When I first started college, I studied fashion and costume, & for me clothing is costume, a way to set the scene. For our resort trip I packed all classic-preppy looks: cute cardigans, seersucker, navy & white, espadrilles, nautical looks. By Day 4 it started to really wear on me. It was cute, for sure, but so unlike the clothes I feel comfortable in that it felt like extreme drag. It made me realize how much my 9-5 office job & the fact that I bike 10 miles to and from work effects being able to dress creatively and expressively, and how much it really does make me feel strange and sad when I am unable to do so. (My weight is also an issue, since I’m about 10lbs from being able to wear most of my clothes. The siren call of cake is too strong, but that’s another blog post.)
During my vacation (all this expanse to think, and I fixate on my clothes making me feel strange?) I was also thinking about the nature of fashion. The Fashion Week tweets and blog posts were flying thick and fast, so it was in the air. When I read Tricia’s post about Fashion Week, I commented the following:
I’ve been thinking about this all week & have been percolating in order to write about it. & now that I’m about to comment I find I’m still not sure what I want to say! But I too have been burnt out, and I’m not even in the fashion world. There’s something missing – the need for editors to even be at the shows (imagine old-vogue style, where you could phone up and arrange a private viewing!) is irrelevant now — the inspiration seems to be coming more and more from the street and trends are set by the people, not the designers. The internet has changed fashion drastically in just 10 years.
Anyway, babble. Cost vs luxury, DIY, exclusivity, the demise of fashion editor omnipotence… it all POINTS to a more diverse world, but then we still see rows and rows of cookie cutter outfits and poses and trends. THIS is what I don’t get. It’s like no one cares about fashion as a creative outlet, just fitting in.
In my world, clothing is about plumage & creativity. When I look at fashion blogs, it seems that the looks being showcased are very homogeneous. Maybe I just haven’t seen a wide enough range? Lately, I’ve been suffering from information overload and I feel like I’m thinking way too much about what other people wear and do, especially people who’s lives and styles are drastically different from mine. Because I’ve been in such a strange space emotionally, I tend to question my own sense of style. Should I like that? Everyone seems to? But I don’t? There’s something about the constant flow of information, about the concept of fashion that causes me to question what I like. Because I was raised in the woods without television or around a lot of people; I get overwhelmed easily!
It’s interesting that I’m now exposed to people I would never, ever know. The complete range of class and privilege blows my mind, from teenage girls with more money than Midas to stay at home moms creatively managing to make ends meet and still look stylish. Even with that huge huge range of people, I literally cannot tell people apart on street style sites. Tricia posted also this totally amazing site that matches photos of people together, and it took me a moment to realize that IT WASN’T ALL THE SAME PEOPLE. Wild. WILD!
There are things I love that it’s not as fun to wear anymore. Like giant fur hats and kiltie boots and belted blazers and turbans. Can they be un-stylish so I can go back to wearing them? Is that insane? There is something truly magical and freeing in wearing things other people deem outlandish or backwoods, something great in the freedom and creativity that came from being in my own little bubble and dressing to express my own personality. I think of my office job is also a huge factor in the loss of that creativity. How can I stay myself and still look professional, and still be able to safely bike to work? That’s a tall order!
I saw this quote from an Isaac Mizrahi interview: And who, in plainer terms, is this showgirl-meets-woodland-fairy Mizrahi sees wearing his collection? “I think it’s about a person who’s somewhat smart and somewhat urbane, yes, and also kind of this perfect age: 35. Whether she’s 65 or 25, I think it’s smart to look kind of like prime, as opposed to too girlish. I try to stay away from girlish things, I really do. I don’t mean girly things. I mean, I don’t like girls to look tweenish. I don’t like a tween. Even though, of course, I love a tween, I have the soul of a Japanese tween, I do. Um, what? ARE YOU SPYING ON ME, ISAAC? Showgirl meets woodland fairy? 35? Staying away from girlish things? What what!? Sounds good to me!
But the quote itself also brings up the incredible disconnect I see in images where 14 year old girls are wearing clothing designed for 30 year old women. It doesn’t look good, it looks jarring, like a little girl playing dress up. The thinness is also getting so so so extreme to the point where I honestly think we’re at the skinniest fashion ideal of all time. Girls on the internets look like the very very poor girls who didn’t have enough to eat when I was growing up, and I was a skinny teen, around 100 lbs! It makes me sad, and worried. It’s just insane.
