A vague stye blog is born
November 2021: It is time for me to write down my thoughts about fashion. They have been floating around in my head for too long. This is my attempt at organizing them, and at unfolding them in the process. Primarily in order to understand them myself, but, please, join me on this journey!
On this blog, I will source materials from different archives to weave the textile that makes up my own style, my inspirations and my visions. The archives include memories, family photographs, social media and cultural goods as well as my thoughts about science and nature. I will write about people wearing clothes and clothes wearing people. Past and future, beauty and ugliness, lost and found, consumerism and sustainability. I want to make it a visual collage, an expression of personality, a collection.
A bit (but not too much) about me:
My name is Alessandra, I'm a 22-year-old student of literature and language science. I have a very stylish mom (whose best looks I will be sharing with you in the near future) and an equally stylish aunt. It was at my aunt's place that I discovered a book that got me interested in fashion in the first place. The book was FASHION - The century of the designer by Charlotte Seeling. A big, heavy album with photos and illustrations for each decade of the 20th century, its designers, its trends and icons. My aunt eventually gifted it to me and soon I knew instinctively what page to flip to when I had a certain picture in mind. I started sketching the dresses from the book using coloured pencils and Copic markers and came up with a few of my own designs; I had a mannequin in my room that I dressed in experimental outfits; I read fashion books and magazines and even attempted learning to sew (I did not succeed) I can't really remember why, but a while later I stopped. Writing, instead of sketching, became my way of expression, and I let go of the idea of becoming a fashion designer.
After wasting years thinking that it wasn't meant to be, envying people my age who had perfected their drawing skills or enrolled in fashion schools, I have now decided to put all imposter feelings aside and dive into fashion again. Where I'm headed – not sure. Somewhere colourful.
A bit about thrifting:
I have always liked dressing weird. In fact, my next entry is going to be about my weirdest looks. Different, that's what I wanted to be. Until I didn't. That was when puberty made me uncomfortable about the person I had always comfortably been, and muted my will to dress differently for a while. After that, I took up thrifting, something that my mother had already been doing forever and something the fun of which I hadn't fully grasped until then. Slowly, I wore out my fast fashion purchases and replaced them with secondhand items. There was a long transitional phase in which Zara, H&M and co co-inhabited my closet with the no-name (or name-name, in fact) items that I had found, piece by piece, scattered in different thrift shops, boutiques and flea markets.
It were these one-of-a-kind pieces that I developed the strongest personal connection to. After all, finding something in a chain store isn't that hard – you see it everywhere, so you're familiar with the look of it. You choose a colour. You select a size. Done. But stumbling upon a piece of secondhand clothing at a random thrift store – one that appeals to you, one that fits you, and one that you did not even look for! Isn't that fated?
As a consequence, i did not go back to chain stores all that much and have been thrifting happily ever since. The crucial thing is, you get skilled. Thrifting is an endless sea of options, and if you want to feel like yourself in your clothes, you've got to navigate the ship. Apart from that, thrifting is changing (about half my clothes are from apps like depop) and getting ever more popular. It may seem overwhelming, time-wasting or even gross to some people, but it is actually a fun hobby, and, I'm convinced, the future of fashion.
I ended up in a city you could call thrift-paradise for my studies: Edinburgh. Here, you can barely walk along a street without passing at least two secondhand shops. Accordingly, my closet has considerably grown in size, but that's a story for another time. My point is that it never gets boring.
What's coming:
I have several great ideas for this blog. I want to start out with a style portrait series: Who are the people close to me that have shaped my style most, and how, in fact, does this kind of influence work? On to some name-dropping: Who are my very own, perhaps generally underrated style icons? What else in life can be inspiring? Style is not intrinsic of clothing – it is everywhere. That's why my blog is going to be quite heterogeneous, with bits of nature, science, art and more here and there. Then, how to navigate style on social media? How to find your own style? And what about men's fashion??
Please enjoy my personal take on style!
Alessandra