Alot has changed since I started this blog; for one, there is WAY more valuable information accessible via the Internet. Lately I have discovered some useful concepts, and some things about myself. I am having fun again. 🙂
Over the course of the last few months, my thoughts have changed about what colors look good on me. If my coloring is so muted, why do I look so much better with *white* next to my face? And when I took that pile of tee-shirts into the dressing room at Target, why was the deep apricot the worst color, and the tomato red the best? As I explore the wearing of brighter colors, I feel more like myself.
Psychologist Diana Divecha writes of her own rejection of fashion’s values in an article at The Monthly:
As a teenager in the ’70s, in a small town in northern Minnesota, I sewed most of my own clothes. For inspiration, I studied Glamour magazine’s “Dos and Don’ts”—which featured girls with visible panty lines or the “wrong” blouse—and was a little terrified that there were rules of fashion that were arbitrated from New York and enforced by the printing of innocent girls’ dress violations in a magazine. I boycotted the pressure and decided to dress in a way that said looks don’t matter, I’d rather be taken seriously.
In the 1980s, I got my first academic job in a mostly male-dominated department. My colleagues commented that I added “estrogen” to the room and wondered aloud that I could be pregnant and smart at the same time. Being a woman was clearly a liability, something to downplay, and so I retreated even further into baggy pants, ugly boots and, I hoped, credibility.
What makes dressing fun? Using your clothing and accessories, your personal style idiom, as an expression of your inner self. Diana Divecha learned to do this by booking an appointment with John Kitchener and Hella Tsaconas. Most of us need to figure it out ourselves.
Conforming to the rules and expectations of others is confusing and frustrating. This John Kitchener video answered alot of my questions. I can’t wait to get to work on my wardrobe!