One of the first and only readers of my first and only blog post asked me this morning if I’d been working on the blog much. In my head, yes. On paper, a little bit. I jot down notes. Despite people telling me I should write a blog, I’m not confident of what I might have to offer. I have more questions than I have answers. I hear “you’re the best dressed person in town” (small town), and maybe that’s true in the universe of people that any given person knows. And I hear “you have great style.” I think that means people like the way I generally dress. But what constitutes being well-dressed? In many ways, it’s an aesthetic judgement.
How does each individual person develop their aesthetic taste? Are there those with none at all? As far as dressing goes, there are those that dress in all black. Aesthetic choice, or cop-out? If you were raised in the slums of an inner city, and brought up to believe you lived in a beautiful area, would it be? I’m not trying to be flippant. I get it that clothes for people range in importance from virtually none at all, to being obsessed. But the idea of aesthetics fascinates me.
Fashion vs. style. I think fashion falls into the category—whether it’s high or low, or somewhere in between—of “nothing is constant but change,” be it from year to year, or over longer periods of time. Style is a more general constant. But what is style? People say I have style. But don’t we all? Isn’t how each person dresses from day to day, in their general sense, their “style”? And so we return to aesthetics. (I feel like I’m beating a dead horse here.) I dress according to my aesthetic, which people that share my aesthetic appreciate. For them, their taste, I have style.
I read a decent amount on fashion and style, and I like to find instances where people much more learned than I try to explain things. I’ll share some quotes from time to time.
Getting back to having more questions than answers… I find marketing—the psychology of—fascinating. I don’t feel like I’m easily marketed to, but that’s not always true. I think that’s a topic for discussion down the road of how and where I find my clothes, which a lot of people ask. I’d love to know more about the psychology of sales. Logos. How and why we wear them.
And not so much questions as issues… “Feeling comfortable in one’s skin,” and pushing the comfort level. Giving and receiving compliments. From an economics point of view–and how they pertain to human welfare—I’d like to explore the issue of sweatshops. And the companies that use them, and the consumers that buy the products. I’d love to get my hands on some textbooks that would answer some of these questions and discuss the issues. I find it all totally fascinating.
I could keep going. As I try to move on from here, more questions keep popping into my mind.
In closing, in a tribute to Kate Spade, quoting her following her passing, I read the following:
“My husband, Andy, likes to say that style is innate,” she wrote in the first chapter of Style. “He and I both feel that style is the sum of so many things—beginning with a sense of who you are and having self-confidence. It’s about getting the most mileage out of what works best on you. I’m a firm believer in wearing what makes you happy. And the only rules I’d encourage anyone to follow are their own rules.”