The Conversation of Fashion

I don't remember the first time I thought about fashion, but at some point learned to express myself through clothing (that's me in the middle rocking a cool jacket and floral dress). I was lucky enough to have a mum who sewed and made me clothes-often with my input. At 12, I remember saving up my pocket money and heading to town to purchase my first pair of chunky doc martins.

I think fashion and style get a bad rap, that they are silly, superficial and superfluous. For a long time I believed that, and I felt a bit sheepish about my love of fashion and clothing. I don't feel that way any more. Today, I feel that fashion is more than personal decoration- that it's part of a larger creative cultural conversation.

At 13, I moved to the US, and one of the ways I held onto my homeland was through fashion and style- I wanted to stay part of the conversation. It was around that time that I discovered vintage (props to Alices Vintage in St. Louis, for anyone who remembers!) Vintage opened up a whole world for me, and gave me access to style beyond the crap that was being sold at mall. Also, it was cheap which was a win to a 15-year old. I honestly believe i became a fashion designer and later a shoe designer because of my early experience with vintage and making clothes (a conversation for another time).

My goal for this series it to be more playful with my own style, to 'try on' trends, see what works, see what doesn't. I plan to invite friends to play dress up with me. I plan to raid my (and their) closet. We don't need to buy new things to play with trends- often digging some forgotten treasure out of the back of our wardrobe is enough. Trends are often about looking at things in an new way- a new proporiton. A new color combination. A new texture. 

Dressing can and should be fun. I hope you'll join me in this exploration and we can see what trends we want adopt together, and which we might leave for others. 

The first trend I wanted to play with was Red tights and red clogs. I asked a local stylist, Luna, to come play with the look with me. You can see some of the looks we came up with here.