a discovery of large proportion

I know I haven't posted in a week- because I've been spending all my usual computer time searching for hotel and airfare rates to Paris. It's seriously been hours upon hours of searching for fares that would never be low enough. So I guess it looks like we aren't going after all. Sigh. I'm disappointed and all, but really I only had my hopes up for three weeks, so it's not that bad. I just never EVER want to look at those frustrating travel websites EVER again. They give me migraines.

To continue, I was reminded for some reason the other day, I remembered a major style revelation I had, say two...three years ago? It was the moment where I realized my taste for fashion. It was in New York, (which really goes without saying- would I be inspired by anything in Ridgefield? I think not.) and I was walking through the NYU campus, perhaps on the way to lunch or something... when a student walked by. It was mesmerizing. She was wearing a sheer lace tunic (not totally unlike the Anna Sui spring 2006, below) over a black bra with black tights, knee high boots, and a leather jacket. She had bleached blonde scraggly hair wrapped up in a bun with a cigarette in her hand and a book bag in another. She stopped, I remember, to give someone else her lighter.

I don't know what it was about it- why those images are ingrained into my mind now, but I have theories. I think that everything about the outfit was just so wrong, wrong in every way that I'd ever thought there could be, living in the heart of suburbia. She was breaking all the unspoken clothing rules that come with living in a small town. She was showing skin and undergarments, she wasn't wearing proper pants, and there was far too much leather to be allowed. Not to mention the state of her hair and the smoking habits.

But then it clicked. It was right, because it was different and individualistic and maddeningly full of her-whoever she was. She wasn't limited to wearing the things that society would prefer her to in order to blend in. She was defying that unspoken rule. It all made sense then. Fashion is a way of expression, to show who you are, not who people would like you to be. It's a way to stand out and be your own person, whoever it is. Fashion is that way you can be an individual in a dull suburb, and remind yourself that you don't have to be part of the bland and blah. That was when I discovered that I loved fashion.