FASHION (TURN TO THE LEFT)
Since I've been living in the backwoods for the last few months, I have found myself becoming more and more inspired by nature and organic processes. Alas, as most of you know, I am never satisfied... particularly in a social and/or cultural context. This is the ever-present challenge. I constantly long for the big city life with it's hard edges and man-made dirt and hypocritical nature. I need its clean lines, its inhabitants' ego-driven desire for self-expression, and the general young adult conception that we all will stop at nothing to be accepted for who we are. I NEED FASHION, BABY.
For a while now, I have been functioning in two very different M.O. The cravings for each extreme have, over time, shed light on my nature and approach to living and atmosphere. I am an extremist in a very catagorized way. I want to have my cake and eat it too, but I want my cake totally seperate from my eating it, and I want to have excessive banter, hyper-analyzing the effect of having to eating, and eating to having but only in the moment of the effect. This, in turn, exacerbates the destructive elements in this relationship and disolves any opportunity for cohesion betwixt the two possibilities. Therefore, when I am in a beautiful natural environment and it is brutally interrupted by a sad baggy sweatshirt, carpenter jean shorts, and the generally unfortunate scrunchie, I can't help but cringe a little bit. Some may say that this is a (rather shallow) sacrifice one must make when relocated to such far reaches of the galaxy. My stance remains contrary, though, to this somewhat newly antiquated way of thought. Is the desire to find inspiration in other's visual creative force really so dim? Is it so wrong to want to explore and share your own creative ideas via color, image and harmonious combination? Why is this enjoyable phenomenon seemingly quarantined to a social few when there are so many people that have so many ideas about themselves and how they fit into the world?
Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion on where and when fashion and style occur but I do think there is a stigma aligned with an atmosphere where one is assessed by what is on their back rather than what is coming out of their mouth. Who says which is more of a valuable tool to assess one's character? In my humble opinion, talk can be just as obviously cheap as a bad knock-off bag. I take umbrage with the fact that in some circles the style-coordinated, creative and fashion-ABLE are often deemed pretentious, attention-hungry and vacant. I think for me, the whole thing is more about a comfort in expressing one's self. Self-expression stems way beyond language and can actually attract people to one another! Why would one deny that opportunity?
Since I've been living in the backwoods for the last few months, I have found myself becoming more and more inspired by nature and organic processes. Alas, as most of you know, I am never satisfied... particularly in a social and/or cultural context. This is the ever-present challenge. I constantly long for the big city life with it's hard edges and man-made dirt and hypocritical nature. I need its clean lines, its inhabitants' ego-driven desire for self-expression, and the general young adult conception that we all will stop at nothing to be accepted for who we are. I NEED FASHION, BABY.
For a while now, I have been functioning in two very different M.O. The cravings for each extreme have, over time, shed light on my nature and approach to living and atmosphere. I am an extremist in a very catagorized way. I want to have my cake and eat it too, but I want my cake totally seperate from my eating it, and I want to have excessive banter, hyper-analyzing the effect of having to eating, and eating to having but only in the moment of the effect. This, in turn, exacerbates the destructive elements in this relationship and disolves any opportunity for cohesion betwixt the two possibilities. Therefore, when I am in a beautiful natural environment and it is brutally interrupted by a sad baggy sweatshirt, carpenter jean shorts, and the generally unfortunate scrunchie, I can't help but cringe a little bit. Some may say that this is a (rather shallow) sacrifice one must make when relocated to such far reaches of the galaxy. My stance remains contrary, though, to this somewhat newly antiquated way of thought. Is the desire to find inspiration in other's visual creative force really so dim? Is it so wrong to want to explore and share your own creative ideas via color, image and harmonious combination? Why is this enjoyable phenomenon seemingly quarantined to a social few when there are so many people that have so many ideas about themselves and how they fit into the world?
Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion on where and when fashion and style occur but I do think there is a stigma aligned with an atmosphere where one is assessed by what is on their back rather than what is coming out of their mouth. Who says which is more of a valuable tool to assess one's character? In my humble opinion, talk can be just as obviously cheap as a bad knock-off bag. I take umbrage with the fact that in some circles the style-coordinated, creative and fashion-ABLE are often deemed pretentious, attention-hungry and vacant. I think for me, the whole thing is more about a comfort in expressing one's self. Self-expression stems way beyond language and can actually attract people to one another! Why would one deny that opportunity?
I think the bottom line is that, in this world... and ironically particularly this country, people have a fear of expression. They have a fear of being judged and that judgment being some kind of negative reflection of who they are or what they like. I think that the submission to the "anti-style" is, in some form or another, an individual's extradition of the pressures that expressing one's self can bear. One can only wonder, though, if this person, who has written off the benefit or importance of quite possibly the easiest and most accessible form of self-expression, had this expressive freedom taken away from them, would they be singing a different tune?
With this question I leave you, in celebration of all-things-fashion, with a link to my friend Emma's new blog/lookbook called The Clothes You Wear. Emma has been all over the world as of late... Paris, Amsterdam, London, and good ole' Chicago, taking pictures of individuals with inspired clothing and ideas who clearly take a second, while getting ready to go out into the world, to make it a more visually rich, unique and creatively unobstructed place!
Hats off to you my darling Emma!
posted by Gregory at
8:30 PM
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