Kean Etro put together an instructional how-to on ways of customizing the brand’s basic white shirt with ingredients found in the kitchen. It ranges from blueberries to coffee and even salt, taking a fun and interesting approach to dying your clothes.
My personal favorite has to be the shirt baked with blueberries; The color is perfect for spring. You can find the blueberry recipe, along with the salt and coffee DIY, here.
(Source: josh-dd)
By challenging traditional, or ‘glossy’, notions of beauty and defying the mainstream in order to reshape societal norms and expectations from a citizen viewpoint, blogs across all genres can and have served as powerful social tools. Women (those with access to the Internet; and access is a whole other can of worms in terms of Internet democracy debates), through personal style blogs, were presented in a new, subversive outlet in which they could use the power of contemporary technology to launch their personal voice, and a diverse array of notions of ‘beauty’ into the fray of public discourse.
However, ‘personal style’ bloggers have garnered an almost infallible legitimacy as purveyors and creators of sartorial news, and their following has boomed to a cult-like status. As these blogs have gained intense popularity and more prolific bloggers have established an online celebrity, the democratic value of blogging is becoming increasingly undermined.
[…]
What concerns me is what happens when the everywoman is nothing more than a shill—a curated example of the glossy ideals that continue to terrorise femininity and perceptions of femininity in the mainstream media. When fashion bloggers essentially become caricatures of themselves—with professional photography, unrealistic beauty and lucrative deals for product placement, what message is being sent to the other side of the screen? We’ve been taught to adopt a certain level of cynicism when reading glossies, but the same grain of salt has not yet infiltrated to blogging. The danger thus occurs when conversations on Internet dicourse fail us—where young women are watching and idolising the self-declared ‘everywoman’, who, in reality, is no such thing. She is merely a perfectly coiffed version of her civilian self—a wolf in sheep’s clothing—holding fast to notions of her ‘unique ordinariness’ but spending hours creating the perfect (suspiciously so, to the point where I question whether or not we’re starting to see dramatic retouching on these personal style blogs) imagery of herself. Add to that the contrived use of product and corporate engagement (insofar as fashion bloggers are sent unrealistically luxurious and expensive product to advertise, which is often done covertly and without any outward acknowledgement that the garment they are wearing/holding/promoting was gifted by the designer) the concoction begins to become toxic in its social impact.
So I’ve recently found myself losing my interest in fashion, and it suddenly came to me why after reading this article.
I first got introduced to the world of fashion blogging around my sophomore year of high school. Up until that point, I had mainly focused on high “glossy” fashion: runway photos, fashion editorials, anything Alexander McQueen or Alexander Wang. In other words, I was mainly focusing on things I couldn’t, and probably will never be able to, afford. Nonetheless, I liked it. It was different from the stuff I saw my peers wearing. More creative, more intriguing, more challenging.
Then, the internet started buzzing about this 12-year-old girl named Tavi.
And I think that’s when the idea of the democratization of fashion really hit me (I remember talking about this in my job interview for MOCA). I couldn’t afford Alexander Wang, and god knows I couldn’t afford Alexander McQueen, but I could still use them as influences to create my own, personal style that didn’t necessarily adhere to social conventions of what was considered “chic” at the time. Admittedly, even when I was passionate about fashion, I never really obsessed over my style or wardrobe (budget limitations, general laziness, and other priorities aka AP classes). Though I never really fully submerged myself into fashion world, fashion blogging did allow my mild interest to become a somewhat-obsession over the course of high school. And whereas before I thought of fashion as a more frivolous activity, I started to regard it was much more respect.
Now, I think I’m back to square one. Mild interest, rather than somewhat-obsession. Fashion blogging has changed since the good old days. Plus, I’m starting to realize (actually, I’ve always realized this but it hasn’t started bothering me so much until recently) that the fashion world was, is, and probably always will be extremely superficial and hierarchal. There are certain aspects of the fashion industry I really like, even admire, but more and more, I’m finding my interest in fashion waning.
That being said, I still like fashion. I like looking at nice clothes, shopping, all that stuff. Just not with the fervor I used to. As for fashion blogging, the only personal fashion blog I really check regularly is Tavi’s. If you can even call it a fashion blog anymore. She posts much less regularly than she used to, and when she does, it’s not so much about fashion as it is about style, feminism, and personal stuff. Which actually works perfectly, since I’m pretty much headed in the same direction.
TL;DR I don’t like fashion as much as I used to.
You Can Tell Zaha Hadid Is An Architect
My love for this woman is endless.
Work it girrrrrl
Andrej Pejic, an androgynous model who works both the male and female runways
