style icons and carbon copies.

Hi guys! The names Belle, and obsessing over style is my game. Ok, just from that sentence you ought to realize I am kind of dorky. But I mask it with my vintage finds and really, really, fast talking, so please don't walk away now! The parties just getting started, kids. As an editor and writer for Retro Splash, I've decided to just write what I want and what I think you all will relate to. When I read my favorite mags (Lula, i-D, Nylon, Elle Korea, FRUiTS to name a few) I decide on whether or not the magazine is right for me by how the articles, styles, and writers relate to me. I like reading articles that are easy to understand but in depth and I hope I can bring that to you, the readers, when I post.

Ok, now that the fancy editorial intro is over with I would like to touch on the subject of style icons. You know the major ones all the big kids write about---Cory Kennedy with her unwashed hair but killer connections, Lisa the simplistic chic teen, Modernitener and Susie Bubble. They're all queen's of style in their own right, which plenty of followers to prove it. But when does an icon become a mold? When a girl with 'original' style is airbrushed onto the cover of magazines, are they already the first edition of thousands or is it a starting line from when their faces are in print?

1) Cory Kennedy. 2) Rumi; Fashion Toast 3) Susie; Susie Bubble

How do you decide to make someone a style icon? Through the power of blogging, all of these people have reached fame, or infamy. It's of course their style choices, their trend-setting talents, and all of that ruckus but it must be said that they got their ideas from someone and somewhere previously. Make no mistake; fashion is a cycle and everything, everything with the exception of mullets, thank god comes back into fashion eventually. Do these people become our icons because they are step ahead in the cycle, or that they broke away from it completely?

Ah, so many questions and such varying answers. I am just one girl out of many, so of course I can't tell you the answers to all of these immediately. So tell me your thoughts on the subject, and in exchange I'll tell you mine.

To me, a style icon is someone to be inspired by, but never to emulate completely. The idea that imitation is a form of flattery doesn't hold for me because if someone truly inspires you, new ideas that continue their ideals will bloom and you won't have to copy their look piece by piece. That would be impossible to do, anyway; style is a person's second skin and can't be shed as easily as what they wear. Cory Kennedy and her comrades on the Style Pedastal (or whatever you want to call it) are famous and looked up to because they can't be perfectly emulated. Try as you might, that perfect picture of the girl can't be carbon copied. You can wear the same outfit but you can't be the girl.

And we should stop trying.

Style is unique to ones self. Period. People's style and fashion decisions are decided by their circumstance, their personalities, their moods, and their instinct; no two people can consistently share the same style. The same pieces in their wardrobe, yes, but how you wear them can be a polar opposite. So of course, go ahead and buy the same pieces, but put your own twists to it. Make it your own and don't just be a shell. If you really want to be on par, be recognized in the same caliber as the ones you look up to don't emulate them, take their ideas further and change it to suit you.

Little bits and pieces of your favorite style icon's outfit-- the shape, the colors, the patterns, they can easily be incorporated into your own style. The impulse to be another Kennedy.... it's infectious but curable. Take little things, and make up your own story. Follow in their footsteps but don't stop in their tracks. One day, you might be the one they're talking about. You never know.

signing off for today;


Belle