Dumpster Diving is a platform where we explore our love (and very often obsession) for culture by questioning and filtering it through a fashion lens.
We dive into a search to prove, clarify, or confine common sense and set ideals to build a deeper awareness of the world in which we live.
Writing for Dumpster Diving is our way of seeking refuge from lucid social structures and global uncertainties. We at Bad Accents profoundly disagree with the inclination of fashion being obsolete or superficial. We find it quite difficult to dismiss the cultural role that fashion plays in shaping identities. Especially when dealing with generations living a condition of fleetingness and struggling to restore to a place of rest.
In such conditions, history has repeatedly shown people’ s tendency to form defence mechanism manifesting either in returning to a nostalgic outlet where things seemed simpler or bet on a future where hypermobility is something to overcome. And while fashion, by definition, is about the present, its creative process either relies on nostalgia or envisions a future to deal with the contemporary.
With this tendency, one would ask if the present has an actual role apart from the moment of purchase and consumption. And more intimate to Bad Accents is to what extent does the fashion system mirror its wearer and vice versa? How much can we learn about the human psyche, constructed identities and society through Fashion?
These are the questions that we are putting forward as premises critical to be explored through the study of fashion as social science, brands as cultural symbols, and consumers as humans.