Subliminal styling...down the rabbit hole

In my last post I took issue with a suggestion that emerged in the Jumpy panel discussion last week. Specifically, the notion that women's aesthetic choices are motivated (primarily) by a sense of insecurity, or a felt need for correction. There's lots wrong with this argument - and its absurdity shines through when similar logic is applied to other manifestations of personal style. Do you, par example, paint your walls and hang pictures on them because you wish to live admidst color and images or because you're trying to distract potential visitors from a draughty window? If, then, our sartorial and interior design choices (along with what we eat, drive, do with our leisure time, etc.) are motivated by a desire for self-expression, then they should be, largely an act of self-articulation. How then, do we make these choices? What is the anatomy of self-curation?

The easy answer might be a range of socially and commercially constituted factors. In my case, sartorially speaking adverts in Vanity Fair, mainstream fashion coverage and/or the helpful emails Topshop regularly inundates me with (I maintain my subscription because they're so much fun to deconstruct - such as this fabulous example on how to express yourself through (mass-produced) pieces inspired by (appropriated) tribal motifs). So internally incoherent is their logic that it makes me wish I was writing a PhD on the discourse and marketing of high street brands. I may take a superior attitude towards such missives, imagining they won't influence me, but is this actually true? If while consuming a great deal of fashion-related discourse, one still strives to ultimately employ sartorial items to serve an evolving sense of personal style, is s/he safe in assuming the styling choices that result are sui generis? What actually happens as you stand before your open closet, with no idea what to wear, no runway look you're striving to emulate? What leads you to combine a selection of  items you've never put together before? In other words, precisely where do outfits come from?

Let's see if we can unpack this one, which I wore to the very wonderful White Rabbit in Stoke Newington on Saturday night.

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I had never worn these items together previously and their various provenances are quite diverse. The skirt is a Ralph Lauren blanket skirt that my mother bought for me sometime during my undergrad years. I don’t know that I truly understood it at the time, but I rediscovered it in Warsaw and it’s had periodic outings since then. The grey net sweater is from Topshop, purchased  in Prague a couple autumns ago, worn over an American Apparel leotard. The shoes are new Chelsea boots from Office and I’m wearing a lot of jewelry with both gold and silver, including new French connection earrings and a necklace I bought from a vendor at Little Paris during last month’s First Friday. In other words. completely random. Or really?

While not the best ensemble I have ever put together, it is ripe for dissection and I can identify three sources (apart from general start-of-term madness and indecisive weather) for this outfit. The first and most serendipitous was a twenty-something man I observed earlier that day at the 91 bus stop outside the British Library. He was beautiful, with dark, curly hair and wearing a floor-length black watch tartan kilt, the likes of which I had never previously seen anywhere. So striking was he, and his originally-styled girlfriend, that I nearly managed to overcome my fear of snapping strangers to ask to photograph them. I wasn't consciously thinking of him as I dressed for the evening, but I'm sure he contributed to my choice of skirt. A second factor is location - I knew I was going to an eccentric cocktail bar in North London, so felt free to play. Much of what I wear is influenced by the part of London in which I will be wearing it. This has something to do with with framing - a bit like publishing in the right journal or placing one's production in the perfect venue. There is something terribly sad about a missed opportunity to wear something delightfully odd or wasting a truly excellent creation on the wrong audience. A third influence, tragically, but perhaps inevitably, is admittedly my old friend Topshop, whose range of gothic jewelry I inspected on a recent trip to the Knightsbridge branch and blame for metal-mixing here. 

So there you go - an argument for subliminal styling (or perhaps just the existentially-inclined meanderings of an overly-taxed mind). Night night.