Life through the eyes of a fashion guru

One thing that I’ve always loved about fashion is its sense of fantasy.

There are few things that I enjoy more than getting dressed, because clothes allow you to be whomever you please at any time. Example: in tenth grade I went to a Good Charlotte concert with a few friends.

The crowd consisted of 99 percent punk-rocker (or faux punk-rocker) high-school aged adolescents. I was the farthest thing from a punk rocker, but I had one pair of Volcom Stone pants and a studded belt, and for the night I blended in.

Clothes allow us to enjoy the Halloween experience of being someone else every day.

Earlier this week I went to an open house at a country club, and you can bet that I had pearl earrings and a cashmere cardigan on.

But this ability to transform into whatever stereotypical being we desire at the time presents an interesting conundrum: if we’re always pretending, how do we know who we really are?

Modern culture allows us to fake a great many things: tanning salons can make us look like we’ve been in the sun for the last week, shoes and clothes can make us taller and slimmer and (for the right amount of money) a plastic surgeon can completely re-arrange our faces and suck the fat from out bodies. We can be as fake as we want to be. If we decide that reality is too tough and we can’t come to grips with who we are, we can at least fake an exterior image.

Is this escape from reality healthy or harmful? Where is the line between enjoying a stint outside our sometimes grueling everyday world and being a fake?

Yes, it’s fun to wear something out of the ordinary or go to a place that you wouldn’t normally go. It’s healthy to try new things, and it’s the variety of experiences that shape our personalities and lives. It’s when we lose sight of who we really are that things get scary.

When we decide that we’re not comfortable without our façade, our faux identity, we lose the very thing that grounds us.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look your best. There’s nothing wrong with going ultra-preppy or gothic punk rocker for a night, or playing with your “look.” But I’ve seen far too many over-tan, over-bleached girls that can’t seem to face reality.

Hell, they can’t even face their makeup-less faces.

To make matters worse, they can’t even generate a genuine conversation, and refer to everyone as “hun,” “babe,” or “sweetie.” You just met me – I’m not your sweetie. Get real and quit faking.

Ultimately, everyone fakes something in the course of their lives. My personal favorite is longer eyelashes (I have an insatiable love for falsies and gobs of eyelash glue).

There are the pretend friendly hellos to people you went to high school with but never really liked, the smile at your boss behind when you’re devising a plan to slash his tires without getting caught and the “no, it was totally not your fault” that you tell your friend after a big fight with his/her significant other.

Little white lies get us through things in life.

But we can’t hide behind the things that we fake, and truth and honesty are what generate real human relationships – with others and with ourselves.

One thing that I’ve always believed and seems to become more relevant as I get older is that before you can fully appreciate someone else, you have to be comfortable with yourself.

It’s OK to escape, but ultimately you have to come back and be real in the real world.

Sheree Whiteley

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