Fashion is for You

Does fashion make you feel out of place?

I was quite surprised the first time I heard it: "Oh I hate fashion." Maybe because I've always loved clothes, always loved shopping, it seemed odd that someone could hate it so much.

Then, I became a personal stylist, and lo and behold I heard it more and more "I'm not bothered about fashion", "Fashion isn't for me". I'm not talking about trend setting fashionistas here, I'm talking about a seemingly growing groundswell of women who just feel completely disenfranchised by the fashion industry.

It seems that increasingly women feel that 'fashion' is something scary and inaccessible, for a stylish elite. To some degree, I don't blame them. The fashion industry can be a bit of an exlusive place - if you aren't thin enough or young enough then you don't belong - off to Middle Aged Frumps R Us for you to buy something comfortable and dowdy!

Well, I'm here to tell you that it's all a lie. Fashion is for you. Fashion is for everybody. At the end of the day, trends are strongly dictated by what is going on in society and the world around us. Who is society? You! What keeps the fashion industry afloat? Shoppers. Who shops? You!

Yes, there will always be struggles - a lot of the high street shops do seem to concentrate on a younger customer, and I shall be having further fashion rants about some of the major issues I think are out there at the moment (tops/dresses where you can't wear a bra, too-short skirts etc.) but at the end of the day you can vote with your pound. There is no need to abandon fashion completely.

If you build an awareness of what is going on in the shops from season to season, you can pick and choose the bits that work for you (in fashion terms, 'an edit', see, you're discovering the secrets of the fashionistas already!) and develop your own sense of style, which at the end of the day is far more important than following fashion anyway.