Solange: Our Lady of Pastels

Reason #1999090980 why we all love Solange: her ability to revitalize an already strong brand with her pretty point-of-view.

Recently, she was hired to direct Puma's shoe ad campaign, which she has done in a spectacular show of soft oranges, yellows, pinks, and blues. The photos below remind us of summers long gone and sorbet ice cream bars.

Check out the pairing of pastel separates against bare backdrops, which somehow manage to evoke past and present all in an image:

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Style Envy

Fashion bloggers often put on the cloak of omniscience when discussing clothes. We are the master narrators of look and style, analyzing the whys and hows of beauty without faltering.

Fashion as Narrative (Pt.1)

Stories are important, just look at your Facebook timeline. When filled out completely it tells a history of your adult life, a constructed public face you want others to see.

Whenever I friend someone new, for example, I find myself clicking through his/her earliest albums and wall posts in order to try to determine who he/she has been over time. (Then I say to myself, "She really did drink Pabst before it was cool." ಠ_ಠ)

Like a web page, fashion is another aspect of ourselves that we assemble for the pleasure of others.  Our clothes and closets are a series of narratives that offer glimpses into the choices we've made and what we have liked over time; these narratives are not always linear, headed toward some perfect sartorial endpoint, but circular. The things we wear go out of style and come back in, sometimes more refined, or in other cases, identical to what was popular before.

And just think: In a few years, you're likely to look down and discover you're wearing a schizophrenic outfit--maybe a thrifted paisley top from the '70s, a metal bracelet made just after 9/11, and the latest platforms from Nordstrom. Our modern outfits tell many stories, blending decades and art movements--produced in places all over the world. Everything we wear is a piece of time and history.

My bracelet of rubies, bought when I was working 3 jobs at once

Popular fashion designers and celebrities love to capitalize on the power of the narratives through tabloid and Twitpic photos, interviews and editorial spreads. Little styling details like bright pink hair, braces, or a signature style help celebrities tell master narratives that they want the public to believe, projecting an identity without words at all.

It's the reason I spend so much time on Tumblr looking at photos of celebrities like Solange, who entrances me just by changing the narrative of her hair.

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Sometimes, I scroll through old photos of myself and wonder what story awaits its end for me? That is to say: what will I wear in the future and will I need to stock up on shoulder-padded power suits like I so desperately want to? (Also, will I ever be as cool as Solange?)

Blackness

What a great thing it is to be young, gifted, and black!

Over the past few years, natural hair and prints inspired by the vast continent have been widely embraced in America. Afros, bantu knots, and curls are literally blossoming from the heads around us. Instead of mere attitude, we now carry something like...negritude.

Concurrently, the borders of race are continuing to blur and along with them, formerly distinct aspects of American culture. More aware of race as a social construction, some young Americans are rejecting prescribed roles (that to be black is to behave like x, and to be white is to behave like y) and instead, are asserting who they are and what they like by embracing eclectic interests (untethering these interests from the categories of race and class).

Now, fashionistas like Solange and Janelle Monae create pop art within a boundless context enriched by blackness---and it's anything but monolithic. As they've shown us, blackness is performative and almost always, beautiful.

Janelle Monae serves us androgyny:


Marie Claire 2011

Rihanna, the gamine:


Italian Vogue 2009

The earthy Esperanza Spalding:



These ladies demonstrate how limitless cultural identity can be.

Of course, such an increase in popularity is not without its drawbacks. I hope that one day, we will be as mainstream in the fashion world as we are in music, not treated as topical themes but as eternal muses.