Interview with Todd Thefashioniste of TheFashioniste.com

This week FashionZest interviewed Todd, who is the creator of the successful fashion blog TheFashioniste.com. We got to learn more about him and his blog.

Jenny: Let’s start by hearing a little about yourself… who is Todd?
Todd: Todd is the curator and editor of TheFashioniste.com, which is an online museum of Fashion, Art, and Literature, aimed at showing how similar definitions of beauty and style have appeared throughout the centuries, and right up to today. The site presents unique sets of parallels that it refers to as “style-alikes,” which are pairs or groups of images and/or insights in which the vision of two or more designers, artists, or thinkers share an uncanny similarity. By “uncanny,” I mean that these connections point to a certain subconscious tradition of creativity, a sort of “creative subconscious” that I think is shared by the most inventive and influential people working in those realms. That may sound quite heavy, but the site exists for no reason but to inspire, and it is filled with gorgeous pictures, thought-provoking quotations, and surprising facts, which are all arranged with that goal in mind!

Jenny: What led you to write about / be involved in the fashion industry?
Todd: My formal background is actually in language and literature, and although some people think of classical (as in, let’s say, pre-1950) literature as not having much relevance to their day-to-day lives, the fact is that there is a very long and rich history of poetry, myths, novels, and stories that overflow with ecstatic praise for female beauty–and of so many kinds–and that expression has been rightly identified as love, a phenomenon that people are still experiencing today, and which most of us spend a lot of time thinking about, talking about, and working for, in whatever sense you can imagine.
In my college thesis as an English major, I collected various beauty-related quotations from dozens of great authors and philosophers, in order to show how these profound minds had certainly not been impervious or indifferent to the power of physical beauty, and that their enthusiasm for it articulates and reflects the way that so many of those who are in love feel right now (and those quotations can be found throughout my site, especially in the updates categorized as “Literary Stuff”). The Muse, or muses, hailed by so many poets are an undeniable testament to that, and those who work in the now $300-billion-a-year fashion industry are the ones who define female “beauty,” which is still intended to have that same overwhelming effect on everyone who sees it.
When a designer’s pencil is making an initial sketch, or a makeup artist’s pencil is extending an eyebrow just one more tiny bit before the model steps onto the runway or poses for the camera, both are defining our very conception of beauty in one way (namely, fashion), just as a painter’s brush or a poet’s pen define it in another way (namely, art and literature)–and all of these different individuals contribute to how we perceive, understand, and talk about beauty in society. So, you could say this is truly a site to behold [laughs].
And classical art (again, let’s say, pre-1950) indeed fits in with all of this: classical portrait paintings of women, almost all painted by men who were enthralled by the beauty of their subjects, are analogous to the romantic love poems that were inspired by, and which feature, and were written for women who were personally known to the poets in real life. As for the link to fashion, to bring this all together, it is not surprising that many of the most successful designers working today, like Galliano, Gaultier, McQueen, and Lacroix, study and reference these portraits–which are almost always of queens and princesses–in the looks and dresses that they design. And what I would like to be is the “historian of style” who shows just how! Thus, with the advent of the Web, and the subsequent ease with which these connections can be seen and made between fashion, art, and literature, I just had to create this site and start presenting these discoveries to the world!

Jenny: So what is The Fashioniste all about?
Todd: The Fashioniste’s Mission Statement sums it up in a few lines, namely:
“Building a Bridge from High Fashion to the Works of Great Artists and Authors,
Renewing the Meaning of Culture and Contemporizing the Classical Spirit,
And Proving that Beauty and Genius are Two Sides of the Same Coin.”
It uses contemporary fashion as the starting point for an exploration of style in multiple forms, and is ultimately intent on showing that classical art and literature are just as timely and relevant to our lives as are television, film, and, yes, modern fashion! [laughs.] Just as the World Web Wide has been called “the information superhighway,” the bridge that is being built by this site is what The Fashioniste refers to as “The Culture Superhighway.”
I want to create a path along which all people are encouraged to cultivate their individuality as much as they please, and, in seeing so many definitions of beauty and style, people will be introduced to many definitions they probably have never seen before! Thus, the Fashioniste aims at paving the Culture Superhighway through the age of information. Data, or information, is what is stored on and provided by computers, but culture is what makes humans human, and all cultures have very specific and complex rules about beauty and fashion, though it is the breaking or bending of those rules that constitutes uniqueness, which is what we call “style,” and the style becomes fashion when it is copied by enough people, which, of course, happens all the time.

Jenny: How did The Fashioniste start?
Todd: I would say I have an actual “addiction” to learning, and the vast range of research than can be done online makes the hours go by very quickly for someone like me, or should I say someone with a “habit” like mine [laughs]. So, in addition to the stacks of bookmarked and self-annotated books I have in my home, there are also the many bookmarked and self-annotated websites and webpages, folders of images yet to be posted, lists of links and copied and pasted material that I learn from as well–and even this very concept behind the site is an amalgamation of ideas from authors I have read (and I name those authors and their books in the site’s defining essay, titled “Introducing The Culture Superhighway”).
It is funny to consider that the word “multitasking” was coined in reference to computers, not people, yet when someone has this kind of restless, multimedia, encyclopedic appetite that I have, that’s really the only feasible way to live [laughs]. And my site is the materialized result of all that time: it consists of exactly the stuff I most often search for and save when I use the Web. Therefore, with the mission to find more and more “style-alikes” to illustrate these ideas and to build this multi-directional bridge, the words “link” and “connection” take on an obvious double meaning.
In more basic terms, I started the site because I had been saving certain images into folders, and certain pieces of text into Microsoft Word documents, and I soon realized that I wanted to share that selected content with an audience, and present each collection of pictures and text in its own distinct format, rather than using a consistent pre-made layout. I would also like to make it clear that the site is a personal, non-commercial, academic research site, and as such, it contains no advertising. But if you happen to buy an outfit, a picture, or a book because of something you saw on the site, great!

Jenny: What current fashion trends do you like and dislike the most at the moment?
Todd: [Laughs] It’s funny you should ask that, because I actually did a whole update that was about the very notion of passing judgment on someone else’s taste, and I quoted various designers and models who have been asked that question (and compiled those answers in the update titled “A Fashion Policeman? No Way!”). I do not seek to be an arbiter of style, imposing an authoritative viewpoint, but rather a historian of style, making connections between the past and present, and between one medium and another. The site is thus intended as a resource of knowledge and a source of inspiration; I want to inspire people to express themselves more fully, in whatever form they choose, and to know, as the German writer Goethe (pronounced “Gurtah”) said, that “Personality is everything in art and poetry,” and that “Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.”

Jenny: And finally… as the creator of The Fashioniste, where do you see the site in 5 years time?
Todd: I see myself as having posted hundreds more pairs and groups of style-alikes, and as having introduced these connections–and the overarching concept–to many more people all over the world. I maintain that if more people got to see what has been done by the greatest minds in fashion, art, and literature (and there are so many, from all different nations and time-periods!), then those people will be able to develop their own individuality more highly, more distinctly, and, I believe, more enjoyably. But there has to be someone responsible for introducing and identifying those works to them–and who will provide that service without any objective other than the love of learning and the appreciation of art, beauty, and culture. And that is exactly what I am striving to do.
So if you go to my site and decide that you would like to be notified when the next update is posted, just send a request to one of my profiles (MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter), which is where I announce every update! I am always trying to do something fresh, different, and not merely informative, but inspirational and yes, educational — and I really hope you enjoy it!

Take a look at the The Fashioniste – www.thefashioniste.com – and see what it’s all about!