DISSERTATION

At university, we're currently in preparation for writing our 3rd year dissertations. I honestly had no idea what I wanted to write about until about an hour ago whilst having an argument with my dad about the level of pride and vanity a general human being can allow themselves in order to succeed. I was telling my dad about how the motivational lecturer we had in class had said; "Do not seek praise, seek criticism".
At first, I completely disagreed with this theory. I believe that, as much as we can't help it, we put the most effort into things when we feel like there will be appreciation for it at the end of the line. When I say appreciation, I mean encouragement and yes, praise too. I do not believe that you go into a situation with the thought; "Ok, I'm going to try my very hardest so that I can hear those people tell me what I could have done better, or differently". I do agree that constructive criticism is healthy and helpful. How can you progress without making mistakes and learning from them? Though, I do firmly feel that as human beings, having a natural sense of pride and vanity, we put extra effort and energy into things hoping for recognition and approval.

So, with this in my mind, I have decided to write my dissertation on the effect of self-indulgence on fashion consciousness. What I mean by this is how vanity and narcissism effect the way we style ourselves. There is always going to be the long standing debate about originality; are those people who dress a certain way really doing it just because 'they felt like it'? Can we really just dress for ourselves? Just for comfort?
I know that I'm a victim. I've gone into uni multiple times and said to people "Oh I couldn't be bothered to make an effort today, so I just pulled on some jeans and a t-shirt" - though in reality I actually saw a picture of Rachel Bilson in Grazia magazine a few weeks ago wearing something similar and she looked really great.
I also know that when I see clothes in a magazine that are imitations of the dresses Sienna Miller wore out in Paris last week, I make a conscious decision on whether or not I want to buy them because Sienna wore them, ergo they're nice, or if I want to completely avoid them because then I am deemed 'unoriginal'.

I read a statistic once about the reasons women dress in certain ways. A percentage of women dress to impress other women; this, I suppose, stems from the need to feel superior to others, craving the envy and jealousy of other women. Another percentage of women dress the way they think men see them; they buy the clothes they do because they think a man will find them attractive in those clothes thus finding the garment attractive themselves. The last percentage of women dress the way they want and as long as they're happy and comfortable, that's all that matters.
I don't know what category I fall into, most probably a bit of all three. I do know that I would like to find out  the driving force behind  fashion consciousness. Are we essentially all just out to impress? Do people genuinely not give a fuck about what other people think of them or their clothes? Does our natural need for appraisal correlate with the clothes we wear?