Throughout 2014 the National Portrait Gallery will be hosting a series called Flights of Fashion. Based on the highly successful 2013 Centenary-based series, this year’s series has six speakers scheduled throughout the year, exploring topics that will delight fashion and art lovers alike.

Flights of Fashion will explore the ways that portraiture can come to life. I admit I had never considered the element of fashion in portraiture – with today’s selfie-obsessed culture, what we choose to wear in our self portraits seems to come second to finding the best lighting and filtering the image to be the most flattering. But years from now, it will not be how we have manipulated the image that we will focus on; I imagine it will be the items we were wearing and the memories they invoke.

Portraiture conveys so much about the subject – it is an expression of an individual’s personal identity, and this is created by all aspects: the expression we wear, the posture we take, and the way we adorn ourselves. Similarly, the way we present ourselves each day, and (in our online lives, the way we edit what we present about ourselves), conveys a message. When we dress each day, our presentation tells the world something about us.

Today, as I type, I am wearing a black sass and bide t-shirt that features white paint splats and some gemstones, bright yellow jeans with an old – hang on, make that vintage – tan belt, and cream havianas. My hair is out and simply blow dried and my makeup is basic.

I didn’t (consciously) think about the message I would convey to the world when I dressed this morning – my focus was on comfort and functionality (hence the belt – in my mind a gaping waist line is unforgivable, no one wants to see that as I run around doing Saturday errands) – yet to some my clothes might be…well…a little left of centre? Would I normally capture this image and post it to the world? Probably not. Will I capture images at a friend’s party tomorrow and share those with the world (once they have been appropriately edited and filtered)? It’s a certainty.

The first event in the Flights of Fashions series has me particularly excited! On Saturday 22 February, renowned Australian milliner Neil Grigg will be presenting a season entitled Bonnets to Beanies, followed by a masterclass in which you can make your own fascinator! A future post will outline this event further, but I am fit to bursting and couldn’t keep it in – pencil it in your diaries!

 What are you wearing today, and what did you want it to say about you?