taxonomies are taxing

the assignment for today is to create a taxonomy for clothing. taxonomy, "division into ordered groups or categories." clothing, yet a gazillion ways to organise, to filter, to evaluate, to shape. an exercise so simple a middle-schooler can do it, yet the breadth of complexity ends up snowballing with each thick and sticky layer of culture, identity, and gender.

i found some highly amusing references on the web when i googled 'clothing taxonomy.'

my favorites:

• tikaro's a taxonomy of boxy clothes features a detailed little venn diagram focused on skater punk (fred perry), british working class (ben sherman), and west coast hot rod (chochie casuals). i like how 'your uncle in the merchant marine' is diametrically opposed to 'avril lavigne.'
  
• every category of goth you ever dreamed of is at corpgoth to perkygoth on gothicunity. i feel most closely tied to the noodlegoth--those on the ramen/macaroni/spaghetti/pasta budget. don't forget the udon and the thai kitchen pad thai.
• joho writes about ("taxonomy and tags") how tagging has dramatically killed the conventional rules of taxonomy. take that, aristotle. but seriously, every item can now have an infinite number of definitions and categorizations, which is great, but how can one standardise which tags are more definitive and which are more frivolous?
  

okay, so back to what i'm thinking, which is everything and nothing at the same time. my first gut instinct was to plot out the x most influential designers (everything from yohji yamamoto to coco chanel) and then trickle down who has inspired who and pretty much link someone like yves saint laurent with a ponytail scrunchie. but i dont have an enormous amount of knowledge about fashion names and history. the book 100 fashion designers, 010 curators, looks like it might be useful in this particular regard. this taxonomy system would not only take care of the actual garments and their sources but also the names and general history that shaped these visions.

another thought is one of purely visual language. the language of silhouette, shaping to (or from) the human body. this one has lots of degrees of freedom--neckline, hemlengths, form-fitting or draping. i might go with this, though it's a design exercise on how to lay them out in a coherent, relating way. however, this is a minimal sort of taxonomy that throws things like context and connotation out of the window. but perhaps it will infer them through the visual spectrum. we will have to see.

and then i just brainstormed a bunch on other sorts of slants i could think about clothing. one strong spectrum was along the lines of protection vs. vulnerability, which types of clothing shield and which reveal. another is handmade vs. machinemade--industrial forms. attraction vs. deflection, inner vs. outer enforcement (expression vs. conformity), preciousness vs. commodity, physical restraint vs. freedom, ergonomic vs. generic form, etc. argh argh argh.

i'm going to try with the visual one and see how that takes. i'm, more than anything, curious about what people will bring to the table tonight.