u/SwitchBrilliant1387

Had to think a bit about “fun”. I have fun, lots of it, don’t worry, but fun isn’t much of an active style priority most days. I’ve been experimenting with neon a bit which is maybe officially on the fun side? but my neon outfits are more in a mood of “quietly strange”. 

But fun: the combination of red and pink. Or maybe different pinks, like today. Plain black tights not pictured. Was going to add magenta socks for the red and pink idea, but somehow ended up with these and liked it even better. (The yellow green is one of my truly very worst colours, as I just said in response to Altruistic_Ad’s amazing use of this colour, but a little bit of sock showing between shoes and tights I can live with.) I also liked how this was a little autumnal but also not. 😈😈

Before adding in the colour challenge and the “fun”, i was trying to get at a sense of “fragile human creature lost in open space”, untethered and vastly insignificant but with a distinctly human little soul. i realise the colours in the accessories add something else, but to me the original idea is still there (though not necessarily legible, which is fine).

Looks like we’re seeing a lot of red and pink and purple in the “fun” challenge?

I can’t really identify a favourite piece but I have been wearing these trousers a lot and they’d definitely make my nonexisting shortlist of summer top-ten. They have some pleating and a flowing balloonish shape (which doesn’t really come out in the indyx flatlay, sorry) and it‘s a nice muddy undecided brown with subtle pinstripes which are so fun against the round/ oval shape of the piece and also play with the the formality level a bit.

I’ve been styling them in all kinds of unspectacular ways and this outfit from today isn’t particularly complex either, but I liked wearing it. I have been craving a little more sharpness lately and this delivered. I like how the neon bag doesn’t quite resolve against the earthy muddledness of the bottoms, I like the sharp horizontal line of the semi-opaque top against the soft flowing lines of the bottoms and I think i tried to throw in some circular shapes with the accessories to keep up with all the straight lines though this is me second guessing myself as I’m not exactly sure what i was thinking when it came together. 

Shoutout to my friend who let me borrow her cute new sandals for tonight after I spent twenty minutes complaining that i don’t have cute open toe shoes that go with my outfit. 🫶

Okay this is going to be cheating, because I tagged this as forum challenge but I’m now going to explain why I felt unable to come up with anything in the spirit of this challenge. 😵‍💫 I have been enjoying the keyword challenges so much but I had a hard time with both Gaia and persona/ personable. 

So I don’t want my style to be personable. It sounds lovely in theory but it’s not me. yet at the same time I don’t see myself using persona. It’s like I need to find the sweet spot between no longer personable, not quite persona. And while I recognise that sweet spot when I’ve found it it’s not exactly a helpful brief. 

Also I thought about my weird process of translating abstract and unrelated ideas and moods. I guess to some extent unreadability, so non-persona, has to be the outcome of my process. I couldn’t translate it backwards either.

I’ll try to demo this with yesterday’s outfit and process. On my mind was a tightrope performance. Does it make any sense for my actual life? Absolutely not. 😂 a few weeks ago I’d been practicing a difficult musical piece and one day in my frustration I thought it felt like being on a tightrope. It probably doesn’t, not remotely. But that’s the image that came to mind. - The association with the music went but the tightrope dancer was stuck in my head. I like the vulnerability of it, the apparent defiance of gravity while at the same time being about gravity, the sense of impossibility. 

So I thought of this black top. (I must also have been inspired by the outfit the amazing u/Shannee0 shared a few days ago. It wasn’t explicitly on my mind - but then looking at the result I felt like a copycat 😖 so please 🙏 read this as genuine inspiration and not shabby plagiarism.) And then got carried away collaging around the “rope” idea. The top taps into the type of vulnerable sensuality I like, and the accessories underline the an idea of envelopedness which I associate with the vulnerable. The copper shoes might echo the “dancing” idea and the connectedness to the ground (or non-ground). The hair clips (in a messy bun kind of arrangement) are a stretch for me, a lot more playful than what I’d usually wear - but in this particular outfit and balanced with the lipstick they somehow made sense (to me, that is) and no, i wasn’t going to go for a hat or parasol etc. Also it’s become easier for me to play with pieces that are not quite from my book now that I know I have a baseline to return to? So it feels experimental and exciting rather than like floating in open space. 

Then grounding the entire configuration with denim.

No - I wouldn’t call this “persona”. A tightrope artist is not a character who repeatedly shows up in my outfits. I don’t see how the inspo would become recognisable to an onlooker. That’s also not the point. But it doesn’t feel personable either. I think the lack of straightforward readability rather gives it a bit of distance. including feeling distant from the imaginary tightrope artist image - I didn’t feel like one in the outfit, so I wasn’t channeling my inner acrobat or circus performer, also not the point. More like projecting whatever was left as a trace of a very idiosyncratic process?