WHO IS A FASHION CRIMINAL?

Fashion, style, vogue – who defines it?

Only recently I read an article berating Beyoncé for going all out to look like a blond when she should be black & perhaps afro. It was a great article according to my standard because it raised up some really salient points. And it got me thinking, at what point can I be judged to have committed a fashion crime. Am I a fashion criminal?

Say, I pick up two fashion magazines: one is an international magazine, the other is a local magazine, I tend to believe every fashion style from the international mag because it is international. My believability is therefore dependent on ‘the-bigger-the-better-the-truer.’ I’m watching fashion Police & Joan Rivers & her crew are – defining to the point of hilarity – what fashion ought to be. I do not understand nor question her fashion opinions because she is Joan Rivers – the-know-it-all-fashion-guru. My believability is dependent on the opinions of a TV celebrity. I wake up & standing before my Mirror, my self-portrait doesn’t feel so good any more. My mind wants to see what the magazines I’ve read & what the TV celebrities in the fashion world calls fashion. So I become dis-satisfied with what I am for what I am not & before you know, I’m at the hair dressers buying & fixing what I have accepted as fashion according to Beyoncé or Joan Rivers. Come on! I think we are now confusing fashion, vogue & style for beauty and that it isn’t. I think because we aint confident of who we are & how we look, we become gullible to every trend thrown at us by every famous face or celebrity. If every individual were to define fashion based on what is suitable to their natural looks, the fashion business would be out of business. If Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, etc had decided to wear Afro & nothing else, I believe even their Caucasian fans would be buying afro-wigs because they want to look like Beyonce. Unfortunately, our black celebrities aint comfortable in their own skins or with their own beauty, I think they have accepted a white definition from Hollywood or the high streets of world Fashion on what beauty should be & we see nothing absolutely wrong with it because we want to make more money and in so doing, lose our natural allure & integrity. That is why acrylics sell, why eye brows are carved, why dresses go way shorter & wigs sell even more.

For what it's worth, why should I base my hard-earned budget on the opinions of other people's fashion sense? Does that make me a fashion criminal? If perhaps I wear an orange scarf with a lilac blouse on a red MC Hammer's kind of baggy trousers, I'm I now condemned to a fashion criminal? O dear! Should I dig my natural afro or should I mix it up with a pink wig or perhaps I should just damn the consequences and give myself a Mohawk cut tinted with a golden hue that shouts - crazy?

Go figure. I think fashion is whatever suits me and whatever I like and not just because Ms G or Mr P says its ok. Still, I have seen several fashion ideas & styles that are just lovely and just because I aint brave enough to wear this afro hair-do

doesn't make me judge the person who does. Like my younger sister would say, there are only certain people that can carry-off certain looks. I agree. However I think we are all fashion criminals one way or another because what might be great fashion to Miss Daisy might be appalling to me or someone else - different strokes for different folks guys. Let's just conclude this piece amicably, any fashion that is a 360-turn-around from your natural self & does not flatter or better your natural image aint fashion in my opinion but
then I aint Joan Rivers, I am simply me, the unknown & to cut a very long story short, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. :)

NB
And don’t go asking me ‘what if I don’t like my natural image or my natural image does not flatter me, then perhaps you need to see a certified shrink!

Once again, don't hurry off that quickly. I would love to read your comments, please drop a line. And you can also follow at my handle: @signetseal. :)