Tag Archives: styling

Does Colour Really Matter?

YES! Colour’s dennote different meanings and feelings. Colours are also associated with various things based on peoples experience with them. For example, red and Green mean Christmas, whereas Black and Orange mean Halloween. Pink and Yellow are for Spring because of the flowers and dark colours are for fall and winter to mimic the weather. People have developed countless associations for colours, therefore, colour totally matters in fashion. I have created an example to demonstrate what I am talking about using a photoshop on an image of myself taken this summer.

The image on the left is the original image (which you may have seen in another blog post). I am wearing a yellow dress with black open toe heels, and a black purse with a beaded handle. I wore this look to an outdoor wedding in July. The wedding attire called for “casual dress”. I being desperate for any occasion to wear a fancy dress too, overdressed a little for this wedding (but not for a typical wedding). I chose a the dress because it felt summery, elegant, and romantic and I chose the accessories to add a slightly bold statement to the look.

The image on the right is the photoshopped version. I chose to use a colour palette that is completely wrong for this event and season. The colour palette I chose (red and green) denote winter, specifically Christmas. The look seems so bizarre given that I am clearly outdoors on a nice summer day. Perhaps if I were in a different setting this look wouldn’t seem so out of place. I find it funny that since I changed the colour of the bag to a shade of dark green, the bag almost appears to be made of velvet, which is absolutely a winter textile. Perhaps that is because my mind is relying on the visual cues to piece things together.

All in all, this simple example shows how colour completely changes the look and the message the look sends to viewers.

What Fashion Means to Me

Since I was a kid I have loved fashion. I love expressing myself through clothing and playing with my identity. Somedays fashion allowed me to express my emotions, and other days it allowed me to be someone else entirely. Fashion is the visual identity you construct to display to society. You are basically determining how your want to be perceived by the outside world, whether or not it is reflective of who you really are. Fashion is a language that is filled with meaning and assumptions, and my favourite part of fashion is trying to break those meanings and mess up the ‘norm’.

I, like most people went through “phases” as a kid. My style evolved overtime because who I was changed a lot. Let me show you just how many phases I had….

The Hippie Phase…

In Kindergarten I was notorious for wearing old dirty T-Shirts and a headband around my forehead

The Colour Phase

In early elementary school I went through a phase where my entire outfit was one colour from head to toe

The Girly Girl Phase

Around the same time, I went through a lip gloss, pink clothing, and fake dog in a purse phase (we all know the one)

The Cardigan Phase

Pretty much the rest of elementary school consisted of me wearing some kind of cardigan over every outfit I wore. I was obsessed with cardigans.

The Trying Too Hard Phase

When I started high school, I was a girl from a suburb going to high school in the city. All of the city kids were so “cool” and had a very individual style. I wanted to show that I had good style (which at this point, I did not. This is what we call the “awkward teen years”). I wore dresses with patterned tights, too much makeup (done horribly), boots with fringe or sparkles, and I looked a MESS.

The Grunge Phase

Then of course, as all teens do, you rebel against yourself and who you used to be and become the total opposite. For me this meant wearing thrift store mom jeans, old t shirts with a turtle neck underneath, combat boots, and my hair up at all times. I must admit that this was the comfiest phase and I still have days where I channel this phase.

The I Just Got a Job in Retail Phase

In my senior year of high school I got my first retail job at Topshop and I felt a need to up my fashion game since the people I worked with were all very stylish and being stylish was sort of a requirement for the job. I was really drawn to cigarette trousers, boyfriend jackets, leather boots, and knitwear. This phase ended my so called “Phases” and from here on, my style has not changed drastically but has evolved with current trends and who I am as a person