On the right side of this site you’ll find a link to Scott Schuman, who is the Sartorialist, a blog portraying his views on todays fashion by taking pictures of people actually wearing it on the street. A site that only defines people by the way they dress.
Would it be a crude assumption to state that people can completely be defined by the way they dress? I’m not sure. Ofcourse, when people do not buy their own clothes this is not a valid statement. But for the rest of them, isn’t it the statement? People pick their clothes to present themselves towards others, to give others an idea of who they are. It’s most probably the most honest display of their personality you’re going to get, even more so upon meeting for the first time. I’m not trying to make a plea for a certain kind of clothing, fashion vs non-fashion or anything, just that you are what you wear.
On some lazy day, wearing your trainers and not having done any grooming, can you actually deny that’s who you are? But the same goes for the nights you go out partying, so I would advise against reading too much into one look. But every look is one side of the personality and you should be able to tell a lot by it. So it’s not that people are not defined by clothes, they define themselves through wearing them.
Ofcourse there’s always people that tell us they don’t care about their clothes, they make the rest of us think: ‘And boy, do you look the part.’