At the risk of sounding like a pretentious prick, let’s make one thing very clear; ‘fashion’, as a general term, means nothing. Anyone who claims to be generally fashionable deserves a back-handed slap across the face. If anything, fashion is a dynamic discourse, representative of culture and subculture, and heavily influenced by history and environment. It is a personal billboard, speaking endlessly on behalf of the wearer and translated and read by the viewer.
It seems to me that being able to compose a coherent outfit and dress with style, although subjective, is a much better measure of someone’s ‘garmental intelligence’—a term I have just made up and will probably never use again, so soak up its brilliance now.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely not suggesting we adopt a sweeping and flowery view that we all look good in our own way, because let’s be honest, the majority of the New Zealand population dress with no other concern but to cover their private bits. And they’re not particularly good at that either. However, trying to follow fads and trends originally designed by powerful fashion houses which have trickled down seasons later (hacked, cheapened and destroyed in the process) into barely acceptable stores like Supré, is disturbing. Don’t do it. You’ll fail.
When given the opportunity to write a fashion column for this classy publication, the last thing I wanted to do was to list vague fashion dos and don’ts—there are very few universal fashion rules. Pieces of clothing that we might deem unaccepted are too often taken and worn by others who effortlessly make it look like Gucci couture. So in essence, the only dos are looking good and the only real don’t is wearing crocs. And business branded caps. And jeans that are unintentionally too short. I lied, there are definitely some don’ts, but we’ll let natural selection deal with those people. Mother Nature will definitely sort those people out. Her and Obama. We love Obama.
In the coming issues this fashion column will feature brand and store reviews, interviews with the industry’s finest, and a few of my humble opinions thrown in there for good measure. In the meantime, if you’re craving a fashion fix, here are my ‘go to’ style spots:
1. www.isaaclikes.com for breaking fashion news and a dose of the wonderful Isaac Hindin Miller.
2. Petone op-shops, since all the good clothes end up there and because it’s cheap and we’re poor.
3. RUSSH magazine, for beauty we can never attain. The styling in their editorials is impeccable. I suggest you buy every issue. Maybe even two of each.
4. Kate Sylvester on Cuba St is currently getting in winter stock. It’s beautiful and wearable and worth spending course related costs on.
5. This column, because when you’re sitting in MDIA201 (which we all know no one would take if it wasn’t mandatory), you can read this and feel better about how stylish you really are.