I’ve been writing this post series for a couple of months now where I take a fashion show or lookbook and make a short story about the type of girl who wears those clothes. Sometimes she’s the class pet, in other posts she’s a runaway on a train to Paris; sometimes she dresses as prim as a First Daughter while sipping vodka from a mug at noon. The posts are labeled “for laughs” because I find them amusing, but lately I’ve begun to realize how much I like the message underlying each one. That prim girl reads Oscar Wilde in her free time and picks fights with friends when they cross her because she’s headstrong and all while dressed in a manner some might term “twee.” The school pet is obviously a bit neurotic about things from her pencils to her grades, but she also clearly puts time into her appearance and there’s a bit of admiration not for her grades but her dedication to being herself. Everything comes back to fashion because their personal style is obviously important to each character, but none of them are your typical fashion girl. I think when people picture someone who's interested in fashion they tend to have their very narrow idea, but I know a lot of girls with varying degrees of interest in personal style and they're each very different and fashion is tiny aspect of their personality. These characters: they look one way and act another, because as deliberate as they are in the way they present themselves the packaging is only one piece of the puzzle of their personality. They’re admirable despite flaws. They all care about style, but it’s never described as something shallow.
I guess the point is these fictionalized females feel more real than some of the characters I see on screen or the ones I find in articles in magazines because they’re allowed to be. There’s no need to fix them or to redirect their interest from fashion to academia because those aren’t mutually exclusive arenas nor should choosing one automatically label you as anything. Because ultimately, people/individuals, don’t fit labels.
Above, Valentino Fall 2013--the discerning choice for a library science major who paints ceramics to de-stress and her killer gams come from practicing to join a Roller Derby team...
CONVERSATION