Your Style Mastery: What is Style?
Nuances of the word style make it possible for one to differentiate between the various uses made of the word. We are going to approach it from aspects of its application to Visual Arts, fashion, and our own mode of personal presentation.
Of course these are not exactly totally separate, Visual Arts are influenced by technology, politics, fashion, and individual artist’s expression. Fashion is influenced by economics, politics, Visual Arts, an influential person’s tastes, media hawking, and teenage rebellion, not to mention nostalgia and other emotional states of being. Technology, to a lesser degree can also influence fashion. When bicycles became popular in the late 19th and early 20th century Europe and USA, woman’s fashions didn’t so much as evolve as revolt. From bustles to flapper dresses is a huge change that took less than two generations to occur.
So in the past one’s taste was constrained by fashion dictates (and social morés). Nowadays, we are more free to find, even develop, our own personal styles or to join a stylistic movement that resonates. Take, for example, hair styles. A woman will wear her hair long or short, bouffant or natural, braided or flowing even sculpted if she has the time and inclination. Some women even shave their heads. In no other age has hairstyle been so unaffected by outside dictates. Even men’s hairstyles are less a statement of social class than of fashion and taste (although that is one area where men have less freedom than women).
Have you looked at your personal style recently? What does it say about you? If you were free to wear whatever clothing, shoes, and jewelry you would like, would it be what you wear now? How about the decor of your home. Is that your style or someone’s else? (Or is it just a haphazard collection of accumulated belongings?) Look for this topic in next Monday’s post.