Book titles
Symbolism and Alegories in Art
Semiotics: The Basics
Experimental Fashion
Norton Anthology of Literary Theory
Rick Owens photography by Danielle Levitt
Margiela: The Womens Collections
Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
Iris Van Herpen: Transforming Fashion
Rick Owens: Legaspi
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personally i think the best analysis is when you can make the creator of the art realize something they did subconsciously.

"That big discourage of falling in a trap of lack of knowledge" hits so hard, i was about to cry hahaha

Dear Bliss,
I just thought I should send you a note to let you know how much I enjoy your blogs.  I love them. However, I am 70 years old and am on a pension.  Some months I don't have enough to eat.  I don't have enough to buy cheap discount plain clothes never mind designer clothes.  I do sew.  THANK YOU FOR YOUR BLOGS

Man I dont know how amyone could not pay attention to this. My eyes wete glued to the screen the whole time i was watching. This video was probably the best fashion video i have ever seen.

incredibly underrated video. gonna be revisiting this for years, thank u

most of this can legit be rephrased into life advice lol

My favorite Art History professor makes us pick a painting at the very beginning of the term before we've even gotten into any content. A lot of other students hate it, but I love it so much. One of the best papers I wrote was in a class I went in already hating (Impressionism) with an artist I thought was pretty boring (Degas) but through the course of the 15 weeks I spent getting elbow deep into everything, I churned out a very relevant and incredible paper. (Ok, ok, it was titled, "Degas: Making Art Among and for the New Bourgeois".) I am positive that when I finish school, I could go back and read that and find that it's absolute garbage, but it was important when I wrote it. As you said, we are constantly evolving, honing, sharpening, softening, expanding, contracting, and overall learning new ways of seeing, our critiques must remain just as fluid and never settle too long in one place.

And also: no one can tell you your critique is wrong because it's all subjective bullshit.  Unless you're bungling a purely formal concept, it's pretty difficult to screw it up, if you're hitting the right spots for your intended audience.

Historically I have a habit of going too hard, not being able to sustain the Herculean effort, giving up and hating myself. So now I’m trying to give a small, consistent mediocre effort everyday. It sounds stupidly simple but its crazy how it adds up.

I had to overhaul how I approached taking care of my brain (exercise, journaling, studying etc) by practising mediocre consistency. Now I try to put in consistent 40-60% effort into my journaling habit - to make sure I do it I began recording it and posting it on my yt channel. After a really bad depression phase small efforts everyday, is how i got out of it.

Now as I explore my interests (like fashion) I’m realizing this is the way I have to approach it. It’s funny because a few years ago even your channel would have felt too intimidating because you just have so much knowledge. But now I’m excited.

Something that I think is very useful to keep in mind about analysis is that, your analysis and the meaning you glean from a piece does not necessarily have to have been the artist's intention. Like you said, your unique experience is the most valuable thing. All art, literature, fashion, film, is a dialogue. As soon as someone looks at a piece of art, that art gains an entirely new meaning unique to the person taking it in. When you are analyzing something, there isn't ever necessarily a "wrong" way to do it. If the artist intended one thing, but it means something different to you, that is completely valid and worthwhile, because it MEANS something TO YOU. That's the whole function of art, is to express meaning in different ways. Sometimes, when i really like a piece of art, like a movie or a song, but have dubious feelings about the creator of that art i deliberately analyze it in a way that I know that the creator would hate, but as long as that analysis is backed up with solid evidence about what you see in the piece then it is still a good analysis!

I love how you foster us all to broaden our perspective by sharing your ‘findings’ and then proceed to provide us advice on how to discover our own new ‘findings’ further evolving the global perspective.  Full circle.

Answering to your question, I myself have to do a lot of analysis in school, most of the time german lyric, and what I figured out is that if you want to fully understand it, you have to read it again and again, make notes of what you felt, ask other people what they feel when they read it, take your time and in the end try to understand how the author makes us feel like this and why he wants us to feel like this.

So, I studied music in high school but now am a final year medical student. It's kind insane how the artistic form of analysis and the scientific for sort of meld together when I look at fashion. Its like the science is very much there in the make, shape, cut, fabric, silhouette etc but when it comes to the colour story, references, history, personality, themes and motifs, my musician side takes over

I have put off writing an essay for class and something in this video is helping me breakdown my own anxieties and fastidiousness. So thank you Bliss!

