Us fahionistas are a complex bunch at times – most times. I mean the horror of rocking up at a do, only to be met with the nightmare of someone wearing the exact same outfit as you, is enough to make you want to crawl into a deep, dark hole. We never want to experience the terror of coming across as style-duplicates and yet most content you read about fashion is heavily focussed on trends. If it’s content that has anything to do with style and fashion, most readers navigate right past the exclusive, one-of-a-kind stuff and rather focus on what’s trending, what’s “in-season” and what’s “next”.
Nobody can blame us really for being a little torn between the latest fashion trends and a growing desire for each of us to express our individualism through fashion, for it is at the meeting of these two worlds where something quite interesting is emerging. It’s like a game of fashion-Scrabble, where the players are handed a limited amount of options at a time and it’s then up to them to come up with the best combination of what they have to work with. Individualism is indeed the new pink and individualism is very much alive and well in a fashion world where a handful of designers pretty much dictate what’s “current” or “trending.” We might have limited options by way of what is currently available on the market, but through mixing and matching, our individual styles somehow manage to shine through quite beautifully.
Finding Your Individualism
The desire to express one’s individualism goes beyond the fashion world, however. It can be witnessed in just about every area of our lives, from the way in which you decorate your home or your office desk (procured from the likes of office monster), right up to those custom playlists you have on your iPod. This quest for individualism should not be stifled in any way and should rather be reinforced at any chance you get. You can kick things off very easily by making the choice between reaching for your phone or laptop each time you want some inspiration for a new outfit, or you can stack the odds in favour of truly expressing your individualism by trying a digital detox. Switching off for a while in this way reinforces the expression of your individualism because when you do go out shopping for that new outfit, you’re doing so with a completely clean slate and an idea that is totally free of the influences of retailers, just trying to push their own stock.
TV is another one of those connected devices which should be eliminated, even if only for a little while, if you’re serious about truly expressing your individualism. Beyond the world of fashion and design, expressing your true individualism further can take the form of listening to your own subconscious as to what you feel like doing for entertainment today, as opposed to subjecting your mind to the “programming” on the telly.
Switch off more of the tech, tune into your own intuitive a bit more and watch your individualism flourish! You might be surprised to find that you’ve in fact been a trendsetter this whole time, instead of a follower.