At lunch yesterday I sat in a bookshop and read feminist books that made me angry for an hour, which is a good way to get perspective when I worry about shit like “I hate all my clothes.” or “Why do all these young girls want to dress like frumpy 90’s kindergarten teachers?” Why do I, as a woman, get so caught up in something so seemingly trivial? Because clothing helps me feel comfortable in my skin, in a world I don’t entirely understand. It is armor and protection, it is a way to create a space for myself, it is something I can control and express in my own world microcosm. And that is why the idea of Fashion with a capital F is something I don’t want to be a part of – a cultural and capitalist entity that feeds off the identities of it’s followers in the name of style.
What I love about clothing is creating places, characters, ideas. Time travel, the past and the future! I love the idea that fashion can be feminist, that we don’t have to wear what’s created for us if we don’t want to! We can take it back, refuse to fit into ideals, use clothing as a tool to break glass ceilings in the workplace. We can get married in black, wear metal spikes on our shoes, vote with our dollars by shopping only vintage! I like the fact that I can be a different person every day if I want to.
When I have these wee fashion crises I always gravitate back to beatnik witches, preferably Italian. What? Why do I bother gravitating away, when I’ve been liking the same things since I was 10? What is it in the inherent power of these women that so enamors me? Genetic memory! It’s like a recharging spot that I come back to over and over, a grounding point. Today I’m wearing a giant black cashmere sweater, black tights, and boots. I’m working from home. There’s a storm brewing. I feel grounded and good.
Jeniphir
5 months ago
“I like the fact that I can be a different person every day if I want to.”
Yes, this!
One thing that has been challenging to me in the past few years (since I became a mama, since I had to try to make brand new friends in my 30s) is that the clothing I love and that makes me feel beautiful, stylish, powerful, and just plain old good can be alienating to people. That was a hard one to come up against.
There is also the problem of now and again going, “Whoa, I’ve been in my uniform (black jeans and rather plain tops, minimal make-up but always cute shoes) for too long!” and one day getting a little dolled up to remember who I am, and what’s fun about fashion (and I do mean “a little”–like a flower clipped into my hair, or a skirt instead of pants). . .and people tease me like we are 13 years old and I am right back to being the classroom freak dressed like Cyndi Lauper! I don’t get it. I don’t say anything about them going out in public in yoga pants. . .
Then the fun of fashion again seems like work, and a burden, because I have to defend my choices. Crazy.
Kristin
5 months ago
Hi Tamera-
I think this is the best post you have ever written! I also have similar thoughts about “fashion blogs” and the internet. Just recently I was saying how in 2003, when I first went and visited NYC, I was so excited to see the shoes! I remember I bought these flats with huge flowers on them. When I came back to California, it was exciting to show my friends a trend that was happening on the east, but had not yet reached them. When I visited again in 2006, everything had changed. I went to a party where it looked like all the kids could have been the same ones I go to parties with in SF.
Sometimes I can’t even look at fashion blogs, or even wardrobe_remix because I get insecure. I know I should not mean to, I feel that I have a style, but don’t feel comfortable enough posting myself on the internet every day. Most times, I am self conscious that I will come off as being narcissistic. I also feel like I can’t compete with money, like you said, I can’t have a pair of shoes for every day, not that I would not mind having them, it just isn’t realistic.
Thanks for this, I am going to send it around to other fashionable women.
Love,
Kristin
verhext
5 months ago
yes! the speed at which trends fly out makes me feel that people aren’t even giving space to interpret an idea, it’s just copied instantly without thought! who are we as women, and what exactly are we expressing with our clothing?
thank you for sweet words, i felt a little odd writing it, internal dialogue!
Marcine
4 months ago
I agree with this so much. Thanks for voicing a lot of things I’ve worried about Tamera! It’s refreshing, yet at the same time disheartening that more people don’t address these problems.
laura
5 months ago
there is so much to respond to here, i can’t keep up in my current state of mind. brava! all i can say is, amen.
