angelino challenges us to see fashion not as surface, but as substance. He argues that drawing and sculpture—the very foundations of clothing design—are also the foundations of civilization. He says that fashion's true wealth is individuality and that there are as many styles as people.

At the same time, we must balance this grand vision with reality. Consumer choices are shaped by psychology, society, and economics. Math and proportion give us tools for harmony, but consumers give us direction.

As future designers, your role will be to navigate both—the idealism of fashion as art and the pragmatism of fashion as a market. And perhaps the real challenge is this: not to choose between them, but to recognize that both are essential.

So as you leave today, I encourage you to ask yourself two questions: What do I want to design? And what do consumers truly need, desire, and express through their daily ritual of dress?

Because the future of fashion will be shaped not only by what we create, but by how we listen, how we interpret, and how we respond to the billions of individual styles that make up the living artwork of humanity.