The Definition of Style

I was wearing a white sweatshirt with Winnie the Pooh embroidered in black. I had bought it at Disney earlier that year, and it was about as mod as a seven-year-old could get at a place that vomited glitter and tiaras and boasted remarkably few roller coasters. My blonde bob had bounced as I walked and, god, I thought I was the coolest kid in town wearing matching denim dresses with my sister who, ten years older than me, has always been everything I have wanted to be and nothing I could ever understand.

My family and I were at my sister’s high school assembly for graduating seniors, watching her perform a dance to what was a Gap commercial at the time. While the other students embarrassed themselves with routines to “I’ll Be Missing You” and danced around in cone-shaped bras like Madonna, my sister and all of her friends owned the gymnasium that day in brightly colored sweaters and blue jeans. She was the essence of cool and fashion and style, and though I admit that much of my life has revolved around all of these things, I know nothing about any of them.

Fourteen years later, still mesmerized by style, the relationship is much more complicated. It is a complete and complex balance between being wholly and truly obsessed with what I’m wearing (if only in the moment) and a packed closet – or the contents of that closet strewn about the floor, bed, chair, and any other available surface – with the all too familiar panic that screams, “I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR.”

I prescribe to style like religion or a highly addictive drug. It is no opiate, though. Instead, it is the ultimate interactive higher power. Style can allow one to see the world through rose-colored glasses. Literally. The whole world of style is meant to be felt, touched, embraced, and even repelled by. Just when it seems like all of the creativity has been used up, there’s nothing left, that Acne splurge was a huge waste because this style thing is just not going to work out — the most brilliant thing happens: the season changes.

Or inspiration comes by means of an elderly couple strutting down the sidewalk in complementary but not quite matching outfits. Or, at my some days demeaning, other days entertaining retail job, a customer exits the fitting room wearing the one piece I have despised since I first laid eyes on it like she has just put on pure gold, and my entire perception of that piece changes.

Much like the woman I look up to – always ten years ahead of me – style feels unattainable. I strive for and crave it so deeply but can never seem to fully attain whatever it is that she has. It can always be improved, one-upped, or flipped. It is frustrating and (for reasons that some will never understand) filled with heartache. But the creativity, the process of trying on seven tops and thirteen shoes before finding the one despite having picked out an outfit weeks in advance, and the constant inspiration from the most unlikely places is what I have come to understand as style. This entire opinion could change tomorrow, though, because the beauty is in not knowing.

Written by Rebecca Day. See this week’s prompt here.