I love fashion.

Honestly? Super, that’s all well and good, but what on Earth are you actually stating, in a day and age where any fool with an Internet connection and a Lookbook account can declare themselves “the next Anna Dello Russo”? The statement is essentially meaningless by now…until my infinite capacity for overthinking and making any given question all about me, myself and I got involved. The question I kept coming back to is  “what is a love of fashion, and how does it translate to my everyday?”

If you love something, anything, a good place to start is by following it. I’m not talking about the kind of fan one-upmanship I used to partake in as a fourteen-year-old teenybopper. Yes, I am duly ashamed of those years, why do you ask? Anyway, what I’m on about is what actually inspires me to get dressed in the morning, and where I go hunting for said inspiration. I find it in the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and InStyle, on blogs written in lively, personable voices, and on the street – for better or worse. If something I come across makes me aspire to better-dressed things, and does an outstanding job of evoking that image of garment-related perfection…it’s probably inspiration.

This is where it really, really gets personal. How does what can seem like an aesthetic pipe dream move from picture to Polly? This quandary goes back to the unfortunate matter of the horrible, terrible, not good atrocities that I have seen committed in the name of style. While it is true, I love fashion, I most certainly do not, however, love every trend diktat that proceeds from the mouths of its deities. It takes only one subpar collection, maximum two, for a label to be irrevocably soured for me. It’s completely subjective, too – if there’s little to nothing that I could imagine in my wardrobe, forget it. This is evidence enough to suggest just how personally I take fashion, no?

My personal style tends towards being as beige as my scarf.

As much as I keep one exquisitely made-up eye on the passing phases of dressing up, I’m generally more concerned with how to develop and refine my own inimitable interpretation of the aforementioned diktats. Clothes that I will never wear and have no interest in completely pass me by. That would lead me to believe that I would be considered a pretty ineffectual lover of fashion, if it were the sole criteria – hell, if there were even criteria. I can’t get excited over a new designer if they haven’t understood the fundamental idea that sometimes, a woman doesn’t want a high neck – my personal circle of clothing hell, and the hurdle at which most garments miserably fall. I want clothes to flatter me, not wear me!

We’ve already established that I’m currently somewhat stymied here – watch this space to watch my skeleton plan take shape, no pun intended. Anyone who has seen my Twitter knows that I’m currently regretting my first and most important decision, not to buy a single item of clothing until I hit my goal weight. Blame the All Saints spring look book, which led me straight to The Kooples and down the rabbit hole of online retail.

Anyway, once this hell is over (because it will be over…right?), I resolve never to indulge in “fast fashion” again. A wardrobe full of quick fixes just doesn’t give me the same excitement as a single piece I like way better, the kind that makes my stomach start fluttering when I hand the card over, at risk of spending a few days in a burlap sack. I’ve promised myself that I will devour every word I want to (not because I feel I have to, to qualify as a “fashionista”) as voraciously as possible on the subject of clothes and accessories, my true loves, whilst exercising due caution in applying their pearls of wisdom to what I wear. There, I’ve justified my love of fashion and a whole lot of spending. I call that a job well done.

PS: 100 posts. Thanks for sticking with me x