My Relationship With Fashion

My relationship with fashion has always been a well, turbulent one…See, just like almost every girl on the planet, I ran around in my mother’s pumps and swam in her silk dresses, fantasizing about growing up and luxuriating in fancy outfits. When I got older I saw the dark side of fashion: the sick models with the sunken in faces, the competitive although posh world, the devoted materialists—the superficial, and ironically reality part of fashion. So I fought with fashion, trying to decide if it was something I was willing to go hard for. I spent time trying to decide if it was something that would have my back in the end.

Eventually, we came to a compromise. I realized that it was okay to not love fashion in order to like fashion.

Fashion is more than runway shows. More than current trends. More than standing in front of a camera draped in luxe fabrics. More than what Blake Lively wore on the red carpet last week. It’s an archive of eras. Fashion is expression. Fashion is so much more than clothes.

I like fashion. Obsess over it from time to time. Love watching it, reading about it,seeing it. Yet, I’m not in love with it. To be in love with something, you have to love all of it and sadly, my love for fashion is not unconditional. I don’t have a passion for fashion. I don’t believe in fashion. I believe in style. Great style. Individual style. Yes, I have a passion for style.

For me it’s not being trendy or draping myself only in the most expensive designers. One of my biggest pet peeves are people who walk around dripping in well-crafted threads, nothing but a walking mannequin or editorial from the middle-of-the-book spread in Vogue. Walking around as self-proclaimed fashionistas yet not even knowing what kind of skirt is oppressIng the movement in highs, just that it’s Prada or Versace. I mean come on, can you get anymore original? 

It’s about having style. Style is looking good, not up-to-date or “En Vogue”. Style is not money, and so many people are confused by this. Yes, I adore browsing through the top designers’ collections, I occasionally lust after pieces and fantasize about owning some of them one day, but—and I will fully own this statement—I won’t pay over five hundred Benji’s for anything. Actually, unless it is tailored, designed, made only for me only for me to wear, nothing is worth over two hundred dollars. I’m talking handbags, shoes, boots, coats, jeans—everything. Unfortunately, the entire world is but a chunk of an ongoing business, that’s not reality and I will eventually pay more than I think is acceptable for a pair of to-die-for six-inch platform pumps.

Unfortunately.

Yes, I love quality and unique design, but I’m not paying $159 for a damn tee. How anyone can justify spending that kind of money on something made from cotton or jersey, something that is only going to be thrown into the washing machine with all the other washable garments when at some parts of the world people don’t even have clean water to wet their tongues with is beyond me—purely sick. Do you know how many starving mouths $159 can feed? Exactly.

I love clothes. I love shoes. I love bags. I love style. I love writing. But in some way I’ve always known that I was not passionate about fashion. I guess because I’ve always had it in perspective. How could I have ever been passionate about something, a world that is so skin-deep? I think I was just afraid to admit it.

People have said it numerous different ways, including the fabulous Coco Chanel and the beautiful Heidi Klum. Fashion is in one day, out the next. Trends come and go…fast. But style will always be there. Style is forever. Fashion is a moment, style is a lifetime.

ASB,

xoxxo