Cerulean jumper or a statement on the state of personal style?
I follow a few fashion blogs (not as many as I should if I want to be taken seriously as a fully fledged, I-wear-Louboutins-every-day sort of fashion blogger. Which I don't), so I was inevitably aware of round ups and snapshots from London Fashion Week (LFW, if you're in the know) popping up last week.
But the thing is, LFW (see what I did there?) actually doesn't really feature on my internal clothes radar. At the risk of sounding like Anne Hathaway in that scene in The Devil Wears Prada where she discovers that actually, she is a fashion victim (who could forget that 'Cerulean Blue' monologue?), I like to think I'm a lot more about style than I am about fashion.
Obviously, you can't exactly have one without the other. The constant change over in shops from one season to the next allows us to access an ever evolving selection of clothes that express ourselves, to allow us to hone and develop our own sense of style. But what I mean is, the actual 'this is so S/S 2013' or 'that was last season's look' thing literally doesn't occur to me when I am shopping for clothes. Obviously I am aware that it is harder to buy bootcuts than skinnies, and easier to get a waistcoat bespoke made than to find one anywhere, and therefore it follows that if I am buying clothes and accessories, I am inevitably following fashion to some degree, but the idea of having a particularly current season look or (gasp) out of fashion is honestly not something that ever takes up much of my brain space.
For instance, I am well aware that my leather leggings (a real wardrobe workhorse for me this winter) are currently in fashion. I don't anticipate stopping wearing them when they are (inevitably, within a couple of seasons, because they are something of a fad thing) out of fashion. They express something absolutely key about who I am, the kind of image I like to project, and the kind of clothes I like to wear. And they won't stop expressing that because an arbitrary decision was made (by who? Do fashion editors and designers collude? I've never really understood what actually happens in the upper echelons of the fashion world) that they are no longer cool.
Developing a sense of style means, to me, some immunity against the vagaries of fashion. It means knowing that you have your own personal 'look' sorted, regardless of what Vogue, or Grazia, or In Style (or Woman & Home or Good Housekeeping, for that matter. Fashion is not just for the under-30s) dictate is the essential piece (it's always a 'piece', never just an item of clothing) for this season.
A lot of women talk about feeling out of fashion or out of touch with fashion. Developing a personal style, and an interest in maintaining that personal style, means never looking boring/frumpy/old/whatever it is that 'out of fashion' means to you. Because having a style means not being a fashion victim, and not being a fashion victim means never worrying about being out of fashion.
I will, of course, be back in a day or two with something entirely fashion related to show you. And therefore commit my very own cerulean blue faux pas.
C'est la vie.
