What should I wear today?
Fashion and its implications
Every morning, each of us consciously performs the same ritual by standing in front of a wardrobe, a mirror, or even just a small set of folded clothes, and we ask ourselves a question: What should I wear today? This decision is, in fact, one of the most influential elements affecting your daily task performance. (Psychologists describe this routine as a micro-decision ritual that sets the tone for the day.) Clothing is more than just a piece of fabric covering the body; it'll influence our mood and behavior. Clothing is a silent language—one that communicates powerful messages about who we are, our identity, our culture, and the unfolding story of civilization.
A man is dressing for the day.
As you approach your next clothing purchase, consider: what insights from this talk can reshape the way you act as a consumer? What forms of knowledge can protect you from error and help you recognize, and even resist, the subtle forces that influence your choices?”
The common perception of fashion design is that designers are creative individuals who develop styles that consumers then follow. As a designer, I can assure you that this perception is fundamentally incorrect. Consumer preferences and demands dictate what to produce. The industry has different techniques for discovering those preferences: fashion shows, trade shows, sample sales, listening to consumers and salespeople, and so on.
The USA no longer employs my favorite technique. Companies would hire cool hunters to seek trendy individuals. The cool hunter's role involved using his camera to identify individuals with distinctive and fashionable appearances in bustling locations and to photograph them. Tokyo's Harajuku continues to be the only place where trendsetters and their followers thrive and produce unique ideas. The process of fashion is a constant, ever-changing communication between consumers and the industry. It reflects both the consumer's demands and sentiments and the mastery of designers and technology.
Harajuku fashion looks
The story of jeans provides one of the clearest examples of the consumer role in creating fashion trends. The jeans, pants, and fabric have been around since 1500 in India and Europe. In the 1870s, in Reno, Nevada, a miner’s wife approached a tailor named Jacob Davis with a simple request: her husband’s work pants kept tearing at the pocket corners, and she needed them reinforced. He was working with leather and experimenting with rivets, which he attached to the pocket corners, resulting in a garment durable enough to withstand arduous labor. They 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.
The demand from the wives of miners inspired Jacob Davis to design the jeans that have become an American icon.
This example reminds us that fashion is not a one-way channel from designer to consumer. It is a dialogue, a conversation. Consumers ask and demand, and designers interpret, shape, and create, and the cycle repeats.
There are many misconceptions about what fashion truly is and how we should understand it. and it in today's world. Even in Western societies, people often fail to define the concept of fashion. When it comes to unconventional expressions—such as sagging, tattoos, or piercings—many people don’t even recognize these as forms of fashion.
Beyond Europe, fashion is sometimes viewed as a purely Western invention, with the belief that remaining faithful to traditional clothing is the only authentic path. Yet if Europeans had clung to tradition in the same way, they would still be wearing Renaissance attire.
In reality, fashion is far more than clothing—it reflects humanity’s evolving understanding of design and its ability to shape our lives. Across cultures, universal design principles have emerged from both lived experiences and natural evolutionary processes. These include the meaning and use of lines, shapes, colors, textures, and proportions—elements that resonate with a shared human sensibility.
The way clothing communicates with our eyes, minds, and emotions is based on our interpretation of design elements, making it a universal experience among humans.Fundamentals of fashion design:
Lines, shapes, colors, textures, and proportion
Throughout human development and civilization, we have developed an understanding and given specific properties to lines, shapes, colors, textures, and proportions. Lines are abstractions of what humans saw in nature (tree trunks, horizons, rivers, lightning, and curves of bodies). However, archaeologists can trace the oldest intentional use of lines by humans in art or design.
Vertical & Diagonal lines. Oldest record: Engravings on ochre pieces from Blombos Cave, South Africa, dated to ~75,000 years ago (Middle Stone Age). Culture/people: Early Homo sapiens. Details: The earliest known abstract mark-making involves the etching of cross-hatched diagonal and parallel vertical lines on red ochre. 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. 
The psychology of the four types of lines includes vertical, horizontal, diagonal, and curved.
Horizontal
Lines: The oldest record is also in the Blombos Cave and in the Apollo 11 Cave stones (Namibia, ~30,000 years ago). Culture: Early African Homo sapiens groups.
Details: Horizontal strokes were often used to divide or structure space in early carvings.
Curved Lines Oldest record: Petroglyphs in La Pasiega Cave, Spain, ~64,000 years ago. Culture: Made by Neanderthals (before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe!).
Details: Curved, ladder-like motifs suggest deliberate use of arcs and rounded forms.
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.
Square
The square is more artificial—it rarely occurs in nature. It required abstraction and deliberate construction.
Earliest uses: Urban planning and architecture can be found in Mesopotamia and Egypt, dating back to approximately 3100 BCE. These early uses include rectangular bricks, floor plans, temples, pyramids, and irrigation systems.