tricia
5 months ago
damn if this doesn’t hit the nail on the head, tamera. i can relate to it so much…so much. the trend cycle is sickeningly fast, moreso in these past few years, and it makes this feeling well up inside me: MAKE IT STOP. slow it the hell down! damn right that trends don’t get enough airplay, and when they do it feels like it’s in the most trite, superficial way. it’s a constant quest for novelty, i think. which i understand, i think it’s a very human thing and i am guilty of it myself. BUT, i think that things deserve to be revisited, to be worked out, worked with, to have a half-life longer than a nanosecond in the world before being deemed passe. i’ve been thinking a lot lately about how some things that are trendy now were things i loved for years (acid wash, cowls, etc.) and now that they are big and all over the place and in your face, they are becoming outre faster than one can blink, and if i continue to rock them, i might look like i’m following rather than leading. which sounds totally asinine and weird but it’s honestly what goes through my addled brain. but i don’t want to abandon what i love…so, yeah.
as far as not wanting to post to w_r, kristin, i understand that. i don’t want to either, and i started the damn group.
i have felt so out of it the past couple years, and even moreso now that fashion has moved on and what’s “in” isn’t my aesthetic whatsoever (hello, 1990s redux?? no thanks.). i haven’t felt up to revealing myself on the interwebs for a while…i just can’t do it right now. not sure when i will feel like doing it again.
tamera: i feel like these crits of fashion blogging as it currently stands and it’s cultural and feminist implications are really valid, really something that needs to be discussed more. makes me want to craft some sort of critical jab at it all as i am wont to do, if i can find the energy. i love being a gadfly…you too?
we should maybe talk more about this at length, i would love to if you are game. maybe some sort of discourse on such? could be interesting…
verhext
5 months ago
I would love love love to have some sort of a discourse with you on this! Maybe we could write something together? I’ve noticed in your blog as well a sense of “well, i love this, but where does what i love & what resonates fit into the now?” if that makes sense. Maybe we need to look at picking apart the cultural and feminist aspects of blog culture and fashion to get at it!
Elise
5 months ago
Thank you so much for writing this post, it so eloquently manages to say all those things I think but have never been able to pin down so exactly, about fashion, and identity, and vanity and insecurity. I am fascinated by the way we present (and represent) ourselves to the outside world just by the choices we make and for me, definitely, I see people on the street and think I would like to befriend them based just on a dress, or a shoe, or a hat, and I think that’s a valuable social tool. I am certainly familiar with wanting to dress in a certain way and feeling that it would be unacceptable to the people around me, but I am equally aware of being invested in something (a value system?) that for a long time I have thought of as inherently shallow.
It is really reassuring to be reminded that fashion choices we make need only be for ourselves, and to understand that how we dress is an unavoidable part of our identity, something to embrace or ignore but never something to be ashamed of.
By the way, I really love your blog. I think you’re wonderful.
hannah
5 months ago
Yes! All of this!
Kristy Victoria
5 months ago
Such a great post! I have times of fashion identity crisis as well. Lately I feel like I’ve found my identity in some sort of dark jedi sort of thing. High crossover necklines, drapey sweaters, big hoods.
Tiffany
5 months ago
“It’s like no one cares about fashion as a creative outlet, just fitting in.”
Conformity is soo boring. I found these great (in my opinion!) red shoes at a thrift shop today and one part of me debated for a good 15 minutes while walking around the shop whether or not to get them because they reminded me of a trend that is only a few years old….but then I switched gears & decided, “No….these shoes, to me, are witchy, fairy-tale….buy them!” And I did and Im happy :p
I’m so glad there are people out there who take fashion as a creation all their own, and not what they see on everyone. Expression, yes! Odd, yes! Backwoods, yes! This coming from another gal raised in the woods and working 9-5 in boring clothes ;]
Cheers!
jenene
5 months ago
such a great post tamera.
that website Exactitudes is INSANE!
it’s freaking me out over and over.
E. Elizabeth
5 months ago
1. Oh boy. The biking to work problem. Granted, I don’t have to wear business drag everyday, but I have been pushing myself to see just how outlandishly I can dress and still peddle myself around. (50 year old t-straps can work wonderfully if you have the right sized toe clips!) I find that breezy sun dresses with little shorts underneath work well. What about capris or pedal pushers with beatnik-y vibe? Is it a sweaty ride? Maybe have a designated cycling outfit and then change at the office? Hire an intern to pull you around in a rickshaw?
