Can Style and Fashion Coexist?

 
The August issues of the fashion glossies are particularly thin this year. Several were combined into July/August and no heftier. If fashion were a clipper ship, we would now be in the doldrums. I am waiting for those September issues like Ahab looking for Moby Dick.

Meanwhile there's much to think about. Such as...

Style. What is it? You know it when you see it. You do know if you've got it. When we say, "She's got style" we are thinking in the positive. Conversely style can be bad style—old fashioned, outlandish, unflattering.

Fashion is fleeting. In today, out tomorrow. Fashion can also come back the day after tomorrow. Style can be something we all haven't arrived at yet.

You can be fashionable but still not stylish. If you have style you don't need to be fashionable.

You can admire and emulate someone else's style. That will give you style, but it won't be your style.

This exercise makes my head spin, but I still love to do it.

We all want style, or at least to feel good about how we look. Let's agree there's no magic formula and go from there.

The past dozen years or so fashion has tried to convince us anything goes while declaring what's in/what's out on a daily basis. We are not supposed to let celebrities influence us, yet we are bombarded by them and what they wore, only to be told they were dressed by someone else.

In order to have style you do need to care about fashion. You also have to know yourself. Then you can sit out some of fashion's dances that won't work for you. This is discipline.

I don't think discipline means limiting yourself. I will never be happy with only ten items of clothing carefully curated to take me through all my days (and nights). I own way more than that, but I think I know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em*. My life has too may possible scenarios, and I never know which "me" I may want to be today.

So why do you have problems coexisting with fashion and style? Are you stuck in a rut, wearing or (worse) buying the same stuff over and over again? Do you tell yourself fashion doesn't matter but don't quite believe that? Have you decided if you don't have a style now it's too late?

Perhaps...

> You know you should, but you always put if off for tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, and you really need to look terrific, you end up in desperation with a pair of green velvet drapes.

Tara called and wants her drapes back.

>You've been burned, perhaps by those drapes. You paid way too much for something, or you paid too little and paid the price.

> You are set in your ways. You're so sure you know what you like you don't even look to see what's possible.

> You have blinders on. You've made a deliberate decision not to let fashion in your life. You wonder if it's worth it and what you may be missing.

> You don't want to spend the money or the time or the effort. You don't want to spend the money AND the time AND the effort.

> You worry if you care about fashion you will appear shallow. Not likely, but if you follow fashion trends blindly you will be surely considered clueless.

Blinded by the bralette...

 
In conclusion, style and fashion not only coexist. You can't have one without the other.

* Thanks to Kenny Rogers and Marie Kondo.