Symbolism: order, rationality, and human control over nature.
Triangle Oldest record: Upper Paleolithic cave art (~30,000–20,000 years ago). Examples: Triangular female figures interpreted as “Venus” fertility symbols (e.g., the Venus of Willendorf, Austria, ~25,000 BCE, uses triangular reduction of body shapes). People: Gravettian culture (Europe).
Meaning: Likely symbolic of fertility, femininity, or spiritual power.
Circle Oldest record: Engravings and petroglyphs, Göbekli Tepe (Turkey), ~9600 BCE—circular enclosures and carvings.
Even older evidence: Stone arrangements in Africa (e.g., Nabta Playa, Egypt, ~7500 BCE) forming early stone circles.
Symbolism: Cycles of time, sun, moon, and eternity. Yes, these are man-made abstractions—humans learned from natural observations and codified them into deliberate design, which became the foundation of art, writing, architecture, and fashion itself.
The psychology of the shapes—square, triangle, circle
The psychology of the shapes—square, triangle, circle
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.
The golden ratio, often represented by the Greek letter φ (phi), is a mathematical proportion found throughout nature, art, and architecture. The ratio of the larger part to the smaller part is 1.618, the same as the ratio of the whole to the larger part. This creates a sense of balance that feels naturally pleasing to the human eye.
We see this ratio in the spirals of shells, the branching of trees, the proportions of the human body, and even in galaxies. Ancient architects applied it in the Parthenon, Renaissance artists used it in paintings like those of Leonardo da Vinci, and fashion designers employ it when determining ideal cuts, lengths, and silhouettes. It is not a rigid rule but a guide—when followed, it creates harmony, and when broken skillfully, it produces striking contrast. In essence, the golden ratio demonstrates that beauty is not accidental; it is deeply connected to mathematical relationships that resonate with human perception. 
The design displays the golden ratio, also known as the Fibonacci numbers.
The design displays the golden ratio, also known as the Fibonacci numbers.
Together, these components do more than clothe the body—they shape perception, signal identity, and influence cognition and behavior. Clothing, born from drawing and sculpting, becomes not only an outer layer but also a living language that inspires and connects psychology, culture, and society.
The word "fashion" entered the European vocabulary around the Renaissance in 1500, a time when human representation was once again becoming the center of attention and when drawing, sculpture, engineering, and trade flourished in Europe, placing Europeans ahead of the rest of the world. shading-perspective-proportion) until today
Clothing, drawings, and sculptures,
Clothing, at its core, is far more than protection or decoration—it is wearable art, shaped by precise mathematical calculations down to the millimeter. This is why I believe fashion transcends nationality: it exists at the intersection of mathematics, human vision, and emotion. Fashion is built upon two fundamental pillars—drawing and sculpture—and ultimately, it is about representing humanity itself. Every garment begins with a pattern.
Clothing Patterns, mathematical shapes
Pattern-making involves precise measurements and calculations of various shapes that, when sewn together, ultimately create a complete garment. In this sense, fashion belongs to no single nation; it is a universal language of form and shapes.
Designers often sculpt directly on a mannequin, draping fabric to create structure, which is then refined into a three-dimensional reality on the body. Clothing isn’t just aesthetics. It’s the engine of empathy, individuality, and freedom—the very foundations of progress. Without clothing, prosperity and progress are out of reach. Among the three noticeable elements of factionality, aesthetics, and symbolism, consumers invest most of their energy in the aesthetic aspect, which includes silhouette, line, color, fabric, texture, and proportion that communicate mood or personal identity and set trends. So understanding their meaning in decision-making is essential.
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 skills and energy. But humans? Almost invisible. And when they do appear, they’re little more than stick figures or abstract shapes.
Why do cave paintings feature animals but not humans? 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 animals dominated their imagination, and human beings were not central to their mentality.
Around thirty thousand years ago, small, tiny human figurine sculptures began to appear in Europe. These carved stone and ivory figures exaggerated features of the human body, often linked to fertility and symbolic power. These hand-held human figurines may represent the first instance of human forms becoming the focus of man.
The Venus hand-held figurine found in Europe is thirty-five thousand years old. 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.
Tell Asmar Votive Figures from Mesopotamia
This is precisely 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 discusses the contributions of individuals to fashion.
Angelino believes that there are as many styles as people. When Angelino says, “There are as many styles as there are people,” he is pushing back against the idea that fashion is dictated only from the top down—from runways, brands, or celebrities. Instead, he reminds us that fashion is completed by individuals. Even if two people wear the exact same garment—say, a black suit or a white t-shirt—the style is never identical.
