I'm returned from the highlands, readers, fresh and prepared for life again. It's good to be back; I feel energized and ready to take on projects, so watch this space.
I was featured in the inaugural edition of Qoive, an online fashion magazine, earlier in the week, and it's very humbling to appear alongside other significantly bigger bloggers. I was posed the question, 'how do you describe your style?', and it was actually a very interesting exercise in self analysis. From gender to privilege to your taste in films, I think it's really important to dissect how you relate to the world around you, even if it's only to put the pieces back together, the same as before, safely at the end. I gave the article the following quote about how I relate to the clothes I choose to wear -
"I see my clothing choices as being influenced by the eighties, the early twentieth century, modernism, and futurism, depending on what day of the week it is; a limited colour palette does not equal limited options. It reflects a fierceness within me, whether I’m wearing my grandmother’s pearls or a patch-covered jacket I fished out of a pile in Amsterdam, and a complete rejection of looking passably normal. It’s your mother’s style, but put through a meat grinder."
The way a person dresses and interacts with what they put on their body tells you a lot about them. Black is a blank canvas for me to play my influences and ideas across, wherever that takes me, and clothing - inherited, found, created, destroyed - has served as a means both conscious and unconscious to express alienation from normality. Neil Gaiman, in the wake of Terry Pratchett's passing, posted an old article he wrote about the driving anger behind his fellow author's work, and though it would be egotistical to compare myself to its subject it was intensely relatable; the artist Eliza Gauger describes the key to art making as being a 'berserker state' of compulsive need, and it's this fierce energy that makes me get dressed in the morning. Then, of course, post it online.
I want to know; what makes you dress the way you do? What prompts you to curate your appearance? Please, let me know - I'd be very interested to find out.
Fiona C.
Your reasoning is interesting, I completely agree with dissecting hows you relate to the world, and it's something I find myself doing a lot, so much that I think it's probably a process constantly in motion because it's constantly changing.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think there's no way you can go through life without constantly self analyzing; it's definitely important to do it constantly, too, as you're never the same person you were yesterday - nor is the world the same.
Deletethat was a pretty awesome magazine with some pretty diverse styles. I love the portraits. Whoever was the illustrator did a cool job. what influences my style? Well, I'm an ex-cosplayer and current roleplayer, so I basically love dressing up in costumes. Sadly, I have to tone down my 'true form' for work and social. So 1) crazy concept and 2) tone it down.
ReplyDeleteThey were very good! I like the idea of wearing clothes as costuming - it's not something that I've ever really done, but I appreciate the end results of people who do.
DeleteI am glad to see you featured, because you don't just wear your fashion and claim uniqueness-- in the way you write and curate your looks and inspirations... you are the real deal, the kind of person you'd see passing by the street and take a second glance at. It is creepy what I just said... but I think you're one of the kind of people, other people like people watching for, heh.
ReplyDeleteI think it's been a little over 1 year since I gave my sense fashion any thought... it's weird considering my greatest hobby is sewing garments. Fashion for me these days is conquest. Conquest to see how far I can take my abilities, then if it fits my personality at all. I've already made things I would never actually buy for myself... but I made them just to see if I could with some amount of grace.
Wow, thank you. That's very high praise to me, and I'm touched.
DeleteI think being someone who curates what she wears is definitely at the heart of why I do what I do; I often dress casually (and frequently like a slob when I'm around the house), but I never, ever want to half ass something. Even if my outfit is just jeans and and a jumper, if it doesn't look cohesive I'll feel like I've failed.
I do the same thing with crafts, though I'm not half as good at sewing as you - pushing your sewing as far as you have definitely results in a near limitless range of options to create a wardrobe from. It's almost as though the end product is secondary to the process for you? This prompt is giving such interesting answers!