In defence of getting things wrong (and not caring)
Looking through decades of bathroom selfies, I can’t help but notice that most of the time there is at least something off about my outfit. I usually have an inkling of this even in the moment - it’s not one of those things where shame descends upon you only in retrospect. I think it’s just the state of affairs you have to accept when you’ve got a vision and you’re working within the limits of the clothes you have. Daily dressing by normal people is improv. There are gaps. Which makes it distinctly different to the head-to-toe, new-season perfection of fashion editorials, and the “street style” of fashion week insiders dressed in beautiful borrowed clothes.
Personally, I love those little off notes. They’re our sartorial signatures - like an accent we dress with. Everyone’s wardrobe is marked by certain inimitable idiosyncrasies that are the results of our own collections and histories. Each person has a particular mixture of seasonal cuts that were selling when we were buying. There are things we loved and kept, new things we had to have, pieces gifted and thrifted - all reflecting our taste and and our bodies with all their varied plusses and minuses, and the tricks we’ve learned to live with them.
There is a step further tho than accepting a degree of unavoidable quirk - and that is when you abandon the goal of “good” dressing entirely. Good taste demands that when getting dressed, we should aim for something appropriate to the occasion and flattering, at a minimum. From there, we value elegance, which for many implies minimalism and sense of authenticity. In a perfect outfit, so it is said, you will “feel like you”.
I see several problems with this. The first is that good taste and elegance, while worthy aims most of the time, does get boring. You can’t dress like Linda Evangelista by Peter Lindbergh every day. Second, it’s a tough call to “feel yourself” - assuming it’s possible at all. Grasping one’s inner essence is a spiritual quest really, and tanslated into clothing, I suspect it’s more often a search for safety and familiarity than anything else. If I dig deep for a personal essence, I find it shifts, and is at least partly created by the requirements of the day and my mood. In fact I often feel that I make myself with clothing, rather than the other way around.
In any case, I can’t see how it’s always to your benefit to feel perfectly “like you”, if it means never taking a risk. Even if there is an essential self to dress, it’s healthy to try a different perspective every once in a while. Or more to the point - it’s fun.
Another soothing thought when you are hesitating over taking a sartorial risk, is that if the worst happens and it doesn’t work, literally no one cares. On the other hand, you will have explored, and in doing so, you may have felt light with whimsy. “I wore s Victorian milkmaid’s blouse and no one even noticed!” you might think to yourself. You may discover that “you” is a broader concept than you previously thought. No one begins life as a trilby / leather jacket / coloured scarf / graphic tee person, until the day they are. And tho sometimes it may turn out that a vintage turban is a one-time thing because truth be told, you couldn’t deal with it in the café, the sky does not fall in. You felt some feelings, and some new options may have opened up to you. Good for you! These are your rewards for trying.
I tend to stretch this philosophy into what occasionally looks like straight-up cosplay - mainly because I find the boundary between an outfit and a costume too blurry to fuss over, and I’ve bought a lot of hats. If you’re game, I encourage it, if only to better understand the shimmer and frailty of boundaries, and how quickly they disappear the closer you get. And no one is policing them except you.
French ladies and ruffles
This week my obsession with French ladies landed hard at Laveste - where Blanca Miro and Maria de la Orden made ruffles, stripes, and Gucci-inspired colours seem not only acceptable but necessary.
This lead to a week long experiment with some ruffles that lurk in my wardrobe and “don’t suit me” but which brought a touch of lightness and whimsy to my days that made it make sense.
I also ordered this Laveste waistcoat, worn below by Juliana Salazar and a pair of striped pants. I’ll let you know how they go. Actually everything about this look including the pearls, is perfect. I love that a string of pearls has been unwearable for so long that it finally feels current again.
Paris to NYC to a navy blue shirt
Another obsession that started in France with Lou Dillon, went via NYC (Amy Smilovic and Leandra Cohen), ended up with me at Country Road buying this shirt.
I’ve avoided navy for some time now, feeling it too dark, too conservative, too… too. But this week it felt fresh! and now! and just perfectly right. Especially nice with a touch of red, like this necklace, or this or this, and good with brown and black (if anyone told you that black and navy don’t go together, or black and brown, they were wrong).
How was your week in outfits? Write me a note and let’s talk :)
Love the bathroom selfie (+ sometimes lounge room)...and love navy and black together always! x
I love this post, especially the part where you discuss "feeling yourself" in clothes. To actually reach some sort of magical inner knowledge of how clothing choices would somehow heighten or at least ring true to my sense of self on a daily basis... no, I just don't quite buy it. It's just too complicated, and like you said, it doesn't exactly encourage experimentation or just having some fun.