As I was saying....

To re-iterate what i've been banging on about lately!! This article is from The Age, saturday 18/8/07. She says it so well!

Be yourself

August 18, 2007

"I LOVE Alber Elbaz; how utterly wrong he looks in a world seething with people trying so-ooo hard to look right."
Photo: AP

Fashion won't work its magic if you're not, writes Janice Breen Burns.

Alber Elbaz is an elegant Tweedledee of a bloke with a smug/naughty smile and pop-eye spectacles that accentuate his slitty, sparkly eyes. He's fond of goofy bow ties, droopy trousers and high-top trainers done up with extra metres of loopy white shoelaces. That's him, pleased as a salon poodle after his spring/summer 2008 collection show in Paris. He is Lanvin's creative director and one of the most influential men in fashion. Isn't he smashing?

I LOVE Alber Elbaz; how utterly "wrong" he looks in a world seething with people trying so-ooo hard to look "right". You know what I mean; fat people lipo-sucked, slim, old people slicing bits off to look young(ish), wrinkly people Botoxed smooth, brown people bleached pale and pale people baked brown. Don't get me started on almond-eyed Asians wanting walnut shaped eyes either, or walnuts wanting almonds.

The world has gone nuts, but Elbaz is still Elbaz, the metaphorical tip of a thrilling, lovely iceberg, the epitome of NOT WANTING. Not pining, not craving, not wishing. Just arrogantly, confidently, narcissistically being, revelling in who he is. This is the key to good fashion. Jot it down. This is how you unlock fashion's power.

Self-acceptance like that is a miraculous accessory for striking, carefully picked clothes. It is uncommonly chic and particularly popular on fashion's loftiest echelon where Alber "Tweedledee" Elbaz, John "Ain't no oil painting" Galliano, Jean Paul "Me neither" Gaultier, Vivienne "Who gives a toss" Westwood and Donna "Rhinoplasty? Don't be a clod!" Karan, among many, many technically unattractive others, direct the seasonal looks that trickle down and eventually seduce us all. Aren't they smashing? Ugly/beautiful/evocative/powerful/enviable/fashionable/fabulous. Smashing.

For a ridiculous number of years I have preached the power of a good frock, a nice suit, a new hat - the self-concept of Decoration before Alteration - but apparently, it isn't enough any more. In the past three or four years particularly, the stream of pleas from sad little poppets wishing they were someone else has thickened through my inbox: "I'm short - how can I look taller?", "I'm chubby, how can I look slimmer?". "I'm thin." "I'm florid." "I'm in a wheelchair." "I'm ugly." There are the nearly-but-never-quite-lovelies, too, who can't seem to envision their own worth, let alone potential beauty: "I want hair like Jennifer Aniston's." "That dress like Rhianna's." "Mischa Barton's jeans." "Cameron Diaz's bikini." Go on, I think; you might as well say it: "I hate myself."

While I have been banging on about the power of fashion to unlock who we are, a generation has been marinating in a culture that reveres model looks above all. They genuinely believe anything different can be solved - should be solved - by the right surgery, or the right frocks. Wishing for one painfully narrow definition of beauty is a lifestyle, scheming to achieve it - one way or another - a life project. Self-acceptance; what's that?

Good grief.

Time to revisit the basics. And so I give you the lovely Alber Elbaz. And, come to that, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Valentino Garavani, Miuccia Prada, Karl Lagerfeld. A thousand others. They are fashion's marvellously, technically "unbeautiful" people who use clothes unselfconsciously to express who they are, and who, incidentally, wield more power in the world than most technically beautiful people ever will.

It's time to switch allegiances and goals or, at least, expand them a bit. What do you want to be? Powerful, or pretty?