An Evolution: The dawning of a passion

While sitting down to have an afternoon chat with a stylish friend of mine, we inevitably started talking about fashion.  People our age are usually talking about the future - what will we do for a living, where will we live, when will we marry, who will we marry.  But my friend asked me a question that took me back to my past - "How did you get interested in fashion?"

Of course that is a question I have pondered over when I'm lost in the depths of my own mind, but I have never really formulated an actual response.  I didn't need to; no one had ever asked me before, and I was quite happy living with some abstract understanding of how I came to fall so deeply in love with fashion.

Eventually, however, ignorance can no longer be ignored, so even though I didn't manage to give a good response to my friend at the time, I will attempt one here.

I can say with certainty that I had no interest in fashion as a child.  My mom used to watch Fashion Television (RIP Fashion Television and Jeanne Beker's legacy) and I vividly remember thinking, "This is so weird.  No one wears these kind of clothes!"  Not a statement usually heard from a fashion lover.  The first time I had a connection with fashion was replete with stress and anxiety.  It was grade 7, the most cliquey year of my life.  I realized that in order to be considered cool or popular, you had to have a certain interest in fashion.  And so that was how I started telling people I liked fashion, and that yes, of course I wanted to be a fashion designer.

But don't worry, this is not as bleak as it sounds.  As I changed schools in grade 8, I was surrounded by a better group of people, and it allowed me to look at fashion from a different perspective.  Although I knew deep inside that I was not cut out to be a designer, I started to realize that I actually did like fashion.  I started watching runway shows on Youtube (as I've said before, Versace Spring/Summer 2008 was the show that started it all), watching Fashion Television, and familiarizing myself with designers.  After having lived through a short, horrible moment of not knowing what I wanted to be, I came across an editor's letter.  In it, the editor was describing the first time she realized she wanted to become a fashion editor.  And it was at that moment that I had the same revelation.

It made so much sense.  Before my revelation, I had begun to discover how much I loved writing and how much it was actually a part of me.  I had my first 100% in short story writing in early elementary, one of my teachers had told me how she could tell I expressed myself better through the written word, and the the first time I was published was in grade 5 (a short quote in the book Dear Teacher).  The joy I get seeing my published name before a bunch of text which I have strung together in a way no one else has is incomparable (writing is almost like a fingerprint, no?).  What could be better than combining my love for fashion and writing?

I've said before that we are always learning in fashion.  After realizing how little I knew about the decades of fashion, I desperately cut out a newspaper article chronicling the different decades and their signature styles.  I stuck it up on my cork board for many years, until the pages yellowed, hoping I would eventually know it by heart.  I finally relegated it to the recycling bin last month.  And there was a time when I decided to upgrade to reading Vogue, only to come out of it completely winded and exhausted.  I was not yet advanced enough to read Vogue.  Although I can and have been reading Vogue for a couple years now, I am nowhere near finished learning.

This recalling of events has gone way beyond answering the question of how I got interested in fashion, but it is all part of a larger evolution.  Each event led to another, and each event had a purpose.  Now when I look back, I see how ever since childhood, I have been making tiny steps towards what I now know as a burning passion.  One small (Louboutin-clad) step at a time.

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