Some days I dress a little wild. Others I’m almost invisible.
Ornate headbands are one of my favorite things. That’s not me in the photo but I would wear that darling whichgoose headpiece. It’s whimsical, playful and pretty and I like feeling like that sometimes myself.
And yet – would you wear a headpiece like this (there are woodman versions too, and let’s not forget Oberon, King of the Fairies!) as part of your every day outfit. If not, have you ever thought about why not?
It’s great we have clothes to keep us warm and to wrap our psyches up in. Clothes and accessories display our mood or attitude to the world in a heartbeat.
Of course, lots of people play with this by dressing crazy or hiding a volatile personality with drabness.
As well as the individual manipulations we can practise with clothes – teenagers dressing alike in tribal Gothicism or branded sports gear – staunch individualists making a statement with way-out unknown adaptations of ‘normal’ clothing – we’re also at the whim of where we live.
Dress-style is naturally climate and locality-dependent. Take a bikini-clad babe away from Freshwater Beach in Sydney and drop her in central London and people would perceive her to be a completely different kind of person based solely on her attire. In London, she’d be seen as someone flaunting convention. On Freshwater Beach she’d be following it.
Interesting, isn’t it? I have a theory that the vibration of where we live influences our personal style by either fostering a creative spirit or suppressing it. And clothes have such a powerful effect on how we feel about ourselves.
I think it’s something to do with the collective consciousness of the people in a geographical area, combining to create a kind of ‘acceptable standard’ of ‘threshold’ of clothing.
Some cities are just more creatively vibrant than others. Glasgow and London, New York and Sydney, for example, have high thresholds of creative dressing, perhaps raised by high numbers of creative individuals.
I had a stark experience of this when visiting a friend in Wellington, New Zealand (which has a wonderful open, cultural vibe). I bought a plain wire tiara, its dull metal hand-twisted into simple flower shapes and happily wore it about town.
As I was about to board the plane back to Auckland, it struck me that, much as I adore Auckland, and it is a vibrant, creatively-nurturing place, people there would genuinely and kind-heartedly think I must surely be on Day Release.
Have you caught yourself not wearing something you really love because you don’t want people to misunderstand you? Or the opposite?
Image borrowed from whichgoose. Join thousands of other people who have loved and bought her natural hair crowns and accessories from her whichgoose Etsy shop.
