Fashion Publication piece ...

This article on fashion is the longer piece I wrote before editing - I thought, however, you may appreciate a slightly longer story -the same themes, obviously - it is the same article, only longer.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡ I guess it all begins when we see our first glimpse of a fashion magazine, when Enid Blyton can no longer fulfill us in the art of life through the perspective of our twelve-year old self, when a very sensible blue skirt, white blouse and pinafore, actually I wore a long pinafore when attending school in Lisbon, that was before I came to England to live with my family, when this kind of dressing wear is no longer acceptable, no, it must be bright yellow jeans, purchased at our first sighting and acknowledgment of such a thing as a high street fashion store, white or black shirt, with a tearful little clown motif on the breast pocket, and white fringed cowboy boots brought back from America by older brother who had travelled. A fashion magazine was a thing apart, your friends were in the midst of 'Jackie', and you wondered at that, was this your first recognition that girls are not all the same, people are not all the same, displaying their forays into the world of boyfriends, and your very own distinctive departure from such fickle interests as those you perceived were demonstrations that other publication's inappropriately targeting at young impressionable girls on the cusp of infantile crushes of one kind or another that were of no interest whatsoever to me. We believe we are different for seeking a world that specializes in the artistic, for me, in fashion, art, honed by a parent who wanted the very best for me that my world would be a world that sought questions and looked for answers to everything, a world that sought to represent the uniqueness of my youth. And, so, I noticed that my hair curled, it was long, and the models through those pages seemed to be forever smoothed and sleeked, and short-cut, how did they remain so smooth, I only used a hair straightener at the age of forty. At a young age we learn from sophisticated publications to accept and appreciate difference, to begin to understand style, to be sophisticated in the way you dressed as to who you were as a person. My parent's interest in made to measure clothes took on a new significance, suddenly, cut and cloth were of the utmost importance, fit too, nothing too small to be squeezed into, nothing too large to drown in, overall, home-made chic was okay, and I thought about beautiful well made clothes, in beautiful weaved cloths, this and my family were the most important parts of my life. My friends did not share my enthusiasm for sophisticated stories about middle class or upper class people, any tone or change in conversation which included the discussion of people of difference in their society were not of particular interest to them, and then again when visiting some of my friends at home, what i observed was they seemed to have to adhere to parents' peculiar psychologies, odd rules of one kind or another, I think I was seen as exotic by some of the parents, I was very conservative, and quite a proper person, it was shocking to me to be perceived, well, as a foreign person, a person of difference, simply because i came from abroad, we're only three and a half hours away in Madeira, for goodness sakes, it takes longer to get to Scotland from New Mills, however i accepted their little curiosities and smiled, they were okay, they didn't seem overly discriminatory, the English at home of my youth were respectful, however, some of the parents raised their brows at the clothes I wore, nice jeans, neat blouse, very curly long hair, a sweet voice, which my friends loved, I was on my own, I think, different, but my friends liked me for that, it's a very political thing, parents and youth, all with their own dynamics, and somehow we fitted together and got along.

However, I was the opposite in my tastes in literature, I was interested in societies different to my own, or that I perceived to be different, enough for me to feel a commonality and be a part of them, I often found as I do now we share the same ideas about fashion, politics, culture, art, so much to share our individual views which somehow fit. I did not rebel in the sense of changing my hair drastically, or take to wearing monotone or black, but I rebelled in not following such trends, I rebelled in subtlety, in being neat, and always looking at fashion prom the perspective of high fashion publications as a barometer in understanding the society I lived in from my newly learned perspective. I would show my mum what I was reading and she would be as enthusiastic as me, we would discuss Howie to go about making a particular little jacket that had caught our eye, and this was my world. However, when later in adult life I made some important changes to my life i was able to understand my capacity for undertaking such change and maintaining my intelligence honed by what I had chosen to read as I grew up. When I was young I was interested in my friends and what they had to say, but, really, at eleven, twelve, thirteen years of age, I lost interest very quickly if the conversation veered towards such comments as, 'isn't he gorgeous', referring to another twelve year old person, the word gorgeous to me seemed inappropriate to describe another child. Ditto their odd and peculiar interest, in primary school, can you imagine, in music pop bands such as the Bay City Rollers - I used to think, the Lord get me away from here. Angela De Freitas