Per the editors of Harper’s Bazaar:
“Obsession has always been at the center of fashion…This issue is about those kinds of obsessions: the ones that fuel our sense of identity, our sense of purpose, our sense of self.”
I ask you: Can being obsessed with something be empowering?
I think after reading the book The Conjuring of America that there’s a definite link between the physical and spiritual.
What better way to embody this twin-ship than through dressing up in the style that speaks to us. In the clothes that ignite our desire to be alive fully in our skin and and nobody else’s.
Pre-Covid I had been mired in an existential crisis about what my style “should” be. Taking the Visual Therapy quiz proved a short-lived exercise in how to dress.
Finding out about Allison Bornstein’s Three Word Method changed everything. I could see that how you and I dress cannot be prescribed by an outsider or even a person who calls themselves an expert.
Often I looked back on the girl I was in college in the 1980s who dressed in head-to-toe black long before it was the trend.
The idea that an obsession can fuel our sense of self is at the heart of reinvention. How we dress is the mirror of our mood and yes our sense of identity, purpose, and self at the time we’re living in.
The core of who we are doesn’t change. I don’t think that it does. Yet we can take on a new persona and new worldview as we get older. Which is a good thing.
Our fashion changes because we are not the same person we were at 20.
Today I’ve gotten on a carousel of chasing color. In vibrant pairings like melon jeans and a green top. Pink and red come together too. I wear a green sweatshirt and yellow sneakers that I liken to reggae colors.
This is how all of us grow and change and better ourselves over the years:
Through whatever our new obsessions are that spark the joy we can’t live without.
I liken dressing up and walking down the street as being on The Runway to Resilience. For how we fashion ourselves can help us heal.
Coming up I’ll review a book that was too riveting to put down. I broke my vow to read only fluff like beauty and design.
The Conjuring of America exposed how the ubiquitous blue jeans that everyone wears today had their birth as clothes that enslaved Africans wore on plantations.
Expressing ourselves through how we dress is a unique kind of magic.
The Conjuring of America centers how 400 years of Black Women’s Magic was at the heart of American history.
