effort-less

The bulk of my days are spent at work. Six days a week, I while the hours away attending to the superficial needs of shoppers and putting up with the attitude, the snobbery, the bad manners, the self-centred demands of customers shopping to fulfil some need. Okay this is not fair - there are plenty of decent, polite customers too, but they make up like, 25% of the total shoppers out there. 50% of the time, customers don't treat you like a human being - they're not rude, they're just indifferent and inpervious to the fact that you are too, a person, and thus should be treated with some respect and acknowledgement.

But that's not the point of this post (I digress waaaay too frequently). The point is that since this is how I spent 8 out of 24 hours a day, 6 days a week, getting dressed feels like a bother a lot of the time. For one thing, the botton half of me has to be jean-clad, as decreed by my employers. The top consists of a black standard-issue polo. Feet are usually covered in the form of flats or sneakers (the two most comfortable options for standing in all day).

That leaves the top, and well, I lack the faculty to come up with imaginative variations of the look. Especially when said look will be promptly discarded as soon as I step into the shop. That makes the total time spent in the look about an hour and a half each day, during the 45 minutes it takes for me to get to work and back each way. Mostly I opt for a slouchy tank or tee.

Hence this spread in French Vogue by Peter Lindbergh came as a balm to my rather bored and lazy fashion soul -

It is all too easy for a person like me to slip into fashion sloth mode, and now I realise I don't need to feel so sheepish about slipping into my get-out clause of an outfit. I just to need to channel the right mood. I may lack the long sweep of hair - shorn crop is more accurate a description - and high-waist flares are death to me, but the langour of the shoot appeals to me. It's a bit retro (that always works like a charm on me) and very clean and very simple at the same time, which how I like my look - fuss-free, but inspired. I like the way the woman in the photos doesn't look like she's trying too hard to look different. She looks like she has a life. She looks like she has other interests. She knows what she's wearing is enough, and she moves on.

That's what simple T-shirts and jeans can mean - it can mean that you don't need to get all dressed up because you don't need to bow down to a dress code and you're not looking to impress. You have your own aims and purposes and goals (mine is just to scrape enough $$ together to take off to Europe) and you don't feel the need to express that through clothing - it is enough that you know it in your heart. Meanwhile, poking around in a comfy tee and your favourite worn jeans feels like a luxury - let the rest of the world get all trussed up and make their impressions, I don't need to care about that, for now.

Comments

missx said…
All too true. The only problem is, long limbed and ultra tall girls are able to wear more casual looks and still seem elegant/put together. I, unfortunately, am not long limbed and tall at all, so I'm a bit more limited.

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