Chip and Dan Heath, authors of New York Times bestseller “Made to Stick,” open chapter 3 of their book citing Aesop’s “The Fox and the Grapes” as a brilliant example of using concrete language. Aesop uses concrete imagery (sour grapes) to get his moral to stick in readers’ minds. The authors go on to explain how our cognitive development stimulates memory function making some things more memorable than others. 

Fashion writing uses imagery in almost every way. From describing the clothes that models wear down the seasonal runways to writing about the latest trend in accessories, fashion writers must create vivid pictures in readers’ minds using words. Certain fashion writers use language that is appropriate for any audience. Others choose language that only a small percentage of fashion-obsessed people will understand. Using this type of language can confuse even a fashion enthusiast, such as myself. Case in point: Sarah Mower, fashion writer for Vogue. 

In her most recent article (”Drop Everything,” June 2008), when talking about all the baggy-pant styles seen on the fall 2008 runways, Mower says, “You won’t catch me in any bifurcated mutation of a genie-clown-dhoti this summer, and I don’t plan to be the first to jump into banana-shaped pants circa 1985 this fall.” If I knew the words that played into this imagery this sentence would probably stick in my mind, but by using unfamiliar words most of Mower’s readers are probably left wondering what she meant. 

In the same article, Mower used imagery that created vivid pictures in my head of the pants coming down last spring’s runways. She writes, “It first started rearing up at 3.1 Phillip Lim, where a pair of cropped silk pants opened the show. It slouched on in wide-leg, baglike, hippie forms at Nicole Farhi and as a slimmer tailored pant…at Gucci.” With this imagery Mower uses here, I don’t even need to see a picture to imagine the pants that were shown at both 3.1 Phillip Lim’s and Gucci’s shows. I think she describes the styles in a way that even people uninterested in fashion could visualize. 

Fashion writing is difficult, no doubt. When writers can create imagery that appeals to a broader audience without compromising the effectiveness of their descriptions, they have succeeded. 

On a side note, Mower helped in creating one of my favorite books of all time, Stylist: the Interpreters of Fashion. The book highlights some of fashion’s most creative people. I featured the coffee-table sized book in a December book review for the Oregon Daily Emerald.