On not trying too hard
Scott Schuman, in his blog The Sartorialist, posted this photo on June 4, with this comment: When I am in a neighborhood I'm not looking for the "next big trend" or a ground-breaking style statement, but just reacting when I see a person and thinking to myself "he/she looks nice." "Looking nice" is truly underrated...
The young lady in today's post is dressed very simply, and yet I couldn't help but notice her in the crowded cafe where she was sitting with a friend. She looked so elegant in her simple white summer dress with a colorful floral scarf wrapped high around her shoulders. Not groundbreaking, not earth shattering, but in its own way, a very glamorous way to live a simply nice life.
Schuman captured a thought that's been on my mind for the last few weeks: trying too hard always looks worse than dressing simply. We can get so caught up in looking current, looking 'right', that we forget it doesn't have to be so much work.
Sometimes decades of considering, buying and revising create a kind of visual build-up. The result is loss of grace and ease, loss of being happy with 'looking nice'. At the extreme is the victim of fashion.
I anticipate a comment that when you're young everything, from the minimal to the piled-on and eccentric, looks good, but that's not Schuman's point, or mine. At any age, a simple dress, a pretty scarf, and a wide smile is sufficient and satisfying.
Photo: Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist
Comments
My way of practicing this is to try to take one thing off after I get dressed. A cliche by now, but it works.
Darla
I don't meet many people who spend so much time trying too hard, most (certainly in Australia) tend to underdress rather than over style.
thank you for recent visit. comments much appreciated.
If we all weren't so inherently self conscious about ourselves in this world we'd probably all look like the girl in the Sart photo.