The Importance of Style
The Importance of Style
Style is individual character more than clothes, more attitude than affluence. It’s you making visible your inner self. So forget what you learned about appearance not counting; you can no longer afford to be without style.
There is a vast gap between fashion and style. Fashion is about clothes and their relationship to the moment. Style is about you and your relationship to yourself. Fashion is in the clothes. Style is in the wearer. The distinction could not be more revealing.
Style goes way beyond fashion; it is an individually distinctive way of putting ourselves together. It is a unique blend of spirit and substance—personal identity
Clothes are separated from all other objects by being inseparable from the self. They give a visual aspect to consciousness itself.Through clothes, we reinvent ourselves every time we get dressed. Our wardrobe is our visual vocabulary. Style is our distinctive pattern of speech, our individual poetry.
Fashion is the least of it. Style is, for starters, one part identity: self-awareness and self-knowledge. You can’t have style until you have articulated a self. And style requires security—feeling at home in one’s body, physically and mentally. Of course, like all knowledge, self-knowledge must be updated as you grow and evolve; style takes ongoing self-assessment.
Style is also one part personality: spirit, verve, attitude, wit, inventiveness. It demands the desire and confidence to express whatever mood one wishes. Such variability is not only necessary but a reflection of a person’s unique complexity as a human being. People want to be themselves and to be seen as themselves. In order to work, style must reflect the real self, the character and personality of the individual; anything less appears to be a costume.
Lastly, style is one part fashion. It’s possible to have lots of clothes and not an ounce of style. But it’s also possible to have very few clothes and lots of style. Yes, fashion is the means through which we express style, but it takes less in the way of clothes to be stylish than you might imagine. That’s why generations of women have coveted the little black dress, a garment so unassuming in line and perfect in proportion that it is the finest foil for excursions into self-expression.
It’s tempting to think that style is a new invention, open to us only now because we particularly value self-expression, and an extraordinary range of possibilities for doing so is available to us.
No one should be penalized for not having style, of course, but those who have it are distinctive and thus more memorable.
In the end, style is fundamentally democratic.
It assumes every person has the potential to create a
unique identity and express it through grooming and a few well-chosen clothes. Yet style is also aristocratic.
It sets apart those who have it from those whose dress
is merely utilitarian. It announces to the world that the
wearer has assumed command of herself.
It makes an authentic visual impression, is a memorable
mark of identity in a world that otherwise strips people of
identity. There was a time when style was a luxury. Today it is a necessity.
