Wear a smile

i have always wondered if the personal style is a choice or not. 

in the end, most of the times is about fashion trends. it's exactly like Meryl Streep says in her speech, starring as Miranda Priestley in the movie "Devil wears Prada". 

i didn't like particularly this movie, but i enjoyed this speech:

Miranda: Something funny?
Andrea: No. No, no. Nothing's... You know, it's just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. You know, I'm still learning about all this stuff and, uh...
Miranda: 'This... stuff'? Oh, OK. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select, I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.

i always had the impression that fashion has to do with the choice of a restricted group of people, followed by a much bigger one. a matter of social psychology.
what is the space for our individual tastes in all this mess?

ultimately it must be the idea that we have of ourselves. between a closed number of choices, we tend to choose what's closer to the social image we give ourselves.

i grew up in a family where nobody has a particular taste for elegance, except for (maybe) an aunt.
nobody in family in fact cared about the things that i've always cared about speacking about image and personal style, and i had to discover everything by myself, pretty much experimenting and with my friends's help and example.

what i do know is that most of the people consider me a person with a taste for elegance.
i do not spend money for expensive clothes, i just have many many ways to find out fashion and cheap clothes. it's nothing difficult, just a couple of websites that directly sell online what we find in shops in Europe, but with higher prices.
given the fact that most of the things that we find in shops come from China, and few other Asian countries, if you manage to contact Asian clothes manufacturers websites, you may sensibly contain prices. of course, you also need your personal insightfullness to guess what is elegant, what has quality.

feeling beautiful BEFORE i put on anything or think about anything to buy, is not only the best part but for me is the essential one.
i learnt that i am not beautiful because i put a certain outfit on, but that the outfit is beautiful because i put it on. that's all the pleasure of care about what i put on, because in fact i'm worshipping my beauty. when you do it enough, you are ready to admire the beauty in others, instead of feeling bad because you are not like them. our souls need love. no matter how we give it, but we need it. giving love to yourself, is literally giving it to the world.  

soooo... love's the best outfit, as well as a warm smile to yourself.