There is no doubt Bjork is a creative individual and loves to express herself through the forms of music, art and fashion. Bjork has such a strong personality and artistic spirit and is really not afraid to show it off to the world. Her album covers are really what caught my attention, it’s almost like she can adapt to different looks in the blink of an eye and isn’t afraid to be noticed for her individuality.

Bjork is a very strong believer of feminism. She is always willing to stand up for women and for their rights and urges everyone to do so. In an interview with Pitchfork.com, she says “I thought, ‘you’re a coward if you don’t stand up. Not for you, but for women. Say something.’” Here, she expresses her strong belief of women being recognised and protected. The subject of feminism is becoming more recognised as something to be worried about. Women want equal pay, equal rights and equal opportunities, but the biggest thing they want is to feel normal. Women are constantly sexualised and objectified to the point where they cannot even feel safe. It should be a normal thing for a woman to do whatever she wishes and not always feel attacked. In another interview with Pitchfork, Bjork explains her views on feminism. She says “After being the only girl in bands for 10 years, I learned – the hard way – that if I was going to get my ideas through, I was going to have to pretend that they – men – had the ideas.” This highlights the fact that some women feel that they need to ‘become a man’ behind a screen in order to be taken seriously. Bjork’s fashion choices have also been far from normal. Her infamous swan dress at the 2001 Academy Awards will always be the highlight of her fashion choices, but she wore it like it was the most normal thing to do.

In the fashion world, the word ‘normal’ doesn’t really have a definition. I know I have already spoken about the normality of Desi fashion but haute couture and high fashion pieces are far from your typical normal. In the fashion industry, all it takes is one small change to a regular piece of clothing to make it different and add a designer’s touch to it, where it be adding a panel to a sleeve, adding extra fabric to the tail of a jacket or disconnecting the layers of a dress. One line in particular which I found was very interesting, and although this seems like old news now, but I still can’t wrap my head around the Kanye West x Adidas Originals line. The way the clothes were modelled had a deep meaning behind them, all models were in tights or a nude piece of clothing paired with West’s creation to show off the piece, rather than pairing it with something that will distract from it. This is actually a really good way of showing of the garments while not distracting from them and creating a very minimal look, but they just looked so strange to me. The female models also had barely to no make up on and were wearing some sort of cap which looks like it was made from the same material as tights, adding to the minimal look. It just proves that this line, along with many others was far from normal. One piece that caught my attention was a jumper with holes in it. 

The jumper legitimately looked like it was left out for a night and was devoured by animals, but Kanye West and Adidas decided to go with it, anyway. This looked really similar to the Chanel hole sweat suit Kim Kardashian sported a while ago in Paris, from the Fall 2014 collection.

 Both were actually very hard to look at and were certainly not normal. But who is to say fashion is normal?

What does it even mean to be normal? The very diverse subject of normality can mean any different things, factors that contribute to this include culture, society, race and even gender. The dictionary definition of ‘normal’ is ‘to conform to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.’ These different factors all have very particular definitions of what it means to be different. Culture, to me, is the biggest contributor to the varied definitions of normality, every culture has its’ own unique way of dressing, language and foods. Sadly, cultures are often Westernised and quite often become something that’s very opposite of said culture’s ‘normal.’ Let’s see for example, the ‘Desi’ culture. For someone to be ‘Desi,’ they must be from the countries of India and Pakistan, but include countries like Bangladesh, Punjab, Sri Lanka and Gujrat. Being ‘Desi’ is more like a lifestyle, our clothing, food, habits and way of living is what makes us different from other cultures, just like Greeks are different from the Chinese and Brazilians are different from Egyptians. The ‘normal’ style of clothing would include outfits like ‘salwar kameez,’ ‘kurta,’ ‘saree’ and ‘lengha’ which have actually started to appear in high street stores this Spring. 

A ‘kurta’ or a ‘kameez’ is a long top with slits in the sides, creating a free flowing silhouette and comes in a variety of colours, prints and lengths. These have recently made a debut in mainstream stores like New Look, River Island and TopShop. 

As a ‘Desi’ person myself, I do find it quite strange seeing this style of kameez in Western stores. I’m so used to going to specialist Desi stores to find a kameez like this but I can literally visit my local high street and find different variations of it. But it isn’t what I’m used to; it’s an altered, Westernised version of what I usually wear. It’s not my normal.