Laureline, 16, France
When I was eleven or twelve, girls around me started to talk about make-up, brands and boys, but I just didn’t care! I thought about fashion and make-up as superficial things, and – to prove my ‘intelligence’ and my ‘superiority’ over these girls – I looked like a bag of potatoes! I think my weird nerdy ‘yeah, my mum bought my clothes’ look was probably a way to express my individuality… Refusing to follow fashion like a sheep! Or maybe it was just because I really didn’t care what I looked like, or what other people thought about me…
Blue Hair
Now, you’ll be pleased to know, fashion, hair and make-up all have a place in my life! In fact, they help me express my individuality and how I feel at a certain time. Only people that know me very well can pick up on it, reading in to my thoughts through my appearance… Like, when I fasten my hair my friends know it means I’m out to seduce someone! If I put eye make-up on, with lipstick and perfume, it probably means that I’m lacking self-confidence that day, or that I’m stressed… There’s something relaxing about putting make-up on, isn’t there? Conversely, if I don’t use make-up and spend my day on the couch in a big sweater – everyone knows what that means!
There’s a French illustrator, called Penelope Bagieu [ http://www.penelope-jolicoeur.com/] who wrote something around this… I’m not sure how good my translation is, but it goes something like this:
My clothes tell about me
I’m an artist, or I don’t work only in advertising
I need to be reassured
I’m a very simple girl or, I haven’t changed since high school, or fashion is not so much my thing, or I’m not that kind of person that cares
I’m a little poor thing damaged by life, or – cook a dinner for me tonight
Penelope Bagieu
Basically, the first thing you see when you meet someone is his/her appearance, and – maybe because I don’t trust my personality enough to do the job – I try to tell people who I am through my clothes and hair…
For the moment, my appearance is quite calm, with my natural hair colour, my scarlet coat helps people know I’m unusual, which I hope I am, but I used to have dreadlocks, and before that, blue hair. I think the worst thing I ever did was to cut my hair short for a job interview though… It was odd, I felt like an impostor…
Scarlet coat
I change my appearance every time I start to feel like it doesn’t get across what I want it to… To be more precise, I change my haircut and colour a lot, but my clothes don’t tend to undergo the same radical changes… When I find a piece of clothing I like, I usually keep it for ages, until it falls to pieces… I had a pair of boots once that became such a part of me that my mother threw them out in to the garbage against my will! There are, of course, a few things that I consider to be a part of me, my necklace, that scarlet coat, my watch… These are things that I can wear everyday, and they become as much as part of me as my haircut…
