This post elaborates on the eighth of ten elements of my fashion philosophy, which is if I were caught on security camera, there’d be no trouble describing me.

Symmetry is generally considered beauty in human eyes, spanning time, age, culture, pretty much everything. Whether it is in geometry, nature or our faces and bodies, we like geometry. Not surprisingly, we also like it in our fashion. If our faces and bodies were symmetric, why wear clothes that are asymmetric and skew that beauty?

To make things interesting… that’s why!

There is a lot of beauty that can be found in asymmetry. Most of it is designed, though, rather than accidental. Accidental asymmetry tends to be viewed as mistakes or imperfections, whereas designed asymmetry at least has a chance at being perceived as beautiful. Think snail shell designed asymmetry versus one eye being bigger than the other on a face.

With the world mostly designing on and wearing symmetry, I’m going to make an effort to design and make a lot of asymmetric fashion. Not everything I do will be asymmetric, but it’s going to be like a trademark throughout my designs. That’s why I have designed and named my “line” Asymmetrix. It’s just for the fun of things as it’s not like I have a business or fashion line. There is a slight asymmetry to the pieces, as well as the colour asymmetry that is forced since you can’t have colour symmetry in this unless it were all the same colour (rotational symmetry). The symbol represents some of the points discussed below on how I will incorporate asymmetry into my designs.

I plan to incorporate asymmetry into my designs in many ways:

• Some of them will be more obvious than others, like off centre garment cuts and colour blocking with it.
• Other times, it will be obvious, but work in conjunction with symmetry. An example would be a symmetric cut with one side one colour and the other side another colour. Or a three piece symmetric cut (think princess seam top) with three colours instead of one on the outside and a second on the inside. That will also get me using my three colour combinations of which I am highly fond.
• Other times,  still, it will be rather subtle like a print deliberately cut so certain parts are on one side and certain parts on the other. Or maybe all the parts would point the same way so the images are not mirroring one another. I’m not talking about general prints where one cannot obviously mirror them if they tried, but rather distinct prints. Maybe if I said putting on appliques in offset locations, you’d get a better idea. I’ll do that, too.
• Having pictures, or huge bold images, be they print or applique, will pretty much ensure asymmetry. I love such fabrics and designs and will be doing my fair share of them.

Whether someone will like it or not, they’ll pretty much notice the garment for being asymmetric if it’s the least bit obvious. It’ll be memorable to them, making easy to describe, whether seen in person or on security camera. 🙂