Fashion: it's all in a word?

I once 'studied fashion', i.e. I spent 3 years part time doing City & Guilds Fashion, which was a lot about designing beginning with source material, pattern cutting and making. I have often wondered why for a long time I felt slightly uneasy about 'confessing' this. It's the word, isn't it? 'Fashion': makes you envisage some kind of airheaded existence, perpetually painting one's nails and obsessing about what colour is 'in' this year. Then there's the other word, fashionABLE' which is assumed by many to be a goal to which most women aspire, and so perhaps it might be thought doubly true of a woman who has studied fashion.

How mistaken! I love cloth, I love clothes, I love deciphering the subtle if limited messages conveyed through language of dress, and yet to be called 'fashionable' would not please me; I'm far too much a stubborn individualist for that, and I suspect that this might be true of your top-flight successful fashion designers. They want to set a trend which is recognisable as their brand, but heaven forbid that they should themselves be thought to follow a trend.

Me, I just like to make some of my stuff in my own sweat-shop for one. So many clothes in the shops make one fit into a boring silhouette, that business suit look, or 'killer heels' and all that goes with that,which is such a pity when there are so many elegant and interesting shapes out there in history and the cultures of the whole world that you can adapt for your own use and which are comfortable and practical. I especially like my Victorian walking skirts, which are from a Folkwear pattern (209). See their brilliant http://www.habithat.co.uk/product_info.php/products_id/5372 (a good site for ordering from in the UK) and the whole range can be seen on the website http://folkwear.com/aboutfolkwear.html.

Oh crikey, there are so many lovely things there! Hats!

But it's all in a name isn't it? Or is it? I sometimes call myself a 'seamstress' when forms ask me what I do, but some who do similar things say they are 'textile artists'. I've toyed with 'textile exegete', but this might not mean something to everyone. Like clothes, titles can say some things about a person, but they most certainly do not say everything.