The Psychology behind Your Favourite Colours and Patterns
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Trends come and go; their lifecycle may not always be long, but in some weird way we still remember a good chunk of them. Some we like to keep alive because we like them so much, others we wished never happened. The brain’s main focus in life is to remain stimulated. It likes to keep itself interested by keeping an eye out on things that pop. And when it sees something like a piece of clothing or a certain pattern or colour, it gains familiarity. So the brain creates a link to what it sees often. It creates a liking or a disliking to it. The brain is a map, connecting things to where they need to go; it either puts the familiar stuff it sees in a “like” or “dislike” pile in your head. However, this all depends on one thing: perspective. This is the word that we’re going to focus on today--how the fashion industry creates our perspective and what tends to pop out the most to us.
You Are What You Wear!
If you’ve ever heard that saying before, it is absolutely true. The clothes we wear say a lot about each other, whether it’s to express uniqueness, self-confidence or because we like a certain style or colour. However, there is a large majority of people that seem to stick to the norms that fashion establishes. To explain this we look at Fashion Psychology, an entire field based on, you guessed it, the psychology behind fashion. Surprisingly, this doesn't always refer to clothing, but also makeup, tattoos, room decor and even our cars. Self-identity obviously plays an important role in this type of subject.
But this norm that people like to stick to… what does this mean? Well, it means yes, we do like to self-express, but not so much as to attract too much attention to yourself. The fashion industry has already established these certain norms throughout society and time that shows what is normal/common and what is abnormal/uncommon. So the goal, for most people, is to be unique, but not too unique. We like to improvise every now and then but to the point where it conforms to the social normality.
What Makes Things Pop!
It’s pretty interesting to think that the majority of people want to feel unique but not be too unique. But, within that “uniqueness” there is something else that people like to cling to: perspective. The word mentioned at the very beginning is what matters most to people, in terms of identity and self-expression. Think of your favourite colour of your favourite pattern; why is it your favourite colour? How does it speak to you? What makes it stand out rather than the rest? Can’t exactly think why? Well, most people would say “I just think it looks nice,” or something along those lines. That’s because, unfortunately, there is no real answer to this, except familiarity.
In our childhood, we experience a lot of things, and nine times out of ten, these things shape our perspective of what we like and dislike. For example, maybe you were exposed to a lot of blue colours as a child and because of this, your favourite colour is blue. Have you ever noticed that most people’s favourite colours are blue and green? They also happen to be two of the most common colours out there as well. We attach our fashion with not just expression, but also emotion. If you felt like a certain pattern gives you happiness due to a fond memory, or once again familiarity, you tend to gravitate toward that kind of fashion choice. For example, your mom wore a nice plaid coat when you were younger; now, plaid might remind you of your mother and you’ll probably like and wear that pattern yourself, too.
Self-expression is important to everyone in this day and age. After reading about this, you can either be one of two things: follow the norm or be different. Most people want to be different but in the end, choose to be normal. It all goes back to perspective. Of course, we’re all different; we all look, talk, speak, differently. But when it comes to fashion there’s the box. It confides us. It traps people into thinking their style is different but most of us conform to the norm. Break the box. Be who you wanna be without society having to tell you how to dress. No one can tell you who you get to be, except you.
Nick’s Bio
Nick is a second year professional writing student at algonquin college, hoping to pursue work in either journalism or scriptwriting. Nick hopes to become someone that makes his readers ponder about the many things in which life has to offer. In his down time, you can find him playing on his nintendo switch, organizing his many pokemon cards, or obsessively writing one of his many stories--most notably Radio Heads, a young adult drama about musicians.
