A Cut Above
Is an individual style truly achievable? Or are we destined to follow in the footsteps of those that came before us? Ian Harrold weighs in on the concepts of individuality, authenticity, and fashion fatalism
words by Ian HARROLD
In truth, there are few inevitabilities in life, but one sure-and-steady, constant is the undeniable, inalienable fact that one day, you will dress like your parents. Which is funny, because we spend so much of our younger years trying desperately to avoid it; acting out with a myriad of garishly ill-fitting and wholly uncomfortable garms in the odd and elusive name of self expression.
But that’s the beauty of style, it’s part statement, part learning curve. Genuine style, after all, is a question of incremental development. It’s a series of subtle tweaks and touches that refine what you already have. Style is a constant work in progress, and it stands to reason that the older folk, for the most part, have gotten pretty good at it.
I think that’s because style isn’t really a question of how good you look, necessarily. That’s entirely subjective. It’s more about confidence and authenticity. As you get older, you feel less of a need to stand out. In your younger years your style serves as little more than a billboard for you favourite brands, bands, and misdirected teenage angst; you yearn for a style that screams. As you mature, however, standing out becomes less of a concern. That’s not to say that you start to conform, not necessarily. You just start to clue into the idea that subtlety can speak volumes about a person too.
We live in an age where the visual push has never been more forceful. There was a time when people had to rely on album covers and movie posters to take cues from their style icons. The era of Google Images, Pinterest and, of course, Instagram, has seen to it that nothing stays still, everything changes, and almost nothing is radical.
Tattoos, for instance, have never said less about a person. Don’t get me wrong, I like them. But they’re all-too often slapped on with such reckless abandon nowadays that they start to drown each other out. They’ve lost that subcultural edge. A neck tattoo, for instance, is more likely to suggest that you make a mean macchiato, rather than acting as a record of any criminal antecedents or gang affiliations.
I suppose, to some extent, style is a visual representation of where we are in life at a particular moment, financially and philosophically. There’s more to life than style, of course. And you certainly don’t have to spend a fortune to acquire style. But authenticity? Being true yourself? Things like that are worth their weight in gold.
But is it really possible? How many of us can truly say that we dress for ourselves and ourselves alone? Every choice we make is informed by some prior baggage or influence. So can we ever truly be ourselves? And does it even really matter if, on a long enough time scale, we’re destined to dress like our parents anyway? EJ
@ianharrold1
