Clothing as Mirror, as Myth, as Alchemy

Clothing as Mirror, as Myth, as Alchemy

Shadow into Gold: Fashion Seen Through Jung's Lens

A conversation between Tal Waksal & Dr.Florentin

Fashion has always been more than fabric. It is a mirror of the psyche. A stage where archetypes play out, where the unconscious takes form in cut, color, and silhouette. In a recent conversation with Dr. Florentin, I found us asking: what happens when we look at fashion through the Jungian lens? What symbols are speaking through our clothes?

We began with the figure of the outcast. Watching Wednesday, I couldn't stop thinking about her role as a woman. She isn't written as an ideal or a cliché, but as someone who lives at the edge — carrying the shadow, and with it, the possibility of turning darkness into gold.

 

Jung would say this is the archetypal work: to embrace the shadow and allow it to transform us. The feminine here is not one- dimensional but oceanic, as vast as the night sky where mystery lies and new life begins. Birth and rebirth. Creation through darkness.

The number three returns again and again in these archetypes. Witches come in threes. The Fates spin their threads in threes. Faith itself often arrives in three.

Three is the first stable structure: a triangle that can stand on its own. It carries movement, emergence, the beginning of form. Four, in Jung's terms, is balance and completion, the square that holds steady. But three is where energy sparks into structure, where becoming begins.

This is the space All Three inhabits. The name itself was born from this tension. The triad before the square, the structure that is not fixed but fluid.

It is the rhythm of something raw meeting something refined, undone on purpose.

To exist in three is to honor process, emergence, and the beauty of what has not yet resolved but stable.

And maybe this is what fashion offers us at its deepest: not mere surface, but a spiritual language. Every piece we put on can be an invocation of archetype, of shadow, of light. To dress is to participate in ritual. To layer is to tell a story of emergence. To choose the raw edge is to declare that becoming is more vital than perfection.

What if fashion is not only about how we are seen, but how we meet our own psyche? What if every hem, every loop, every unfinished edge is a whisper from the unconscious, guiding us toward who we are becoming?

This is the reflection that stays with me: clothing as mirror, as myth, as alchemy. The act of getting dressed as shadow turning into gold.


Wishing you a month of your own magic.
In your own skin.

Love and Light,

Tal Waksal, Founder of All Three

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