.. trompe-l’œil

Earlier this week, while on my train journey towards the National Portrait Gallery, I read an *article in a magazine about second-hand fashion. Though it appeared to be an ordinary Monday, the moment felt quite cinematic from my perspective as the morning sunbeams streamed through the windows and warmed my fingers while I held the magazine. The article I was reading explored the idea behind ‘dressing up to look like something else’. From wearing a sweater with an image of a scarf worked into the knit of it, to rocking t-shirts with prints that mimic textures or elements found in nature or dresses with a printed lace pattern at the edges that looks three-dimensional, giving the illusion of wearing actual lace.

The concept behind **trompe-l’œil clothes narrows down to giving people the opportunity to both be more and less than what they would usually appear. It’s an opportunity to make a statement or showcase the humorous side of a person’s character.

The idea of ‘dressing up to look like something else’ highlighted something else to me - intuitively, people are naturally inclined towards the desire to present themselves in ways that are different from who they are. We all have various masks hanging in our closets that we pull out depending on the situations we find ourselves in. We are all actively trying to fool other people into thinking about us in specific ways or gain acceptance in moments when we fear rejection, but there is one particular point from this article:

“Dressing up to look like something else is probably as old as getting dressed.”

which has given me a new perspective on thinking about the human ego - it prompts a question of whether our inclination to portray different personas of ourselves, in an attempt to mask our inherent selves, is a fundamental aspect of our existence or is a behaviour we have acquired with time through interpersonal experiences.

If trying to appear as ‘others’, while narrating through ‘the one that we’re attempting to suppress’ has been woven into the fabric of human existence from the beginning of humanity, then do we ever truly know who we are and are we able to ever get to the core of self-awareness when generation after generation we’ve aimed to appear differently? Are we able to decipher where the boundaries of our identities originate and where the projected personality in various situations stems from? Do we know where these boundaries meet, so we can distinguish between these facades, or do we deceive ourselves while fooling others, forcing us to reside somewhere in between, both physically and within our minds?

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references:

* Madewell, S. (2023). ‘Fool The Eye’, Mildew, Issue 2, pp. 4.

** trompe-l’œil - French phrase meaning ‘deceives the eye’ used to describe paintings that create the illusion of a real object or scene (exact definition from Tate glossary here).

• Oxford Dictionary of English Definition: visual illusion in art, especially as used to trick the eye into perceiving a painted detail as a three-dimensional object.

• Definition of the term in fashion: Trompe l’oeil is an art technique that has been borrowed by fashion, where a designer creates an optical illusion, through a change in perspective, dimension, or placement. From haute couture to the high street’s illusion dresses, this method is a popular way of changing shape or adding layers, belts and collars. It was first popularised by the designer Elsa Schiaparelli in 1927, when she wove a collar into a sweater. (exact definition from Business of Fashion glossary here).