On style, habits, values
Focus on showing up in the world and the rest will take care of itself
God I love an idle Pinterest scroll. I adore those dappy little digital collages of outfits and handbags and pictures of coffee shops or whatever. Gazing at those I fill in all the white space with how I perceive myself inhabiting the collage, swanning around its little world confident that I look the part.
Like everyone else at school in 1998, I used to make magazine collages for our school books and olders, picking artwork, editorials and product shots and gluing them together under sticky back plastic. I loved those. Then in 2006 I started getting MyStyleDiary’s headless outfit shots for inspiration (and found Susie Bubble through her profile there!) By 2008 I liked the little product flatlays of the bloggers I followed, and before I found Polyvore, to make them myself, I tried shooting some by lying my stuff on a bedsheet and playing with the contrast settings. Nowadays I've got all my gear uploaded to Indyx so I can chuck it together to my heart's content.
Since Pinterest added Shuffles, its own internal collage function I've been mostly browsing other people's creations, I don't think I've made any of my own. It seems to go well with the kick back against the great capsule wardrobe push I accidentally trained my algorithm to in 2022/23, which were devoid of context out of a pseudo-universal asceticism. The new collages feel dense, idiosyncratic, complicated, referential instead of reverential. They nod to films, music videos, moods and movements and layer them all up into little legible lifestyles. The feeling from viewing them reminds me of the feeling of listening to lofi girl, or reading Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. It's soothing evocation rather than explanation.
The coherence of these colleges is intensely appealing, but it's also where it all falls apart. Their meticulous internal logic, like an editorial’s, can't translate out into the messy real world of bin bags, smear tests, washing up liquid and rain. Did you ever have a set of paper dolls with their little outfits? It reminds me of those. I kind of love it, because it’s about playing with clothes and the signs and allusions of them.
The thing about all those aesthetics though, is that they are of course total bollocks. In the real world if I tried to dress like that it would feel a lot like like fancy dress, because much as I love my dark academia/frazzled English woman/fisherman’s daughter or whatever else, it’s more fun to do it the other way around. Coherence is a bit overrated in my book, and it's ok if you have to zoom out a bit to spot it.
So rather than trying to unfold a Pinterest collage into it's big enough for my real life, I want to be like the best dressed people irl, who live life and let their style emerge from it. I find this comes most easily with interiors, because I am more patient with homeware (I think because they’re more expensive). Show up in the world and do as much of what you love as you can, be drawn to what you enjoy, and let things develop from there. Those make-believe Pinterest scrolls are a delightful distraction, but form’s got to follow function you know? For years I thought William Morris’s ‘useful or beautiful’ was a total cop out, mate, your gear should ideally be both, surely?!? Anyway, the dude’s a dead legend so I’m not looking to start a fight. Go out and do your thing and see what you bring back. Your only aesthetic is your own life.
Excellent post. This line made me laugh > Anyway, the dude’s a dead legend so I’m not looking to start a fight.
(I think you'd win the fight, for what it's worth.)