It seems that it is impossible for us not to buy following trends. Trying to anticipate trends, following the existing ones (sometimes you have no choice, if you buy fast fashion/high street for example as no other stuff than current trends is available!), looking for the new ones, every women magazines or online articles and fashion gurus discuss current and upcoming trends.
But seriously, is there no other way?
When I say that I have no idea of what is trendy now or what will be trendy next people think I am posing, but it is true!
Because I have my own trends. Another way of shopping and styling is possible and more and more people are starting creating their own trends! Real trends, those not created by marketing agencies, are personal trends, developing in some communities where marketers search for them to make them a global trend.
So let’s stand on the first phase, when we create our own trends to express ourselves and not to please others or looking for their acceptance.
Not buying the trend has some important positive aspects in my opinion:
- First one, you buy less: in a world of fast changing trends where what is trendy this morning is completely out this evening (marketing inputs) you are less subject to fall for every new trend. In my personal experience of vintage hunter it can take even years to find exactly what I was looking for.
- Second thing: it’s really you. It’s your inner style, your own personality that you are expressing. I know that it is very hard to find your own style consciousness and awareness but it is an amazing journey and I suggest everyone to take it. You will learn so much about yourself and you will be able to dress for yourself without trying to please others or to look like them.
- Last but not least: you are free from manipulation (as far as we can be free from manipulation nowadays). Social trends mirroring in fashion trends as a whole are an interesting pattern to study and to find out more about different eras; modern micro-trends have nothing to do with that and they are just a consumeristic form of modern psychological slavery. Am I exaggerating? Maybe, but I am not that sure.
Am I happier since I stopped trying to be trendy? Yes I am. Because I am really being myself, expressing myself trough my own personal style and I could never go back from here as it took longtime to get there, to this point of my own personal fashion style awareness.
I am showing these pictures because they represent an example of this point where I am right now in not following trends. I am wearing here two vintage pieces, a yellow crochet top and a small rattan bag. They are both from La Maison G, a lovely physical shop in Reggio Emilia owned by Giorgia, who also sells online (her Instagram page is adorable and full of little gems!). They were in my personal wishlist for ages, two years I think. I have never seen them before but I imagined them and I knew exactly how they looked like in my mind. I didn’t settle for anything less or different until I found them exactly how I imagined them! One thing that you learn with vintage is definitely patience: your own trends will appear sooner or later, and they can do it in many different ways: in a market, on an Instagram page, in a shop on the other side of the world, in an online app…literally anywhere! And you will recognize them because they are exactly like they were in that little corner of your imagination when you created your own little personal trend!
Handmade denim trousers by Madame Ilary, flat sandals Clarks. Necklace handmade from Senegal + vintage. Earrings vintage.
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