Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Personal style

No, Dear Reader, this is not a picture of me -- it's just to talk about the ever popular NYC style, Basic Black. I'm still thinking about clothes and personal style since I got started on the subject last week and since it's closet shuffling time of year. And when cool weather comes I DO wear a lot of black, in summer I like black slacks but I like colors a lot. However as we go into the basic black season I think of a woman I knew in a former life who wore nothing but black and white -- mostly black with touches of white, never any colors. She had dark hair and looked quite dramatic and attractive. I always thought how easy to keep her wardrobe and to look good all the time. But I realized I like color too much. I really like a bright red with black or, well, lots of other colors too.

Back in the days when I belonged to groups of playwrights and actors, there would be group meetings when I could look around the room at men and women alike and see a sea of black. It was both easy and arty. In fact, people looked pretty good! Although not exactly individualistic. But better, I thought, than a sea of suits and ties.

On the individualism note I remember a woman in my dorm in college who had a collection of bee pins, jeweled mostly. She always wore one on the left shoulder seam of whatever sweater, blouse or jacket she was wearing. It was her trademark and I admired her for it. Also always thought it would be fun to have butterfly pins to wear the same way. But, no, I've not done that either.

It's actually not difficult have a personal style. I guess I'll blame my Gemini personality -- comes in handy when there's no sensible explanation or I don't want to be terribly introspective -- for my helterskelter choices of colors to wear -- and to collect in my quilt stash.

1 comment :

Stephanie D said...

Black might look better on me now than in my younger days, but it really used to wash me out.

In contrast, my daughter has strawberry blond hair, and loves to wear black. She tried wearing it at 12. not that she was into goth or anything, but I wouldn't let her. And then a salesperson backed me up by telling her to wait until she could wear make-up, as her skin was too pale to carry it off.

So she did, and she does carry it off quite well.