Fashion versus style: A definition of terms

When you spent most of your girlhood reading books, playing video games, and learning to smoke because it made you feel like a badass, the last thing you expect to do when you “grow up” is to write a column about fashion and beauty. Yet here I am, struggling to find nuggets of profound style wisdom to impart to you all as I attempt to write my first article on Unblogged. I wasn’t one of those girls who grew up reading Vogue and daydreamed about becoming a despotic fashion editor or designer, if not the owner of an expansive wardrobe. In fact, I was never really interested in clothes until I woke up one morning three years ago and realized that I was sick of wearing jeans day in and out. I had to learn how to dress better, but where do I start? How can someone with no real interest in fashion develop a sense of style?

I hope to be able to answer these questions about personal style through my articles at Unblogged. If there’s anything that interests me more than fashion, it’s the way people style themselves and use clothes to present themselves to the world. Since fashion and style are often used interchangeably, it may be helpful to begin with a definition of terms.

Dictionary.com describes fashion as a “prevailing custom or style of dress, etiquette, or socializing” and “the conventional usage in dress, manners, etc., especially of polite society, or conformity to it.” Fashion is about prevalence and acceptance; it’s a way of dressing and behaving that conforms to current times. Yet this dry dictionary definition forgets to add that fashion is an industry that survives by creating desires and aspirations. What’s fashionable today is an arbitrary decision made by corporate entities, produced by eccentric designers (and their third-world sweatshops), communicated by fashion editors, and worn down the catwalk by skinny Eurasians. We buy fashionable clothes not because they’re durable or necessary, but because they represent a certain lifestyle we wish to achieve, or because they evoke feelings that move us into purchasing them. Fashion is a glamorous, intimidating and beautiful creature not every woman gets to appreciate, simply because it’s so far removed from the realities and needs of ordinary people.

Style, on the other hand, is a “particular, distinctive, or characteristic mode of action or manner or acting.” Style is fashion made more personal, usable and human. Style is a way of putting clothes together to express your personality or to project an image to the world. It’s easy to blindly follow trends, but style involves choice, and that’s what makes it so fascinating. Behind every stylistic choice is a woman asserting a tiny bit of herself and making this self more visible to the watching world.

So where do you start developing your personal style if you’ve never been interested in fashion before?   Well, the day you told your mom that you’d like to start buying your own clothes from now on, you’ve actually already started. Every time you choose pumps over flats or jeans over skirts, you make a clear statement about your likes and dislikes, the things you find pretty and the things you find ugly. But what if you feel the need to refine your sense of style and aren’t sure how to do it?

Here I leave you with my first tip: trust yourself and your own good taste. Follow your instincts, especially if you already have a tiny inkling about what works for you and what doesn’t. If you’re still confused and uncertain about where to go next, fashion magazines and websites are excellent resources. Just remember that you’re in total control of your own image. Take the advice you find useful, reject the ones that don’t apply, and feel free to question anything that makes no sense to you. And if it helps, I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks dishing out more in-depth advice about how to develop your personal style.