I mean who doesn’t want to be fight? Voltaire once said"It is new fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions." This spurious brand of style is not what fight is all about.
Fight is knowing what you want. What you hate. What works and what simply doesn’t. It’s not following the sweeping statements of Anna Wintour, nor is it what Gwyneth wore. It's all about owning it. Possessing your style, making it as unique as your thumbmark, your DNA. You make what’s new into something new for you. It is in enriching your personal style that you become an artist. After all you are what you dress. It is a translation of how you see yourself…and you are definitely not Gwyneth. That’s the soulless thing about lifting a literal outfit off the rack, most of the real fight women I know are never painted in a single coat of Prada or Gucci. Rather it’s like some exotic salad tossed with the tarty dressing of their sense of humour and confidence. They wear the clothes like daily odes to who they are.
I have two metaphors for style: writing and men (incidentally my two favorite hobbies as well). If you read a good essay you will see that there are many references, but at the end it is the author who possesses the point, the gist, the idea. Much like fashion, there are things that even the most savvy and sagest of fashion mavens pluck out of the trend radar of now and then. Yet in their own way make these forecasted products of homogeny uniquely their own. They are not lifted quotes, not paraphrased ideas, or worse, plagiarized entries.
Another is that of men. When we select a man, his personality sort of sets the tone of the romance that one is about to embark on. Think of your favorite shirt from college and how comfy it makes you feel. No excitement, no juicy cravings, just the comfort of a familiar small and the wear and tear of life passing by. Much like a childhood sweetheart don’t you think? Think of a pair of khakis, dependable, you can wear it anywhere, anytime of the day even, easy to maintain but it really isn’t something that you can be bad with. Much like the dependable all around nice guy! Think of that sequined mini dress that you could only wear once, the one where your boob kept popping out of, the one whose hem hiked up a little above the comfort zone one too many times and yet made you feel like the wicked slut that you are. Much like that jerk that you dated briefly, that passionate and turbulent romance that you never really regretted.
Choosing clothes is like choosing men. It depends on how you want to feel at that particular moment. Do you want a fling? A long lasting thing? However never clear you closet of your old time favorites…those childhood sweethearts. The great thing about having a romance with fashion is that you get to keep them all. You get to keep the high maintenance men, the dependable ones, all your college sweeties, and of course as in every seminal fashion moment you find the catch.
My catch is perhaps my Senior Prom dress. I can’t think of a lot of people who can say the same really and I guess I was lucky. It was an ivory Calvin Klein tube dress in satin that had that sexy corset sewn inside and still hugs my body in the same loving manner as it did almost eight years ago. I still wear it to this day…for me amongst all my clothing cassanovas, this was ‘the one’.
Living has become an art. Food, clothes and shelter, the primary needs of man has evolved into mirrors of our personalities, intellectual and cultural fascinations and lifestyles. It is without a doubt a live sculpture in which we are all artists inspired by the muse which are our experiences. So when some you find yourself in a quandary of what to wear, think fight as you deserve no less. As it was said in some dumb cheesy movie (OK it was Uptown Girls…whch by the way I loved), "Fundamentals are the building blocks of fun".
What can I say but fight!