Before I got all worried about what I was doing with my life, and began the process of madly de-cluttering, and setting
goals, I had a wacky style that developed from waking up hungover, rolling out of my messy bed into a messy room with a huge closet full of mismatched costume shop cast-offs and constant thrift store missions, and throwing on ensembles of all kinds of everything, to hit the coffee shop downstairs from my flat in the Lower Haight of SanFrancisco.
I regret that I only have pictures of my tamer, less colorful outfits. The days of sticking plastic aliens and sharks into my ponytail to spice up my crappy hair cut from my (flash-in-the-pan) boyfriend when we were drunk, or trying to put together the goofiest wing-nuttiest outfit possible, and then figuring out that I really liked it and just
had to take it outside, have truly fallen into the un-documented cracks.
When I packed to go to Osaka,Japan (in 1998) late into the morning after a party that was still raging in our apartment, the downstairs apartment, and the apartments to the side of us, I just had to stuff my fluffy orange petticoat and blue dress into my massive duffel bag. I figured I would look like I was from outer space, but hey, I had to be me!
Much to my surprise, my style really paled in comparison to the wackiness of the outfits that crowds of kids were sporting in Amerika Mura.I saw girls with multiple petticoats, elf shoes that curled up at the toes, circles painted on their cheeks....
A street artist in Osaka told me about the magazine
FRUITS, which I had not heard of at the time, but have since run into in a bazillion SF bookstores. There is also a
Fruits-japanese street fashion flickr group.
Recently I found a flickr group:
wardrobe_remix, that is not wing-nutty but
is meant to encourage people to take more risks in their outfits. People post pictures of their own outfits taken on days that they feel like they're rocking them. It looks like fun. Getting dressed used to be fun for me, and I believe that at some point it will be again, even if I don't go all the way out there and dress like a wing nut. Maybe I could try being classy but flashy, or something.....I'm 30, which my friend Rita informed me is the new 20 (That's good news!)...so I need a cool new style to rock.
