Some London Love

by Stephanie Oula

WHAT I LOVE MOST ABOUT LONDON

The boys. They are absolutely, ridiculously adorable (and I don’t think it’s just the accent, as I’m counting the wide spectrum of international men too) and they dress SO well. For an American girl, it’s the Promised Land, complete with milk and honey, and hoards of devastatingly charming boys.

One of my all-time favorite cinematic sartorial heroines, Cher of Clueless (I will always and forever love babydoll dresses and plaid), basically sums up my feelings towards American collegiate male style: “So okay, I don't want to be a traitor to my generation and all but I don't get how guys dress today. I mean, come on, it looks like they just fell out of bed and put on some baggy pants and take their greasy hair –ew—and cover it up with a backwards cap and like, we're expected to swoon? I don't think so.”

But luckily that is not the case here at LSE. Generally, I notice a lack of sweatpants, sneakers, baseball caps, ironic t-shirts—replaced with blazers, vests, boat shoes, button-downs, and v-neck sweaters. And I love it—seriously, it’s so attractive to see people putting a little bit of effort into looking presentable or polished. To pretend that we exist in a vacuum where appearances don’t matter (as so many of my American brethren profess, with more than a little tinge of moral and philosophical superiority) is naïve, and I for one, have never found it a fault to care about your appearance—as long as other aspects of your character don’t suffer as a result.

And from my limited observations, these London boys’ characters have not suffered as a result of attention to their wardrobe—on the contrary, they strike me as more mature in their attempt to be professional—and surely they are aware that dressing as they do results in the paradoxical urge for girls like me to want to rip their clothes off. Thus, benefits for everyone all around.

But there’s also the London atmosphere, so different from New York—the twisting streets and the lovely silver and gray of the sky, the architecture, the Thames at night, the rain—that I love as well. There’s a dreamlike quality to the city, a slow quietness that makes me feel it is okay to be still and just think for a little while. London calms me down. London makes me happy. It is an extraordinarily beautiful city.

WATCHING THE ENGLISH (PART TWO)

Another week, another set of terrible generalizations. I’ve decided at this point that the English in general are distant—but will warm up to you, especially if you make copious efforts to befriend this strange and shy species (no sudden movements, keep low to the ground, booze always helps). I have accepted that America and England have different norms of socialization, and that I can’t call an entire country socially awkward because I feel they are (but they are!). But I realize that what I would consider social graces—friendliness, an attempt to be welcoming, showing interest in people—can be interpreted as signs of too much here. Several euphemisms I have been dealt here include: excited, energetic, bubbly—all said in that curious tone of voice which implies something not quite polite underneath politeness: too much. Too strong. Too opinionated. Obnoxious.

It’s as if they don’t quite know what to do with me—they really don’t. It seems as though they are also puzzled by my desire to get to know them—but it’s like they’re the super cool, completely aloof, and therefore probably better than you girl in high school and all you want to do is be friends with her? Yeah, England is THAT girl.

But I’m making progress, I think. I find that the fresher girls are generally quite friendly and I’ve met some lovely English girls over the course of this week—not socially awkward at all, really sweet! And so, I have hope.

And the boys—well. I’m already in love with all of them (how easy American girls are, aren’t we?).

As for my last week’s post on how incredibly dull and in good taste I find English style to be, I am starting to slowly, but surely see the larger cultural attitude which feeds into this phenomenon—continual reservation and a desire to keep the establishment—and I can respect that—and wonder whether a little bit of restraint wouldn’t do me good.

PERSPECTIVE AND PERCEPTION

As you might have noticed, I am incredibly self-centered. Blogs have a tendency to do that to me—it’s an open forum for encourage navel-gazing. But I like to explain it as a matter of perspective—yes I could write a very balanced and detailed piece of online journalism—but frankly, there are others who do that far better. I’m good for shock value, for brutal honesty as I see it, and for a page or two, you can get in my very crazy head and see what I see—perspective is always good. My favorite bloggers are ones with extremely distinct voices—and in order to cultivate that, there is a certain amount of self-absorption involved. So—perspective.

And then there’s the element of perception involved.

Fashion, as I am continually aware, is all about perception: your own as well as others. Most people put on clothing knowing perfectly well that it will make people perceive them in a certain light—it's why girls go shopping for big occasions like weddings and birthdays and job interviews and first dates. But what about the people, like me, who put on clothing so as to perceive themselves differently?

A STYLE MANIFESTO (IN DEFENSE OF BEAUTY)

I know I'm the same girl underneath all these myriad of looks, these parade of fabrics. But there's something I can't place my finger on when I put on something that makes me feel different from what I normally feel—powerful, or seductive, or careless, or light-hearted. Escapism, perhaps. The real possibility that this dress or this coat or these gloves make you a little different, because you believe yourself to be different with them on—you hold your head a little differently and suddenly, everything changes because you yourself are changed.

I'm probably most influenced by what I see in cinema and what I read in literature in terms of fashion. Photographs too, of course, but there always has to be a story present for me. I want a world pre-made, complete in atmosphere, complete in details, complete in a look, that I can step into. I guess my world is a composite of the many worlds I love, ranging from the film noir girl I'm obsessed with right now, to Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette to Jean Seberg in Breathless to Natalia Vodinova's Mad Men-esque spread with Ewan MacGregor in the American August Vogue to raging, roaring New York in the 20s like F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Beautiful and Damned to polished Camelot of the 60s, Jackie Kennedy, anything Givenchy ever designed for Audrey Hepburn, and turn of the century high society in Edith Wharton's the Age of Innocence. I love all these many worlds and more, and they are not always present in what I wear, I go through periods where one world takes more precedent over another, but they all remain as pieces in my closet, ready to be worn should I want them, should I need them.

My philosophy is always to dress as if you are starring in the movie of your life. For some people, fashion is beautifully, wonderfully organic; for others, it is beautifully, wonderfully fictitious. I am in the latter camp—the only thing that feels organic to me right now is the fact that I can costume myself. Perhaps I will grow out of this; perhaps I won't.

There's a magnificent feeling to be able to create your own story, on your end, anyway. You can't control the other characters, you don't know where the plot is going most of the time, but you can control your own performance, at least from the wardrobe department. "This is the skirt I am going to wear when I go in for my internship interview." "This is the dress I will wear when I admit he means something to me" (incidentally, I do have the dress for this latter occasion and it was chosen much as costume designs choose pieces for scenes—and it is referred to as a “heroine dress,” as defined by my friend Isabella: “ It’s the kind you wear at the top of the stairs and everyone looks up at you." Every girl should have a heroine dress.)

Fashion fluctuates, I think, more because of feeling than because of trend. That is what lends it its wonderful individuality—you dress how you feel or how you want to feel. It's all part of the magic.

And I guess that’s what I was trying to say in my last, terribly mean blog post: I want magic; the splendor of creation, the feeling of escapism—and I want you to want it too. Fashion, style, whatever you want to call it, when done properly, is magical, creative in every sense of the world, escapist. Wonderful. Give a little more to what you wear and it will give right back.

Never, ever let anyone make you feel guilty about loving beauty as you do—and you do love beauty if you love fashion—however you choose to define it. The world will move on regardless, things of great import and social significance will continue along their paths, and take precedence in humanity’s collective thoughts as things of substance—but there are things of beauty too, farther back in the mind’s eye, and though it may not save the world, beauty is beauty is beauty and magic is magic and magic—and I think we would lead better lives if we had a little more faith in the possibilities of beauty, of magic—and if we worked towards them, in our own way—always, a perpetual movement towards the light.