2.I’ve been gulping down the fashion blogs, too. Mostly, I find them appalling, particularly because I’ve managed to sequester myself in my own tiny little culture bubble and the idea of paying more than 3 months rent on shoes that you don’t even plan to wear is just impossible! But now that I make pretty dresses for a very particular demographic, I do find myself thinking about the ethics of fashion and why the clothes I wear, and you wear and everyone else wears, matter. Another big push to understand fashion has come from working with a close friend who is going from lady to gent. Helping him present as a male on a shoestring budget has been really eye opening as to dress impacting other aspects of life; how it is the convergence of who we want to be and who we are; how we manifest ourselves emotionally and psychologically. Reading a couple fat-acceptance/positive blogs also helped me understand why clothing matters, but mostly they inspire me to pull on some hot pants and wiggle my fat butt around like i’m giving the world the middle finger.
But somewhere in here, I lost the point. And that was to telly you that through the years of creepily peeping on your style and what you wear, I can say that you are heads and tails and some more heads above so many of those knock-knee’d fashion bloggers. You’ve a wonderful and from-the-heart flare that extends into how to array yourself. Way more creative and, dare I use the “i” word… inspiring… than so so many others. Like the cool, older sister who is always two or three steps ahead what’s up. So thanks for showing it off. Hand to god!
2b. Any advice you can give on how to wear a turban would be appreciated. They make me feel more like I have a little grape for a head and less like a glamor queen. I want to be a glamor queen, damnit!
Kristin
5 months ago
In a way, maybe we are a movement, be who you want, wear what you want, who cares about trends. Do I need the internet to tell me that I am fashionable? No.
xo
Maven
5 months ago
I am also feeling this post.
I feel like I lost interest in dressing up right about the time street style blogs all blended together. Coincidentally, this was about the time I started biking to work (only when there’s no snow/ice on the ground; I am not that hardcore), and stopped posting to w_r. And magically gained ten pounds of chub-not-muscle even though I was biking 14 miles a day. I tried wearing more techie gear for awhile but that is just not me. I always come back to super wide leg pants and little vests and 70s dresses, which says I don’t know what about my genetic memory. They’re not conducive to biking, I can tell you that much.
Now I’m teaching at a college in another state and living out of a suitcase 3.5 days a week, so I have to plan my outfits in advance, which is not my forte. I have welcomed the challenge because it requires me to think about my clothes in a different way. Some weeks I find that all three of my “teaching outfits” are in the same palette, and some weeks I’m in three very different outfits, and sometimes I feel a bit like I’m in drag because I’m not wearing what I’d choose to wear if I were at home, or because what I packed to wear doesn’t match my mood. But it has definitely shaken things up, and for that I’m grateful.
Angeliska
5 months ago
Tamera, this post is so, so important.
Thank you for it. Our brains live on the same planet.
Let’s keep talking about this, and see what comes of it!
I’d love to see things change. Just visiting NOLA last week
really revitalized me in terms of my personal sense of style.
Very affirming, which makes perfect sense I guess – because I
went through a real identity/style crisis after the hurricane
when I lost half my wardrobe! I think I’ve finally got it back
in place, and I’m getting rid of a TON of stuff I don’t wear
anymore! You are probably my number one living style inspiration, girl!
You are so original, you always look elegant and put together and fun
and gorgeous! You have a look that tells stories, and makes for curiosity and magic, and that is so powerful! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with all of us. xoxoxo lovelovelove!
Angeliska Gazette › Friendly People Honey
5 months ago
[...] ★ Miss Tamera wrote the most wonderful, eloquent article about personal style, and the vicissitudes of the trendy, and fashion’s horrible new homogeneity. This is a subject I’ve been thinking about a lot, and talking about with Tam and other friends, but she really, really nailed it here. So worth reading, even if (or especially) you couldn’t give two hoots about fashion. read it: & they’re all made out of ticky tacky [...]
Lady Lavona
5 months ago
“I always gravitate back to beatnik witches, preferably Italian.” OMG! This is the best thing I’ve heard in regards to fashion, EVER!!! This is the core of my style, I never stray too far away from this either! How can we help it anyway? It’s in our blood! Classic!!!
Evie
4 months ago
thankyou for this!!! I agree with SO much of what you said. Reading this post helped me understand MY frustrations with magazines & fashion blogs.
Personally though I’d like to see some examples of the Italian beatnik witch aesthetic.
Cristina
2 months ago
I came upon your post quite by accident (looking for images of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, with whom I am currently semi-obsessed) and am now a fan of your writing and your clothes. Your musings made me happy, and I loved your choice of images. Maybe someday I’ll fit my big Italian Beatnik derriere into one of your gorgeous outfits!
Glad you’re around…
Viva Giulietta Masina!