According to Heiko Ernst, the writer of Style: the signature of personality (click here for pdf), the formation of style takes place in five phases:
- Fundamental: up to age ten, one’s person is defined and the environment is absorbed.
- Reorientation: from ten into teens, a gradual disassociation from parents and also from the preceding youth culture.
- Individualisation: during the teens and into early twenties a range of different youth subcultures offer opportunities for identification and influence of one’s individual style.
- Expressive: roughly until one’s late twenties, style elements become fixed to form the individual’s own distinctive style.
- Establishing: with the onset of responsibility, young adults tend to withdraw into other priorities; public display of style becomes less important than career and relationships.
Each of us, as we are contemplating this progression and how it fits or does not fit, can no doubt set it to music. What’s on the soundtrack of your life?
For the record (he hee, stealth pun), my earliest years are set to The Doors, Simon & Garfunkel, the Hair soundtrack, and assorted forgettable movie music. And I never liked 80s music much, even in the 80s.
I saw a baby doll top pictured that I liked. Can’t bring up any photo of it. It’s a Tracy Reese grey or beige silk top, fastened at one side under bosom with pin. Lots of folds. Stands away from body and is short, just above upper hip. Lucky Magazine, July, p. 128. However, as good as it looks with slim pants I don’t like it as well with a skirt on the following page.
My “soundtrack”: My father once sang onstage in his youth so he always hummed snatches of song in a baritone. My mother, like me, could not carry a tune but always rocked me to sleep as an infant with “oh how we danced…” (the Anniversary Song).
Later it was American Bandstand, the B & W out of Philly version (is that how I ended up here?).
“Can you dance to it?” Coupled with tagging along to the synagogue with my grandfather and all the minor key music.
As a teen it was a peculiar mix of Barbara Streisand (my mother said, “She gives me a stomachache.” Me, too, now) and Dick Dale, surfer music. I hate all the psychelic music with the exception of White Rabbit, and particularly hate Light My Fire, which seemed to always be playing for a world I didn’t want to belong to. Drug use started the summer between my senior year and freshman year at college, mostly filtered down through older sibs at Berkeley. It was something I emphatically rejected for myself and so I was a pariah.
This was also when the dress code changed at my old high school. In my senior year the girls could never wear jeans or pants or shorts or a skirt that was too short to cover your knees if you knelt. This was not parochial school! By the next year my parents had moved across town to just across from the edge of the high school parking lot. Those girls were in school in shorts, tank tops, flip flops! I really think this would have changed my whole life if it had happened for me. In California, those were the clothes we wore when we were *not* in school.
A sidelight: my girlfriend and I were aimlessly driving around in her car and we passed an outdoor marquee for a concert that was taking place that afternoon. I’d never heard of them but she said someone had told her they were good. It couldn’t have been expensive because there were no ATMs and we had enough money with us and were not affluent. The show had already started and we wandered into the darkened auditorium at the Orange Show grounds in San Bernardino. It was hot and the doors were kept open and nobody cared where you sat. Everybody was up and crowding the stage and dancing. We moved up and were dancing in the aisles in front of the stage. My first concert ever. Exhilarating. I was mesmerized by Mick Jagger strutting and prancing across the stage, waggling his finger.
Vildy, you have the best stories! I really did miss you.
The soundtrack for these last few months is Lori Chaffer (of Waterdeep).
http://www.waterdeep.com/albums/1beginning
8 & 11 reach me deeply!
Hi Rebecca!
Thanks for visiting and commenting on my blog today! Your site looks great. 🙂
~Anna
This post was excellent timing. I had the opportunity to do a little shopping today, and wound up at JCP. Although we discussed this two weeks ago when I saw you, it didn’t totally gel for me until today.
Back up a bit… I wore a new t-shirt this morning, with jeans, for casual Friday at work. The T is V necked, with wide horizontal stripes in white and bright royal blue. It highlights my face and looks fabulous (I think). The kids both commented on it, and a new friend said “That’s a good color on you” when I saw her tonight. But Steve was unsure… he actually referred to me as “sporty.” I was insulted! I had to explain to my 100% functional sweetie *why* his comment was offensive. Poor guy.
Anyway, back to my shopping trip. I realized that what looks best on me, and what I love the most, are simple shapes with a little sex appeal, in solid jewel tones. This should not surprise my dear sister, who saw me dressed this way throughout most of my 20’s. That was my “jewel toned knit top, above the knee black skirt, black tights & black loafers” phase.
I bought three square necked knit sleeveless shells (I’ll look for the matching cardigans online) in white, royal blue, and lavender, a black a-line skirt that hits about knee length, a ruby knit top with cowl neckline, and two bras (very needed). I can’t wait to wear them to work next week. Back in the day (late 80’s to mid 90’s), I wore a black short skirt to work three days a week and often out “clubbing.”
Soundtrack? Oh gosh. I think the music that has stuck with me the longest has to be 70’s funk. I remember singing “Play that funky music” on the playground in 5th grade. I think we played it at our wedding reception and now we put it on and have a dance party with the kids in the living. room.
Speaking of weddings, our 7 year anniversary is Sunday. xoxoxxo to my perfect catch!