Letter from a 24-year-old in the midst of an existential crisis (that has to do with fashion)
Is it unprofessional for a writer to admit that she has no ideas for her articles? Yes, I think it is, but that is what I am going to do today. I love to be constantly looking for ideas, insights, readings to take inspiration from and write about them in my own words and from my own point of view, but there are times when you simply have to recognize that something is not going the way it should.
And I'm not talking about an existential crisis that will lead me to stop writing, that's for sure, but just a transitional period in which I recognize a logjam in my head that won't let any other ideas go by that don't concern concrete problems to be dealt with in my hard life as a 24-year-old woman dissatisfied with her university and professional career in search of her place in the world. Assuming that place in the world for me is there. And it will be there (I write this because otherwise my mother reading would scold me for believing little in myself, which is also quite true in some ways). They call it "blank sheet syndrome," which in my case is not so blank if I am writing about it, and that is definitely a point in my favor. The truth is that for too long I have been writing stories about others, leaving instead the thoughts about me in my head, to make the cloud of smoke that has been blowing my brain into mush even thicker lately. Perhaps because I thought this was not the right space in which to write about it, or perhaps because straining to find the right words would have confused me even more. But, the truth? It is helping me. I have a lump in my throat that portends the coming of a crying fit, but I can handle it. And who knows, maybe there is another desperate 24-year-old among you who will recognize himself in this James Joyce-like stream of consciousness that is taking over.
What does this have to do with fashion? Actually, everything.
If to go out on a Saturday night I don't worry excessively about what to wear and slip on some jeans and a pair of sneakers, it means that maybe there is something wrong with me. Always that damn logjam that won't let me breathe. I think some people have hated me in this life for my punctual empty closet crises (which empty, however, never is) before leaving the house, so pressapochism would never be expected of me. In the eyes of those around me, I am always exaggerated when, even to go grocery shopping at the supermarket that is two minutes from home, I worry about what shirt to wear, not without spending a minimum of ten minutes in front of the closet and letting slip a "I never have anything to wear." Mom that's not true, don't get upset. I, however, for my part, don't think I am as exaggerated as they say, I just have a somewhat colorful way of dealing with the problem.
One day I read somewhere that clothes are not just clothes and that what we wear and how we wear it has more to do with us than we can imagine. It said that the clothes we wear are the skin we choose for ourselves. Skin, can you imagine? It is as close to our bodies as we can tolerate, the way we present ourselves to the world, and the first thing others see of us, is the public form of our physique.
I remember the exact time in my life when I started to get into fashion. I was 16 years old, it was summer, and the very few friends I had decided it was time to leave me behind. And so it was. You can imagine how difficult it must have been for a 16-year-old girl to find herself spending a summer without friends, alone with her already overcomplicated teenage thoughts. But, ever that 16-year-old girl, in the loneliness in which she had unwillingly fallen, she found herself passionate about something that would become a constant in her life from that moment on. For all the years to come this, more than a passion, has become my very personal trademark, something that is known about me even before you have met me.
Fashion has become the place where I've always felt I can let go of my insecurities, the ones I've been dragging around my whole life that always make me feel I'm worth less than others. It is the only thing I feel I really know how to do (talk about it, choose and create pairings, for me and for those who put their trust in my failed stylist quirks) and the only thing in which I have always been recognized as having potential. To me, who has always been the one with the lowest school average in my group schoolmates.
My place in the world, indeed. But what if this place, now that the time has come, is rejecting me? What do you do when the one thing you enjoy doing and think you know how to do does not seem to be meant for you? Does it make sense to continue to have passions that cannot find a place in your real life, but remain only dreams?
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