Without End (Fashion)

In the midst of the chaos that is life and life eternal, one would think that the clothes one chooses to wear and the accessories one chooses to add and the hair style one chooses to adopt would not matter in the slightest.  And those things shouldn't matter.  They really shouldn't matter.  Yet throughout the ages, they have and they do.

In some sense, fashion is important simply because it gives people something to defy.  Sometimes when you feel powerless, when the only choice you feel you have in a day is the clothing you decide to put on, that choice to go with or defy expectations is liberating.  I've seen men and women of all different ideals use fashion as a platform throughout the centuries I've lived, and it never ceases to amaze and inspire me.

It's such a simple thing, what we choose to wear and how we make ourselves look on the outside, but it sends a message.  I've dressed as a peasant and I've dressed as a movie star and everywhere in between.  People treat you differently, you feel differently, you even act differently as a result.

Now, I tend to wear things that let me blend, that let me not be seen, but there were times in history when I was not afraid to stand out.  Times when I started wearing slacks while most other women still wore skirts.  Times long before that when I dared to show a bit of my ankle in public.  I was a rebel back then.  Nowadays, opting to show nothing more than a little bit of ankle would be a whole different kind of rebellious.

Some of those things, the old ways, they don't seem to return, but others do.  People seem to have a strange sense of nostalgia for times they never knew.  It baffles me, but I can't say that I dislike seeing people dressing in period attire from the time I was young.  I simply smile to myself when they get it mostly right and chuckle when they get it horribly, horribly wrong.

In some ways, it doesn't matter if they mess up that aspect of the past, but in others it really, really does matter - a lot.

Fashion may seem frivolous, but it doesn't have to be that way.  It hasn't always been that way.  Fashion my never end, it's existence may never change, but what it has stood for has certainly morphed through the eras.  I'm proud of the secret wardrobe I hold of all the different fashions from throughout those eras.  Some items will never again see the light of day because I'm half afraid they would crumble to dust after 250 years of existence.  Yet it's still good to know they're there, that a part of the past is hidden away in my closet.  And also to remember that there was a start to the fashions I possess.  It reminds me that even though I'm going to last forever, there was a time back before I existed.  It's humbling.  And it reminds me, too, that sometimes the sames that seem so frivolous, like fashion, can be the most important of all.