Fashion as a Creative Outlet

Fashion gets a bad rap as though only vain, brainless people care about their looks.  Well, it's true that some vain people care about their looks, but after traveling around the world and getting to know all kinds of people, I can honestly say that it takes zero thought to NOT care about your looks, so having a personal style necessarily means being a thoughtful person of some intelligence.  As far as vanity goes, there are a whole lot of people on this planet who are incredibly vain about how much they DON'T care about their looks.  That's right, I've met many people who were vain about their frumpiness because they called it rebellion, or being modest or pious, when it was really just pride in being unkempt.  Fashion is a great thing that I wish more people would embrace as a part of their own sense of self worth and well being, so maybe this post will help with that.  If you love fashion, HUZZAH!  You're in the right place.  If you don't , or if you're on the fence, stick around and learn a thing or two or feel free to move along afterwards and we can part as friends.  Totally your choice and no judgement from me. 

Fashion is an amazing thing really because it is all at once a statement of emotions, status, career, etc and a creative composition.   Whether we like it or not our clothes say a lot about who we are and how we feel about ourselves.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, have you ever seen someone sick with the flu who dresses to the nines?  Not likely.  And people who are severely depressed tend to dress down as well, because how you dress tends to tell the world how you feel about yourself whether you mean for it to or not.   

Some people are quite content to be told what to wear to look nice, and there's nothing wrong with that if fashion or creativity just aren't your vibe.  I used to be friends with a very successful accountant who had no interest in creating anything and was very comfortable with that fact.  However, if you're a creative person, you neeeeed to make and do things all the time.  For this type of person, or even for someone who just wants the occasional inspiration challenge, fashion becomes more than just an expression, it becomes a creative challenge, an outlet for creative energy.  A simple dress is a canvas that will host many paintings, each one unique, telling a different story.  Take this little cream lace dress from Anthropologie.  At the time that I bought it I was living in Japan and set an alarm to wake up at 1:00 a.m. to win it on Ebay.  The minute it arrived, the wheels began turning and I started thinking of all the different ways I could style it.

That meant time, thoughtfulness, and experimentation.  Unlike other forms of creative expression, fashion is very personal, it means getting to know your body's strengths and flaws, but being aware of those things and playing to your strengths while down-playing your flaws doesn't mean you are vain, just contemplative.  I know that scares people because many people cannot separate their emotions about their bodies from the mere facts.  They think if a piece of clothing doesn't look good on them it's because they are no good rather than the clothes.  Or, they think if they have hip dips and those are trending it must mean they're unattractive rather than just something they may want to camouflage until trends change or they become more comfortable with their bodies.  

Putting together an outfit is the same process involved in creating any composition except that when you compose a painting or a poem, you don't have to take your own looks into account.  You can decide to rhyme begin with again and it doesn't really matter if you have a pear shape or an hourglass figure.  So, fashion is the most personal form of creative expression and for many like myself it presents an enjoyable daily challenge.

Simply put, fashion is fun, it's interesting and ever changing/ever challenging not to keep up, don't bother keeping up.  It's ever changing because we are ever changing and it's ever-challenging to keep up with the ways we change mentally, professionally, emotionally, spiritually.  And fashion is nothing if not a beautiful way of telling the world all those things about ourselves in just a glance.  So keep creating, keep testing and experimenting with your clothes and your personal style and keep having fun while doing it.