When I was little I thought "Fashion" existed in a vacuum. There wasn't any point in dressing a very particular way because fashion only existed in magazines; designers made fashion and models and the elite wore it. When I discovered personal style blogs it was this revelation that fashion existed on the streets in ordinary people too. The Fruits street style pictures from Tokyo I had liked in junior high was actually part of fashion, the way that cool girl in my class dressed every day was also part of fashion, the clothes I bought a thrift stores could be fashion. To quote the highly problematic Coco Chanel, "Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening."
Not everyone starts from a place of total separation the way I did, but for me blogs really connected all of the dots. When I started my blog one of my goals was to enter into a dialogue about fashion with other normal young women on limited budgets without famous parents and to show (partly to myself) that fashion could exist in small towns. Geography didn't have to limit style. The more I've blogged the less I've thought about why I do it--it's not that my goals have shifted but rather instead of thinking and analyzing I just act. I put on clothes, I take pictures, I find some time to write it all up. I suppose what I'm getting at is that today I opted to wear something more dramatic, something more fun and fashion-y and a little bit silly and putting it on took me back to those days when I was just discovering how broad fashion could be.
CONVERSATION