Thoughts on being fierce, fabulous, and yourself.
Joining "The Fashion District DC" Team
In early 2013, I received an e-mail from my friend, Stone, who asked for my help with his latest project. He wanted to produce an online fashion video digest that put DC in the spotlight. The nation's capital is known for many things-- free museums, politicians, government, traffic congestion, borrowed architecture, but... fashion? Do Washingtonians have any real "fashion sense"? Stone wanted to tackle that question by creating a visual record of just what was happening in the DC fashion scene, leaving the answer up to the viewer.
Fashion is something I do not know much about. My own personal style consists of thrifted clothing, comfortable fabrics, offensively bright colors, interesting textures, patterned leggings/hose/tights, and cool things my sister is no longer wearing. Comfort has always been my chief concern. I mean, you're going to be schlepping around in these garments for a while, why not enjoy how they feel against your skin? If it feels good and is reasonably priced (which hardly anything in this area is anymore, hence why most of my clothing is from the thrift store), I'm down to complete the sale and call it my own.
No one has ever told me I was fashionable. In fact, when I was a traffic reporter on television, the higher-ups expressed that my style was too colorful, too vest-ful, and most of all, "not newscaster-y at all." Only after years of hearing how different my clothing tastes are that I finally understand it... I don't dress like people think I should, and that's not a bad thing.
Everyone has their own sense of what looks good and what feels good. In the fashion world, there is a place for everyone to shine. You like bold animal prints and hoop skirts? There's an outfit for you, honey. You want to wear nothing but black for the rest of your days? There's a community that's there to support you, booboo. You want to spend hours doing your make-up and glue foam to your face every night? There is a world waiting to hold you close to its breast (the NYC club kids are still going strong and are impeccably dressed night after night). It doesn't matter if you think you fit in or you don't. Fashion isn't about fitting in, though the corporate machine would like us to believe otherwise... It's about being innovative and standing out.
With fashion, it's important to never lose your personal center. To quote Stone Lyons, creator of 'The Fashion District DC':
"Be fierce,
be fabulous,
but most of all, be yourself."
Photographed: Quintin Hill, Ashley Linder, Stone Lyons and Bryan Ita
We live in a time unlike any other. Now more than ever, the masses are aware that anything really is possible. We are but a tiny blip in the vastness of the universe. There is so much we don't know and can't see. Every day we're making new discoveries in the world of science and exploration and new information is but a click or two away. Like my belief in the unicorn, I've been told many of the dreams I have aren't possible, that they're too idealistic or absurd to ever materialize into something real. Maybe the unicorn Aesop wrote of is a myth, but that's not to say that a horned creature is solely the work of fiction. Once, stumbling upon an image of a deformed deer, I had the striking realization that dreams sometimes require a shift in perspective in order to come to life. They may not be real in the way a unicorn queefing out double rainbows isn't but that doesn't mean they are impossible.
