Another boring Text
A draft about a draft about black clothing or something
I once again have run out of fruit - this time, fruits of the mind. (To get the reference, go check my earlier posts.)
Well I have to admit, the high frequency of output I initially had on this publication, is getting hard to keep up with. Especially when it’s not the only area where my mental energy is needed.
So the best I could come up with recently (and mind you, that took me weeks) is:
„Why do Fashion Professionals almost always wear black on set“
Yea, I know… who tf cares.
While the draft did not turn out to be the innovative thought experiment I was hoping for, it did contain some good lines, like:
You can often spot the first-time assistant immediately: styled, deliberate, aspirational and entirely impractical, radiating the quiet optimism of someone who has not yet carried garment bags up four flights of stairs or spent sixteen hours standing on concrete in the rain.
Fashion production is an exercise in attention management. The work depends on a constant choreography of being close enough to intervene but distant enough not to interfere. Because the job of the professional — more often than not — is to make something else visually pleasing.
Sometimes it’s dismissed as a lack of imagination, as if the absence of visible expression were the same as the absence of taste. But disappearance can be a professional skill.
In an industry obsessed with recognition, choosing not to occupy visual space when you easily could is not submission. It is a decision about where attention should land — and where it should not.
Once you notice this logic, you start seeing it elsewhere: in kitchens, in museums, in concert halls. Professions built around a shift of focus, often dress for absence. The louder the output, the quieter the operator.
We live in a culture that treats visibility as currency, where being seen is framed as success and disappearance as wasted potential. Fashion in a way contradicts this. Here, disappearance can be productive. It allows the work to exist without interference, without ego, without distraction.
So, while I’m at it, I will also share with you my personal highlight of the text, which would have been the title:
“Dressed to Disappear — Has someone seen the Stylist?”
And that about sums up the two pages of the otherwise bland elaborations on the topic, that I would have almost put you through (given anyone would have even read it).
But listen, that was not the end of it.
While I was busy trying to force the „wearing black on set“ idea into something interesting, this theoretical gem of an observation entered the mental chat:
The “phone-covering-face-selfie”, in a sense, functions like black clothing on set. It allows participation without exposure.
Oh yes. I went there.
And it would have sounded a little like this:
A similar logic shows up in how people use their phones now, especially when taking photos of themselves. The phone becomes a shield as much as a tool. Hiding behind it shifts the focus away from the face and onto the act of framing (something I am very guilty of myself).
You are no longer asking whether you look good; you are asking whether the image works. The anxiety moves from appearance to composition. It’s a small disappearance, but an effective one.
By partially removing yourself from the picture, you regain control over it. Attention is redirected.
Not a terrible observation but yet, when I reread it, something bothered me.
It felt correct, but not alive. Too polished. Too detached.
I keep having to remind myself that ideas don’t operate on deadlines (neither internal nor external). Especially not the interesting ones. Some hit you fully formed. Others pace around for weeks, refusing to crystallise. They demand to be noticed a few more times before they agree to become a thought.
But perhaps when it comes to writing, the less of an “idea” one has, the more interesting it becomes to read. So instead of forcing a clean theory out of something, I decided to simply share the unfinished version of whatever this is.
Some thoughts demand to be worn a few more times before they make sense.
Preferably in black.