I’m on my third year of journalism and i’m also a fashion blogger since last year, but a fashion enthusiast my whole life lol. I found that knowledge i got from my studies, the ones needed in getting to the truth of the matter and finding out the “5 W’s” really helped me in analyzing fashion and the industry in general. I like to approach fashion in a very philosophical and cerebral way because i think, in essence, fashion is something we all agreed upon since no one is walking out there naked in the streets. I think one can approach fashion (and art) in a way where he can connect the dots in how it affects society and the planet at large, and how it can also be a medium for politics, social change and much more.

Hello, for me, analysis is a curious and conscious way of processing life. First, I follow my intuition to respond to the question: What is the very human experience in this thing? And then I can research the author. I try to know them by research but also by making comparisons with my personal life to really learn (not only understand, but uncover) the way that the creator interprets a specific experience. And finally, when I have a broad vision of this, I ask myself in what way has this thing changed me. I love to think that we live in a constant tension between what is simple and profound. So following this line, maybe it's not about bringing to the light all the responses that the creation itself tries to hide. What I mean is that analysis is about translating the mysteries that impacted deeply in the mind of a creator.

Hey! I have been independently studying art history / contemporary art for about a year and a half and I thought all of these tips are great. Your first point about spending a lot of time with what you're analyzing is so true: both with individual pieces and with the medium as a whole. I find painting to be like it's own language. I started knowing nothing at all about how to approach an abstract painting, but the more time I spend with painting in general, and the more time I spend with abstract paintings specifically, the more I can start to decipher the language. I would also like to point out something you seemed to be thinking about but never explicitly said: in art, it's super important to explore lots of different kinds of art. For example, though I mostly study contemporary art, I also have to do research into literature, poetry, film, music, etc. to understand the context a piece of visual art was made in, thereby allowing me to understand references, influences, etc. and analyze the piece more fully. That's actually why I started watching your, and other fashion, videos. Though I already love fashion, I have decided to take a closer and more studious approach to it lately, it order to broaden my understanding of the contemporary art world and inform my thoughts on artists influenced by fashion. I thought of this when you started talking about certain pieces being references to movies. Great video, and keep up the good work! I love the content you put out.

to me, and this is part of why I was so happy to see you reviewing Margiela's 1997 collections, it has always helped to think about the process of creation of the art itself. we have a tendency to take things as they come and not really wonder about HOW they were made in art. A question that has helped me countless times is "why is this here?". if the artist made the conscious decision to include anything, even the smallest of things, it's because it meant/represented something to him. i don't know if it sounds silly and whatnot but when analysing Basquiat's work (my favorite artist ever) this was crucial to the process. pardon me for any mistakes, non-native speaker from Brazil here

I am SO SAD i didn't watch your channel like 8 years ago when I was on the fence about getting into fashion, art, and all sorts of visual mediums and research as a whole.

Today, youtube blessed me with one of your videos on my recommended page- as I have slowly started branching out into the research topics i was passionate about in the past, trying to rekindle my interest in them... Since in junior high/highschool nobody at all was on the same level I was it was extremely hard trying to maintain those interests back then.

In the 3 videos ive seen so far, you have not only inspired me, but also started this whole like rabbit hole of thoughts of "Wow someone else out there sees all of this the same way i used to".

My areas of interest are specifically with the fashion, subcultures, and history of anything alternative. Not only in America, but also UK and Japan. It's been a slow process because i haven't found a way to refine all of the things i love. I draw, i dress, play video games, sew, research, research even more till its 4 in the morning and my heads spinning unable to sleep from being too excited at learning and gaining all this knowledge.... and frankly, most of it feels lost or underappreciated (by others and myself sometimes). I go through phases where i want to do all of it, or none of it, or times where people ARE supporting me in my endeavors and really want to see me thrive but for some reason I can't muster up the energy and confidence.

But perhaps that's what you meant about the "10 years ago, i couldn't have done this- other people are doing 'better' than me and thats okay". Just gotta give myself more credit and be thankful of the things i HAVE done i suppose 😁

I love the dark souls metaphor because my partner used to tell me to face every challenge as if I'm just  playing dark souls lol. But anyways, I really love this video because it validates research as a real form of labor. I've seen a few people in archivist/fashion circles lately point out that people always tell them they "don't do anything" despite these people doing literally hours of research learning about fashion and curating their wardrobes.