My everyday personality is directly related to the Shakespearean truth of every person merely being a player on the stage of life. Wardrobe is the key factor to creating the soul of my character and the ability to remain in that character. My husband has seven similar shirts, ditto for slacks, jeans and the appropriate coats and underwear…and he doesn’t understand my closet full of costumes.
The reason we ‘re compatible? All the extra space on his side of the closet for me to use. All he cares about is that my body is covered – though he indulges my theory of clothing as a foundation for a projected persona. The pieces of clothing and accessories that have invaded his side of the closet all have specific functions.
Every situation calls for the right style and appropriate protective equipment.
The Little Black Dress
The little black dress is the classic versatile garment; moving with ease between day and evening. The color and fit are precise, stealthily camouflaging what I consider to be figure flaws (and what my husband calls womanly curves) to give me a boost of confidence understood as charisma and confidence. The color allows my character to interact with the elevated elite who buy their suits in the trendiest upscale establishments or keeps me from feeling overdressed and out place when rubbing elbows with wardrobe challenged folks.
The mole sisters were thinking.
“Who are we?”
“Good question,” they said.
–Roslyn Schwartz, The Mole Sisters and the Question
Human beings are complicated. We don’t fit easily into buckets, literal or metaphorical. And yet, there’s something appealing about saying “I’m part of this group over here. Here’s my little pigeon-hole. This is where I belong.”
I can still remember my very first Seventeen magazine. I was thirteen. “What’s Your Style?” read the headline. I examined the photos carefully. Punk just looked ugly to me. Glam was way too sexy for a teenager who was hoping her boobs would stop at an A-cup. As the least athletic person I knew (I once found an honest-to-goodness four leafed clover while playing outfield in a baseball game), I definitely wasn’t Sporty. So, the answer: I was Preppy. I felt the warm glow of belonging as I studied Jennifer Connoly’s walking shorts, headband, and ankle socks. I had found my first bucket.
As I grew up, I found more buckets. Magazine quizzes, self-help books, psychological tests, all offering to give me insight into my true self after answering a few questions. If you answered B to 4 or more questions, you’re a…. ‘nother bucket dweller.
None of the buckets helped me that much. Sometimes they gave me some insight into one aspect of myself or another, but they rarely gave me the soul-knowledge I was looking for. I always found myself wondering about my bucket mates: how similar were we, really?
Fashion in Paris is everywhere… although maybe not in the way you may expect. Paris is the famous home of haute couture fashion houses and famous names like Chanel and Louis Vuitton, and while these names are still omnipresent on the famous Champs Elysées, I was much more accustomed to seeing these super-expensive items in my old city of New York: here in Paris, people tend to make fashion their own, and, especially with the younger generation, this has nothing to do with items that cost more than fifty euros.
Parisians create fashion every day when they get dressed: I’ve never seen a Parisian going out in pajamas or grungy sweats like so many Americans tend to do. It seems effortless, and I often wonder how they do it, but after observing for several months, I’ve finally learned something from them. Parisians are big on two basic themes that make them exude fashionable qualities: layering and accessorizing.
How The Parisians Build Their Fashion Sense
Layering may seem old hat in the States, but the Parisians have been throwing dresses over jeans for much longer than the trend has been present in American fashion magazines. Throwing on a little sweater turns a great dress into an amazing outfit. The Parisians seem to have an innate ability for layering, and somehow they turn a closet full of basic staples into a new and amazing outfit every day.
As Carrie and Danielle tell us in their manifesto of style, “Style matters. The design of your life can inspire or mire you. Every aesthetic and material choice sends a message to the world about who you are, and the world responds accordingly.” I think Nina Garcia must have read Style Statement before writing The One Hundred: A Guide to the Pieces Every Stylish Woman Must Own. Garcia (of Project Runway fame) knows the importance of style, and she wants you to know, too.
In The One Hundred, Garcia sets out to identify THE one hundred essential pieces in a stylish wardrobe. The idea was born not only from the fact that Garcia is a style editor, and “what are the essential pieces” is the one question she is always asked, but also from an apartment renovation. While her apartment is being renovated, Garcia has been living in a transient place a few blocks away, and once in a while she braves the plastic, dust, and construction equipment to sneak into her closet to grab a few things. She realized over time that the things she would go back for were her “essential” items.
