It's time. I'm gonna post right now, mostly because it's about 11:30 PM on a thursday night and it's the first day of summer for little old me. Yeah, that's right, I finished all my exams! BORN FREE, AS FREE AS THE WIND BLOWS...
Anyways, I've been thinking a lot about personal style, and as I was wondering how to get out these thoughts that my friends are so sick of me blabbering about, I slapped my palm to my forehead. I have a blog. ABOUT PERSONAL STYLE. Duh, Sarah, duh!
So! My thoughts about personal style, and then a little moodboard-type-deal, even though I don't typically do those (truth be told, I felt bad for not posting an outfit... but I couldn't be bothered to set up a tripod).
First off: the ALMIGHTY PERSONAL STYLE. Gee, I love America. Well... America and any other country that lets you wear whatever you darn well please whenever you want to wear it. People are only really kept in by social boundaries when it comes to dressing, if you think about it. I mean, obviously you HAVE to be dressed in public, but that's the only way
the man can keep us down! WEAR CLOTHES OR ELSE!
So if we have to wear these clothes, why don't we make them say something about ourselves? I have only recently (within the last year or so) really, really gotten into personal style. Before this, I went through various phases...
Elementary school me:
-Cloth shorts (think Soffes)
-T-shirts with monkeys on them
-Light-up sneakers
-That is all.
Middle school me:
-Uniforms during weekdays (wish I would have kept those skirts!!!)
-Oversized band T-shirts
-Skinny jeans (I remember, my first pair of skinny jeans was like my firstborn child)
-Vans slip-ons/ Converse low-tops
High school (9th-11th grade):
-9th grade: A more streamlined version of middle school ^^^
-10th grade: ANYTHING TO ACCENTUATE THE BOOBS
-11th grade: Floral/indie grunge
This year (12th grade):
-WHATEVER I DARN WELL PLEASE!
Do you see the change here?
I do, and I wish it had come sooner.
After being in the bloggin' world for a little while now, and observing these young and sprightly fashionable youngsters, it makes me kind of wistful for the past. I wish my parents would have given me the freedom of choosing exactly what I wanted to wear when I was really young.
I think it really makes a difference to let a kid figure out the consequences of wearing certain things and being able to choose for themselves in a relatively harmless way. If your eight-year-old wants to wear his pajamas to school... let him. Maybe that's a way of parenting that's considered "extremely liberal" but I think the power of free expression through clothing is SO much more valuable than a lot of people realize.
That's why I'm against uniforms. Perhaps, I pensively think to myself, perhaps I would have developed my own sense of myself far earlier if I didn't have 3 years of uniforms holding me down. I can't make that judgement for everyone who has ever attended private school, but in my opinion, uniforms made me lazy about dressing otherwise (I had about four "weekend outfits").
I believe that every person, even though they may not have enough money or time or what-have you... every person can develop a personal style and flair to whatever they're wearing, be it a prom dress or a pair of sweats. That's the beauty of it, you know? Wearing sweats isn't a fashion sin. It's a choice people make to wear those things, and they CHOOSE to not dress up. It's surprising to me that ripped shorts and sweaters and dirty boots are fashionable yet comfortable fleece pants are not.
On that note, I am beginning to hate fashion magazines.
There.
I've said it.
I have been reading a few lately, what with my newfound free time, and I really dislike how they all seem to give "fashion rules" or "fashion do's and don'ts". Nothing boils my blood quicker than a snotty fashion editor trying to tell people they're dressing incorrectly.
If you don't get my point by now, just pay a visit to
Hel-Looks.com. You'll see what I mean. Street-style websites like those make me love clothes and understand that it doesn't have to be an upturned nose, a high-school hierarchy. Clothing is a simple, necessary, and continuous form of art.
(By the way, if you want to read a good article on this very idea, written by a contributor of Vogue, click
here)
So now that some of the ideas that have been festering in my brain have now been aired out... a moodboard!
(by the way, all of these pictures were saved in a folder on my desktop, regrettably without sources. If they're your pictures I'll be happy to cite 'em or remove 'em.)
So there's my weird and scattered P.O.V.
