Stylelikeu has made me feel so NORMAL. Boring, dull, plain white bread normal. The people they feature are exceptionally creative, and innovative characters in their own right. Bill Cunningham may photograph these people on the street, but Stylelikeu comes into their homes and finds out what inspires them and the intimate thought processes of how they achieve their vision of ‘style’.
Before I went looking through that site, I truly thought I might be too obsessed about my wardrobe. But how wrong I was! In all honesty, I’m not working hard enough. I need to stop being influenced by what's popular and start leading myself down a far more interesting path of personal authenticity.
I will still follow the unspoken rules of dressing for the weather and the event, hell even the old-fashioned ones about having sartorial decency and modesty in public. I’m still going to dress practically- the day I start recommending wearing avant garde wedding dresses to walk the dog is the day I’ll be committed. And this change is not because my style is so boring I have to focus on my eccentricities to get attention. You’ll never see me attention whoring by trying on Lady Gaga meat dresses or hanging up beef curtains.
The real problem is I’m a huge coward- I’m constantly watering down my look so people will approve. It’s pathetic that I meekly let hairdressers, store assistants, beauty therapists, and cosmetic saleswomen inflict atrocities upon me like third-degree burns, hacked-off hair and coercing me into hideous clothes at wallet-abusing prices. I refused to wear heels because when I did there was always some troll who started moaning about my choice in footwear. Or listening to an unreasonable person telling me to stop wearing my business casual outfit of dresses and cardigans with flats and start wearing t-shirts, jeans and sneakers like everyone else because somehow my enthusiasm for style made the female colleagues feel bad about themselves.
Well, I have three words to say to all future critics who wish to denigrate my style in the future:
I’m not going to conform to the norm. It’s time to listen to the voice that screams, “Sparkle, SPARKLE!”
