chinchillas don't sweat

[avrelia]

I haven't posted anything interesting for some time. Why? No particular reason, beside that I didn't want to write anything intersting - or to write anything and worry whether it is intersting or not.

I am looking for a skirt, and possibly a dress.

Long ago - or not so long, ascian3 made a post about formal dress on some occasion, I commented, and then I started thinking about clothes in more general view: what I am wearing and why.

If you are curious, here are the results of my deep thinking:

1) I am random
2) I wear whatever is there
3) I am expressing my mood by wearing this or that
4) in some ways, I don't care what to wear
5) in other ways, I love to wear pretty things

Somehow it all works together. I am not sure whether I have a style of my own or not, but I definitely have ideas about things I want to wear that always get my in trouble with the world.

it is the mixture of personality and circumstances that got me there - as for everybody else. I cannot blame everything on the environment, but it did play some role.

Clothes shopping didn't have the same flavour when I grew - and where I grew up - I had very nice clothes bought for me when I was a child, but by the time I was a teenager shopping for clothes just didn't have much sense. I think we mostly used taylors and skilled friends with the magazine Burda Moden. I had school uniform - which eliminated the problem of what to wear till the high school, I had some nice clothes, some casual stuff for street, one pair of jeans at the time - I was pretty well off. Some of the clothes were second-hand, some were even my mom&aunt desses (vintage!)

In sum, clothes just appeared in my life, and I had mostly not choose, or find the right clothes, but to decide what I want to wear out of what is available. This situation suited me just fine. I rarely wanted any specific kind of clothes in the eighties - I hated the eightied fashion passionately.
After when I wanted something specific, I either didn't do anything and eventually forget about it, or find a taylor to make it.

THe thing is, i never learned to shop for clothes - I mean, I do it from time to time, but it seems to bring moreanxiety, confusion, and exhostion than satisfaction. I tend to have a semitransparent idea of what i want to have, and I try to find it - too often without anything resembling success. Possibly, those ideas of mine are somehow wrong - i mean is it reasonable to want a velvet bodice and a patchwork skirt made of satin diamond of green, blue and red colors? Where would exactly I wear it? Especially since I wanted to wear it with a threehon hat (which I also don't have)

Some of my ideas of what I'd love to wear just don't work out in reality.

Reality also discourages my fashion sense in the following way:

I am expressing myself through things I wear - and it way too often goes not the way people around me look like. I am not strong enough to not care what other people think and how they look at me. One of the moments that made me unhappy in BC is all those looks I was getting every time I felt pretty and dressed accordingly.

This is not the case in Toronto. I honestly don't know how one should dress here to get a surprised look. But I myself became too wary and weary and boring in my clothing choices.

I still want a threehorn hat.

But I will settle for a nice peasant-style dress or skirt possibly with embroidery, ankle-length.

Comments

[gobi-rex.livejournal.com]

i never learned to shop for clothes - I mean, I do it from time to time, but it seems to bring more anxiety, confusion, and exhaustion than satisfaction.

Oh yes!

When I was small, most of my nice clothes were second hand. And I never had much choice in what to wear because well, I didn't have a lot to choose from. This and decision making problems = a frightening lack of personal style. I'm trying, though. And I totally identify with your points 1-5.

Hee, I remember I had a pair of dusty pink jeans that I wore non-stop, partly because it was my only pair and partly because I really really liked them (this was right after the uniform rule ended in 6th grade). Actually I don't have much against school uniforms, as long as they don't resemble the itchy brown horrors we had to wear in Russia.

OMG, speaking of Burda, I had some really cool sweaters from that magazine (knitted by my mother and my cousin).

I was in for a considerable culture shock when I arrived in Eugene, Oregon, the capital of hippie casual dressing. I mean, I was this uptight city-girl. I really yearned to wear pretty and interesting things and couldn't reconcile it with the ultra-casual and kinda boring outfits sported by my peers (it was the grunge era, too). It took me a very long time to make peace with it.

And I'd love to have a tricorn hat, too!

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

The worst thing about that uniform was - every week sewing fresh cuffs to it. I didn't think much of its ugliness, but I was glad to be able to wear the blue uniform, allowed from 8th grade.

[gobi-rex.livejournal.com]

My main issue with our uniforms was the scratchy/itchy factor and that I had to wear the ever sliding tights/pantyhose.

Oh yes, those lacy cuffs. I remember there were several varieties of patterns and shapes, and I always lustd after the ones my classmates had.

[ascian3.livejournal.com]

I can't say that I have ever, myself, had the urge to wear a threehorn hat. But I'm glad that somebody does. The world is a better place with threehorn hats in it.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

It really is.

I don't think I quite be able to wear such a hat, but I like to imagine myself in it. ;)

[jonesiexxx.livejournal.com]

It IS hard to shock people here. Especially in my neighbourhood.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

Not even with a threehorn hat, I guess. ;)

[claudia-yvr.livejournal.com]

I'm really sorry to hear you felt so uncomfortable in Vancouver! It also surprises me, since there's such a variety of people here that it's hard to be singled out for being different because, well, everyone is. Maybe it was just an awkward time, when you were first adjusting to life abroad?

I thought of you the other day while listening, idly and in total incomprehension, to some colleagues of mine talking in Russian in a corner of the lunch room. Most of the time everyone speaks English, but every now and then there are small clusters of people chatting in their native tongue, whether Cantonese or German or whatever.

Incidentally, my attitude towards clothes is similar to yours, and I sometimes come up with rather random outfits ;-) My mother still sometimes makes me clothes from her Burdas. I especially adore long skirts with colourful, ethnic touches, and could spend hours wandering through the sari shops on Main.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

I feel somewhat embarrassed for not loving Vancouver the way it deserves. When I look back, I can see that due to my own issues, moods and problems at the time, Vancouver didn’t really stand a chance. No city would.

Besides, Vancouver is pretty different from Moscow – and for many people I know, it is a huge advantage. For me it wasn’t. When I lived in Moscow, the way people dressed seemed perfectly normal and variable, and I couldn’t say that it is any kind of Moscow style. Now, when I go there – people often do seem overdressed for me. :) So, it all in many senses is a matter of the point of view. (then, maybe, most of interesting people live not in Richmond, but somewhere else?)

I miss a lot of the Vancouver’s places and things. I miss early morning walks on Commercial Drive, I miss sunsets in the Boundary Bay park (my favourite place in the Lower Mainland), I miss noisy sparking creeks, I miss seeing mountains every time I look up north…

I so need to scan our old pictures!