These three words means something completely different for everyone – they even mean different things for the same individual at different ages, so to try and encompass what they are truly defined as is a mammoth task. When I was younger, I thought that wearing my favourite colour, would make me the epitome of fashionable. My favourite colour was red and to this day I can still remember, in horror, when this fascination peaked; one day I wore a maroon leotard, a red corduroy skirt, crimson sleeveless cardigan, red tights and ...patent red shoes! I thought I looked chic and gorgeous, now I realise that I looked like a red nose trying to celebrate comic relief slightly out of season. Then there’s make up - I started wearing this to school when I was 14 and every morning I would apply my foundation, followed by plentiful blusher and waltz into school thinking that I looked prettier than I normally do in my golden-brown skin tone. Moment of clarity – physics class, aged 15; one of the cool girls popped her head in and shouted “someone should tell you how to do your make up properly!!” If I wasn’t bright pink before, I definitely was then as I quickly wiped the blusher off my cheeks on to my hands. Now much older, wearing a little bit more blusher in the right place is regarded as accentuating your cheekbones...as for wearing the same colour from head to toe...no, that still isn’t in.
If we dissect style and fashion, and we look at the “historical evidence,” we realise that it hasn’t undergone leaps and bounds of change through time, but has followed a cyclical motion where the main concepts keep making a comeback. That pair of royal blue leggings plus my father’s green and white silk shirt outfit that I wore to an “own clothes day” when I was 10, would fit me right into the streets of Shoreditch and nobody would bat an eyelid at the girl sporting that retro vintage and super cool look. Further realisation - the two concepts; as you become older are not about what you wear but how you carry it. A shy beautiful girl with bunched up shoulders looking down towards the floor constantly, wearing a beautiful Roland Mouret galaxy dress can quickly camouflage into the background. In contrary, a lady wearing baggy jeans and a plain white wifebeater oozing confidence and is comfortable in her own skin, will turn heads and get acknowledged. So perhaps style is not something that can be confined into a specific meaning, rather it is a state of mind and fashion is associated with knowing your body and making the most of it. Perfect, a statement that could easily crush all the hopes of the average Elle and Vogue purchaser – reading the magazine...sleeping on it so it will diffuse into your brain, buying it as a substitute for food (Carrie – Sex in the City reference) will not make you “bang on trend.”
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| Art Exhibit at The Bluecoat, Liverpool |
So culture, what is that nowadays? An expression of artistic ability? The traditions one must follow in respect to rules that were defined many years ago? When I was 16 (yes another childhood reference), my parents let me get my nose pierced in the summer and when I went back to school I tried to sell it as religion (Hinduism), to which the deputy headmistress corrected me and told me it was associated with my culture. Liverpool, my current city of residence, won European Capital of Culture in 2008 and although musically and artistically the expression of culture is apparent, there is nothing associated with nose piercings-esque culture! Google tells me the word refers to “the arts and other manifestations of humans intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” So I’m not off the mark with my preconceptions of it, however perhaps culture in the Asian/Middle-Eastern sense that I am familiar with, is absent in the Western world...apart from in pockets of ethnic diversity where the national language is what you’ll hear the least.
Adamant on not selling Liverpool...and “The West” short, my journey for discovering culture and associating it with fashion and style will hopefully be an anthropological playground, looking at the migration of humans and how each element plays a role in one’s identity.
