My new mantra for my personal image. Feel free to join me! (copy and paste to your heart’s content)
and have a great weekend.
much love to you all, Vivienne
fast fashion vs slow style
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Great logo! I sense a meme going around.
After reading your post yesterday on doing the right thing, and reading the article a commenter posted, I decided my style slogan would now be "slow style." You call it a mantra, which fits much better. I think I'm going to lift your mantra to fit my wardrobe and my life!
To me, "slow" means that the style evolves, doesn't stay stuck, but is thoughtful and enjoyable in its change. It's not stressful, wasteful, reactive, destructive, polluting like fast food and fashion are.
Slow choices are so good that they are savored
for a long time and remembered long after we are finished with them — just like a great "slow food" meal, only "slow style" is so much longer-lasting. It feels like an investment in a quality of life both as we live it ourselves and as we impact the rest of the world.
Thinking about it, every piece of clothing that I can bring to mind from the past that I loved would fit the slow style mantra–perfect choices for me, worn till they fell apart, all feeling of-the-moment at the time but actually timeless styles for me.
The perfect green blouse that turned my hair strawberry–it had long bell sleeves that for some reason made me feel like Lady Guineviere (I don't even remember now who Lady Guiniviere is supposed to be!). And there was the navy shirt that fit like a dream and turned me into an hourglass. The best photo ever taken of me was in that shirt.
The light purple swingy summer dress that I wore as a girl to every memory-making occasion for as many summers as I could.
The red plaid wool skirt that cheered up winter.
The cranberry soft shirt dress that worked in every season with everything. The cinnamon sueded sheath that did something wonderful to my eyes and summer-tanned skin. The black jumper with a colorful striped pattern in the bodice that made it perfect over every turtleneck and blouse in my winter closet.
The textured ivory business suit that let me stand out from the crowd of blacks and dull greys early in my corporate career.
The block-printed green and gold maxi-skirt that was just-right fashion forward back in the day and would be so right now.
All of these pieces would be stylish and today if they suddenly reappeared in my wardrobe (and fit my age and figure!). Oh, how delightful if they could reappear. To me, that's what slow style would be about. Now I want to feel that way about everything I own!
Of course, "style" is the distinction from "fashion." To me, style means that it is about all things "style"–personal style, classical style principles, aesthetics that come from noticing a lot and choosing carefully with eye, heart, and head.
I used to struggle with the definition of "style". The word seemed so ephemeral, almost meaningless, though it pointed to something important. It's not surprising that I also felt like I didn't have style, though I wanted to. Looking back, I was loaded with style in my youth, I just didn't understand or appreciate it. And now I see that I have style today too. If it's going to be slow from now on, then maybe I'll notice the style part of it more often since it has little to do with the confusion of the churn aspect of fashion.
There's a great blog that's worth a look for anyone thinking about the personal and global implications of fashion. It is onedressprotest.com and is a smart and intimate account of one woman wearing one timeless black dress every day for a year. Sounds a bit crazy, but it's fascinating, and her evolution over the past few months is truly enlightening.
Love this idea, very thoughtful. As I grow older I find myself not only aiming for slow food and slow style, but a slow life altogether. Observing so many participants on a endless treadmill of consumerism I find I want to do the opposite and live with less.
I'd like to request a capsule of black paired with winter brights, but am wondering if that is possible? Can you have a capsule without severely restricting colors? I would like to have an assortment of bright colors near my face, but don't know if it would work with a capsule.
Thank you for this, I adore the idea. I'm far beyond fast fashion (age-wise), although I do dip into Forever21 for their fun jewelry. I like to thrift, shop for vintage and in consignment store, for previously loved pieces. They make me smile more : >
I am HOOKED on your blog and have visited it multiple times since I found it last year! I “ran into” it while searching how to pack a capsule for a trip to Germany, with the goal of looking good, being comfortable, and everything had to fit in a backpack as I was moving to different hostels every night. It was a wonder epiphany! I realized I should apply the capsule principle to my wardrobe to always have things that matched other things to make packing a piece of cake. (I chose black, white, and khaki for that trip, btw) But then I realized that I kept buying clothes, or “essentials” recommended all over the internet for a good, basic foundation in the wrong colors – I have strawberry blonde hair, light skin that freckles, and green eyes with amber specs. I just feel better in warmer colors, such as browns, greens, teal/aquas, and oranges. I started the process of slowly purging the black – and still working on it, but its so hard to part with suits and things that you have spent a lot of money on!
I am also a shop-o-holic and have tried fasts, but have crashed and burned a couple times. This time, I am sticking to it! I found Project 333 and thought it might help me decide what I really love and want to wear if I can complete a couple of cycles, and what I can donate. Your blog lessons, along with moving everything that doesn’t fit into P33 into a separate closet makes me much more objective with my culling process! I love the way I feel when I walk into my closet now and like everything that I see hanging up – everything is so cohesive and “me”. I place hangers in the little spaces on the wire rack and have decided that once the project is over, I am not going to the old way of cramming everything in, but following “one in – one out”. I have been paying more attention to finer made goods and specifically made in USA (but that one is very difficult!) and am preplanning for my shopping fast to be over. For each month that I complete P33, I am putting $166 toward new goods, but I can only redeem it once I am down with the cycle. I found Kika Paprika last week and have fallen in love with the idea of their company and like a lot of the styles. (about $1,000 budgeted for “upgrades” and accessories)
Ok, so that was a long winded introduction, but I was hoping you can help me build a good, solid foundation using your eye for cuts and color. I am pretty casual; at work, I am uniformed four days out of the week and wear jeans on “casual Friday”. During my recreational time, I attend a lot of sporting events or go to pubs/dive bars with friends, hike (and other outdoorsy stuff) and tend to my “fur factories”. I really love the idea of cashmere sweaters and silk blouses, but realistically, it will get ruined and it doesn’t really fit into my needs right now. I have a bad problem of buying for the life I want, not the life I currently lead. I need easy care, durable fabrics.
I love the colors in this painting ( http://www.john-howe.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/1882.-Thomas-Moran-Cliffs-of-the-Upper-Colorado-River-Wyoming-Territury.jpg). Right now, my P33 capsule is dark brown, light brown, medium brown, cream/ivory, teal, orange, and purple. Those are the colors I would like to build a permanent wardrobe around, with the addition of olive/moss green. I get confused with demin. Do I count that as a color? And thus, have to add navy to my list of colors – even though I don’t like wearing it on top…or treat denim as a neutral, since I can wear everything with it? Oh, also, I live in Seattle and am a big fan of layering as I am cold natured. I am also under 30 and would like to dress my age – I don’t like boxy, pastel, prints (with the exception of plaid, stripes, dots, and some animal here and there). My last purchases before P33 were a turquoise and cream sailor shirt (to complement the cream and navy one) and a deep turquoise and purple plaid from LL Bean.
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