Putting this outfit together and just getting ready today was a really conscious process. I guess since my last post, I've been really thinking about my presentation and how it's a constant negotiation of 'traditional' femme elements, and more subversive, perverted ideas of femme and sexuality, and how I balance them out with small things. Traditional avenues of femininity in clothes like pink lace, frothy pastels, they're all really beautiful to me but it's always been about the leather and the darkness, it balances and gives depth to really cute shit. I can't have one without the other. Big poufy skirt needs a leather accessories situation to balance it out.
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| I look stiff because I'm trying not to attack you. |
This outfit was particularly in honor of the moment I overheard someone complaining about "whatever happened to simplicity and class?" the other day and I just wanted to throttle them, because there is so much wrong with that statement, but instead I just pulled out the loudest patterns I had as a fuck you instead. Bring on audacity and loud colors and thick, heavy fabric and textures and a multiplicity of everything. It's loud and obnoxious and it means I am here and I want to say something, and you can't put me in place. For a long time I was super into more "modern" design -- you can go through my archives, I wax on about it lots -- and I still am! But I hate the thought of privileging one aesthetic over the other, at least for me. I'd love to dress in all CDG, Margiela, Yamamoto, Mandy Coon and Chalayan, but I can only afford thrift and vintage, and all that stuff tends to be less post-modern monochromatic neu classic and more bizarre, loud, and unique....so I do the best with what I have. It doesn't mean classic is better, and you know, when I hear someone complaining about that stuff I get annoyed, particularly the idea of class in relation to fashion. What does that even mean?
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| Me listening to the GOP telling me stupid shit. |
And when I was putting makeup on today, I was trying to decide if I really even wanted to. But you know, it makes me happy. I could write a lot about makeup and how I negotiate it as a feminist, but that is for another time. But I'm just thinking about how I pick and choose. I put makeup on, like a cat eye, bb cream, but I don't really make an effort to hide my blemishes anymore (and I do have quite a few right now). It's kind of a fuck you. When I wear more drastic lip colors, like my purples which I'm known for, or a blue, or even a black, I like to have flawless skin, so I am unreachable in a different way. It's a dance where I balance the desires and expectations of other people's with my own. What keeps me safe in the line of presentability in the sense that I look dressed up for something, but keeps me bizarre enough for them to not bother me at all. You feel me?
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| This is my come hither face. |
On kind of a related note, I don't know if I've told you but in Taipei, no one ever catcalls. It's wonderful, and I think it is going to be the thing I miss most. Just not having to worry about some creep. Of course, people stare (a lot.) but they never say anything, and I'm okay with that. I don't wear dramatic makeup here, because it's more conservative in general as a society, and I guess in most ways a lot of my makeup decisions are kind of an armor against creeps when I'm in America. Here, I don't need that, which is nice, though I miss it a lot. You know, negotiation depending on your situation. I'm safer here in a lot of ways but I've unconsciously given up some of the things that make me feel like me because of the safety of this place, and I miss my makeup armor. I'll be back to my old jaunt in a matter of days though, but still....
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| "VOGUE FOR ME" |
Anyway. I just wanted to write down what I was thinking when I put this outfit on today. A lot of the times an outfit post is just empty space, but it's nice to see the process behind it too, don't you think? Ok, I'm off. Have a wonderful day, cutie.