The cut interacts with the body’s shape, the posture, the movement, the accessories, and even the confidence or personality of the wearer. A suit on one person communicates authority, on another, rebellion, and on another, artistic eccentricity. Style, then, is not simply the garment.
It is the dialogue between clothing, individual personalities, and perceptions of others. Each person interprets and performs clothing differently. Such interaction is why Angelino calls clothing a “living language”—it is spoken in billions of dialects, one for every human being. This realization has two important implications:
For Designers: It means our role is not to impose style but to create tools for self-expression. A design's success is based on how much he or she knows about niche preferences and demand. This is because consumers hold the power, while traditional roles of authority do not. Philosophically, Angelino’s statement also elevates individuality. If there are as many styles as there are people, then fashion proves that no two human beings are identical—and that this difference is what constitutes beauty.
For Society: It reminds us that fashion is inherently democratic. Trends created by individuals and others may relate to it and follow it, but ultimately, every person curates a unique style through combination, adaptation, and context. Fashion is not a single narrative—it is millions of parallel stories. The primary benefit of fashion for society is that it encourages us to celebrate not only our common values but also the differences that enrich our society and inspires us to bring innovative ideas and perspectives. Philosophically, Angelino’s statement also elevates individuality.
If there are as many styles as there are people, then fashion proves that no two human beings are identical—and that this difference is what constitutes beauty. 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 satisfy a demand. Our role is not to impose a style but to create collections, garments, and aesthetics that allow individuality to relate and flourish. Fashion, in this sense, is not about control or imposing ideas—it’s about people’s true choice without external influences to express individuality, self-authority, and self-awareness.
Consumer Decision-Making
Now let’s shift from Angelino’s philosophical view to a more practical one: what actually drives consumer decisions. Multiple forces influence people's clothing choices. Psychological factors and cognition influence how we choose to present ourselves. The desire to express identity, mood, better performance, or aspiration is a fundamental human experience for fulfilling one's true agency. 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.” We induce production of certain hormones related to positive emotions. Learning more about fashion makes us more self-aware, self-authoritative, and expressive. inspires us and fosters empathy for others. There are social factors—the influence of peers, media, influencers, and culture—for the way most of us perform this very personal aspect of our life. . 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 availability significantly influence consumer choices. 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 individuality. However, trends, marketing, social norms, and economic systems shape much of what we choose. Fast fashion illustrates this tension. Many consumers think they are choosing freely when they buy a shirt at Zara or H&M. A global system of design forecasting, supply chains, and pricing models has already shaped their options. 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.
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 was not fully formed at first. 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, like the Ishango bone from Africa, are tally marks that date back over twenty thousand years—evidence that humans kept 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 last point 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 the beauty of design. They connect us to something ancient—the impulse to make sense of the world through structure, harmony, and beauty.
The word "fashion" entered the European vocabulary around the Renaissance in 1500, a time when human representation was once again becoming the center of attention and when drawing, sculpture, engineering, and trade flourished in Europe, placing Europeans ahead of the rest of the world. shading-perspective-proportion) until today 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 the external influences and our mistakes when we choose our clothing? Representing the human body created a need to study anatomy. Without perspective in painting, geometry, and optics, the discipline remains underdeveloped. Restricting human representation cut off the feedback loop between humans, art, science, and society. The Renaissance shows the opposite. As soon as human beings returned to painting and sculpture, curiosity reignited. Anatomy led to medicine.
Perspective led to architecture. Portraying humanity reawakened its value. Now fast-forward to today: the same principle applies to fashion. When expression is restricted—by rigid dress codes, by censorship of gender-fluid styles, or by the manipulation of fast fashion cycles that erase individuality—humanity shrinks. Fashion becomes uniformity instead of representation of human diversity and inclusion. But when fashion opens up—when streetwear tells the story of a neighborhood, when gender-fluid design challenges categories, when cultural dress is celebrated instead of hidden—empathy expands. Representation in fashion becomes representation in society. That is Angelino’s point: fashion is not decoration. It is civilization’s daily act of representation. If we suppress it, we stagnate. If we free it, we move forward.
Conclusion So let’s bring this together.
Fashion is not a one-way process from designer to consumer. It is a dialogue between them. Designers know how to make garments, but consumers demand and shape them. Lines, shapes, colors, textures, and proportions form the components of design. Culture, function, aesthetics, symbolism, and consumer habits determine what survives and spreads. So see fashion not as surface, but as substance. Drawing and sculpture—the very foundations of clothing design—are also the foundations of civilization.Fashion's true wealth lies in individuality, with as many styles as there are people. At the same time, we must balance this grand vision with reality. Psychology, society, and economics shape consumer choices. Math and proportion give us tools for harmony, but consumers provide 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? The future of fashion will be shaped by how we listen, interpret, and respond to the billions of individual styles that make up the living artwork of humanity.
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