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"...what we wear signifies who we are in our heads. our looks say so much about us, a window into who we are. we have different beliefs, feelings, likes, and loves, so why would the way we look be exempt from this?" — Rob Phillips, LCF
𖤝 i started consistently blogging about my personal style online around 11/12 years old (~2011). my blogspot had many names but the longest held one was lait fraise (in english: "strawberry milk"). i had always been drawn to blogging, first through a photography blog i updated for about a year before i decided to fashion blog. around the time of my fashion blog's genesis (and before i was a personal style blogger, i was a Fashion™ blogger--iykyk) i was obsessed with polyvore, i was trying out tumblr again specifically for fashion inspiration, i was reading fashion magazines and books to delve a bit deeper into that world, i was collecting my favorite style.com runway pictures, and sites like lookbook.nu were starting to become fixtures in my life. i think i was even taking sewing classes and attending a garment-making workshop for kids at a local art college (project runway girlies, wya???). the more i explored fashion online, the more i realized how much freedom i had in how i express myself through getting dressed.
in 2014, i wrote this for a reflective birthday post "I change every year, for better or for worse, and that's my favorite part about living: seeing myself change and grow." like Meghan Smith says, personal style is also personal thoughts about yourself. how i choose to dress myself is a core part of how i reflect on being myself, throughout all the evolutions. maybe my affinity for exploring my personal style and the evolution of my taste is one of my favorite ways to enjoy living.
i also just love keeping a blog, customizing it, and updating it over time. blogging is a practice i can't leave behind yet. i have been saved time and time again by a random sincere blog post. i've always had a desire to connect online. i've always been a writer. i've always loved to share my creative expressions. blogging still brings all of that together.
alice sparkly kat, shared this essay entitled why i don't run ads. as i read their thoughts, i felt it said everything that i could say:
"For those who don’t know, this is what it was like when you googled something around ten years ago: you got mostly Yahoo! Answers links but you also got independently run websites by real people and well cared for blogs. You got forums where regulars debated things amongst themselves. You got random bad advice such as the tip to put garlic up your vagina as birth control. You also got thoughts on philosophers and the mystical and long stories about tormented relationships.
In other words, you got real people and real stories. You got personalities. You search for information and you find that people, funny little people, are the things that contain and convey information.
For me, this is the beauty of the internet. I love the internet. I loved those geocities websites where all of the text was times new roman and neon. I loved their tiled backgrounds. I love them because these things mean that a real person made the website and worked hard on it."
[...]
But that doesn’t matter because I’m writing for people. If even one person is into what I’m writing about, then I feel emotionally satisfied. That’s the thing that motivates this website.
That kind of pressure, I can write under. I grew as a writer in fanfiction spaces where people beleaguered writers constantly for the next update. That’s enjoyable to me and fine. But earning views and likes? I can’t deal with that psychologically. It actually conflicts with what I feel the internet is for. My opinion is that the internet is an archive, a memory space of sorts, where human beings show their strangest selves. The internet is not capitalism’s popularity contest. It’s primarily a nostalgic space and that’s how most people will try to use it."
enjoy ti grande dame :)
