(no subject)

I am about to fall asleep at my desk after a weekend of crashing on other people’s floors at 4am and seeing Turin Brakes play a super extended concert last night, but I just wanted to pop by and say thanks to everyone for coming out to post about their relationship with fashion. I couldn’t wait to see what you’d all been thinking so I checked my email by phone a couple of times and each time I found something to surprise me. Thanks for all chipping in.

I think sometimes in real life it can be hard to talk honestly about your relationship to fashion, because there tends to be a judgement that if you don’t fit clothes, or want to dress a certain way it’s your body shape or your mind set that’s wrong, rather than the lack of suitable clothes available. Having read through the comments I think it’s clear that women with all different shapes and ideas about style struggle to find a real connection with what’s available. I am absolutely shocked that tall, skinny women find it hard to shop – in all honesty I thought you guys were always sitting in your exclusive skinny bars, surrounded by shopping bags, heartily laughing at all other women’s attempts to buy things ; ) I mean models are skinny and aren’t all clothes made with models in mind? Apparently not, apparently there’s some sort of other weird, unrealistic body shape going around that dictates what we all get to wear. Another case of odd assumptions creating women’s products do you think?

As for me, forging my style has been as odd a process as some of the rest of you have found it. In some ways I’m a typical fashion reactionary feminist (no bra, underwear is for comfort, legs get shaved when they get seen) but in many, many other ways I’m so not (dresses, heels, nail varnish, hair dye – hurrah). I don’t really feel those two elements of my style clash, it’s all about choice right? Then I had a really weird work place related experience at my last job, which made me realise that despite the feminine way I dress and the fact that I wear makeup, the little feminine efforts that I don’t make get noticed more than all the fashion things I do subscribe to. I guess that bummed me out and made me view my style in a more... eh, not a political way, but maybe as a statement of some of my values.

Now I spend more time trying to subvert the clichés of how I look and what I wear. So I drink pints while wearing elegant dresses, I wear a lot of stuff that reflects my darker musical tastes – which I didn’t do when I was young because it always turned into a ‘but you are blonde and look about twelve, clearly you cannot really be a fan of rock bands’ kind of conversation. And every day I feel like the way I dress looks like I am challenging something, or deeply confirming other people’s wrong assumptions of me, like there is no other option because of the way the world views the kind of body I was born with (I won’t bore you with the small troubles of looking sweet and doe eyed, because they are miniscule compared to someone who looks totally different from what society perceives as ‘normal’ but yeah they are annoying) . It’s only really recently that I’ve found a compromise style that fits me where I can mix harder, or sloppier elements, with pretty patterns and tailored things. But still I feel people making these ‘but surely you are this way, these things you say you like are just an act’ judgements without knowing anything about me.

So, yes sometimes I just want to scream, but it was good to be able to come by here and find out that everyone has a variation of their own bitch about the fashion industry, or the dress codes the world sets up.

I promise we can go back to talking about books now :)