It’s clear to me from the many people I talk to that there is
a great misunderstanding about style. Style is not a price. It is not an
age. It is not a size. And it can be learned.
Style is one part self-knowledge and one part self-confidence. In
other words, it’s an attitude. It is a life-affirming expression of
your character and spirit, a conviction that you are worth knowing, worth
looking at and can present yourself well. It is knowing your strengths
and weaknesses so that you can accentuate your strengths, not hide real
or imagined shortcomings. Feeling good about yourself is a sine qua non
of looking good.
There is one more element of style, and that is clothes, but style
should never be confused with fashion. Fashion is synonymous with
clothes, but style is merely expressed through clothes. Fashion is IN the
clothes. Style is IN the wearer.
Style is nothing if not a celebration of individuality, of
individual variability. It glorifies the fact that we are all different.
It exposes as preposterous the notion that there is an ideal body, an
ideal woman—that there is only one perfect way to look, that any one way
is perfect for all women. Style always delights because it is a
revelation that the possibilities for originality are limitless.
Style rejects ideals. It goes its own way. In fact, style is
nothing if not a triumph of the fresh and unusual.
Style is democratic. It assumes that every woman has the potential
to create an identity that’s unique, and to express it through how
she carries herself, how she grooms herself, what she puts on.
Yet style is aristocratic. It sets apart those who have it from
those whose dress is merely functional, utilitarian. It announces to the
world that the wearer has a sense of herself and has assumed command of
herself.
Style is intelligent, because it requires self-knowledge. Style
hugs the self closely, even though it never represents the whole self at
one time. The self is too complex to be represented by any one way of
dressing.
Style is optimistic. It is optimism made visible. Style presumes
that you are a person of interest, that the world is a place of interest,
that life is worth making the effort for.
There is no style without taking risk, without exploring new sides
of the self, without saving what works and discarding the errors. Style,
then, is a springboard for personal growth.
There are those who criticize style for its trendiness and
materialistic consumption. But they are confusing style with fashion.
Fashion is preoccupied with change merely for change’s sake, to
stoke consumer purchases.
Style is in fact a way of avoiding the clutter of stuff. It is a
way of sorting through the crowded marketplaces, a way of selecting,
making choices influenced not so much by pressures such as advertising
but by internal considerations. This kind of style no more requires
change from season to season that does your character. But neither is it
completely static. Ideally it should evolve over time, as character
does.
Style is really self-knowledge applied selectively—selectivity is
its essence—to the material world.
Tags:
attitude,
celebration,
clothes fashion,
conviction,
element of style,
expression,
fashion,
fashion fashion,
grooms,
notion,
originality,
possibilities,
revelation,
self confidence,
self knowledge,
shortcomings,
strengths and weaknesses,
style,
triumph,
variability
