Is Your Style Unique? Find Out Who Else Dresses Just Like You
How do you identify yourself within your social group? Do you identify as part of a specific subculture, are you more mainstream or do you stay in your individuality ?
Since 1994 Dutch photographers Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek have been working on what they call a “work of recognition and confrontation”. Humans, in order to survive, depend on how they coexist with one another. Without social interaction socialization can not take place and without it we are left without knowing how we fit in this world.
Courtesy of Exactitudes
Dress codes are a key part of how we understand who we are, the way we dress forms our identity and helps us connect with people with similar interests. While clothes can help people bond and feel connected they can also exclude, violate and marginalize groups. The Exactitudes project shows how this practice of enforcing and creating dress codes have systematically created various identities within social groups.
How does it work? First we must understand that dress codes come in all forms and serve different purposes, meaning that while this is a fashion project don’t expect Vogue anywhere near it.
Courtesy of Exactitudes
Exactitude is a collection of street style photography where different people are picked out of the streets and placed against a neutral background, with the purpose of showing the similarities between people.
We are presented with a visual representation of what everyday looks and feels like. Here’s where it gets really interesting. If we look closely and analyze each category in which people have been placed in we can see the infinite amounts of categories. This performance of dressing up according to what we like, what we feel is correct, what we feel comfortable in and what we want to show the world tells a story beyond appearance.
Courtesy of Exactitudes
Clothes by themselves are meaningless, but we as a society have placed so much power on them that people categorize each other in their minds according to how they perceive the other's clothing and appearance. Showing that no matter how much effort or intention goes behind an outfit, people's personal experiences and beliefs are what will determine what category they will place you in.
With Exactitude we see how strong dress codes are and how people find solace in dressing certain ways, proving that conformity and individuality can be questioned.
Courtesy of Exactitudes
Check out Exactitude official site to discover how people dress and start questioning how and why these similarities are shared and would any of these people have anything in common beyond style?