Being a passionate-for-fashion gal, I always spend a considerable amount of my time flicking through magazines scrutinizing people, hairstyles, trends and outfits. Designer fashion has always been fascinating and inspiring, plus it looks great on models, but what about the real people? Can they actually pull it off?
Thus, my attention has always been captivated by street fashion, the fashion of the real people. Blogs like the Sartorialist and Face Hunter featuring street fashion have actually been such an online hit mainly because of the approachability and wearability they infuse to fashion trends, as well as the plethora of original ideas fashion-lovers can track down from other trend-setters.
Cyprus has seen it all a bit different though in the "street-fashion" scene. With Fashion Police pages, it doesn't seem like a celebration of fashion but a route to making a mockery of one's style choices. As a bunch of mixed up thoughts have occupied my mind for a while, I thought I 'd share a few observations, just to get them off my chest.
"Strangely" enough, you always seem to get all these recycled faces, these rich, polished, groomed-to-the-last-cell ladies wearing their high labels and their every-inch-designer outfits on the "in" pages. The pictures are always accompanied by extra flattering commentary of course, with full details on which designer each of them is wearing. As for the "out" pages, well they are always filled with all these regular "unknown" women, just "nobodies", with less than perfect bodies and some sort of fashion disorientation. It seems like the photographers have been doing "a good job" taking very specific pictures of normal women with - yes - unflatterring outfits, yet oddly enough not once has a common mortal been featured in any of the best dressed pages.
I walk around the city all the time and I see exceptionally beautiful women wearing garments from the high street - maybe a few with a hint of the designer element - yet looking nothing less but mesmerizing, with far more interesting looks than the supposedly "elite" ladies. This country is probaly one of the very few places on earth where people are somebodies because of their money. Understandable it may be in a population of less than a million, where everyone knows everybody, and with the lack of a proper star system which means that - and I am stating this without meaning to sound insulting - importers of electrical appliances, civil enjineers, advertisers, supermarket and boutique owners, and other local businessmen/women become the "celebrities", "the hot stars", and of course the regulars at such columns, being featured as the most beautiful, the most fashionable and the most stylish of the cypriot kind.
But fashion is not represented in the wardrobe of a woman with unlimited money and a closet filled to the brim with all the latest designer creations. Fashion is reflected upon the wardrobe of a regular woman who might be a bit strapped for cash, but is constantly experimenting with all her raw material, taking advantage of all her sources, recycling her older clothes and updating her wardrobe every season with new items of the key-trends and while putting her personal nifty touches to her outfits manages to look exquisite.
Just to make a clarification, this post does not turn against all these wealthy ladies. I mean, they just happen to be financially priviledged, with overflowing bank accounts and flourishing family businesses - luck on them. My problem stands within the editors of these lifestyle magazines, who have created this provocative and pretentious, I dare say, culture of the newly-riched "elite".
And one thought for the finale: What gives you real style and commendable existence is not a mount-everest-sized pile of bank notes. What you are and what you have achieved in your life as a person is what truly makes you somebody.
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