This month’s writing prompt was Fashion. Here we showcase all the responses that were submitted.
Fashion prompt: With the met gala having just happened we’re buzzing with the latest trends and new ones to come! But fashion is more than just clothes: it’s style and aesthetics, a reflection of society and ourselves, it’s a mirror, it’s art, it speaks volumes about a person.
MODEL BEHAVIOUR
I strut down my runway of grudging choices made,
with eyes and feet aimed straight ahead,
a screw you, loser sneer on the lip and on the hip,
and a loose insouciance to my stealthy bump
and calculated, bitter grind.
’Tis pity the presentation has zip to do with its
disconnected contents. Mayhap I will do better
in some skin more appropriate to me, more fitting,
in the next collection in the next season in
the next, better incarnation.
by R
She looks silly
He dresses our babe for weather –
Warm sunny days,
Days in the rain.
I tell him she looks silly.
A duck vest over her fruity pyjamas;
Socks pulls up like footballers;
Mary janes to match(?)
She looks silly –
“Not everything is a fashion show;
Anyway, she’s warm and happy,
So, what if she’s silly,
What’s wrong with that?”
She looks silly;
But she’s warm.
He dresses her for weather.
by Elizabeth
Santaromita (@elizabethsantaromita Instagram)
TW: eating disorders, reference to suicide
Fashion is a preparation for suicide
In a world where fashion is minuscule
Degrading and shocking
Fashion is a preparation for suicide
For sleepless nights doing crunches
Eating eggs rolled in cabbage
Wondering about the calories
In water
In toothpaste
The calories from sex.
Obsess, obsessed, malnourished, repressed, oppressed, depressed.
Fashion is a preparation for suicide
Body dysmorphia lore
Eating teeny tiny bites and chewing until my jaw
Cracks open
Smelling the horror from the kitchen:
Food.
Fashion is a preparation for suicide
And I made my bed and
Lied in it.
by Karolina Santos (@mousakalliopewrites)
Goddess
She is the diva of our school.
She says life can’t be perfect
but our outfits can be flawless.
She doesn’t know she is perfect.
She is the goddess of fashion.
She says I have no fashion sense.
I can’t deny her.
She doesn’t know she is flawless.
Her short hair flip is magic.
Her tone is music.
In another life, I will tell her
her eyes are flawless.
by Inner Monologue (@inner__monologue__)
Fashion: Who Decides?
When I was a little girl I adored browsing through the Sears Wish book. I would check the table of contents to see which colour was assigned to the toy section, find the corresponding colour-coded section, and flip there immediately. I would eye up Peaches and Cream Barbie, kid-sized convertibles, electronic language translators, and an assortment of other things I’d never own. As I grew older, I would do the same thing but for clothing.
I’d put together entire outfits in my head: those jeans, that tee, that vest, those boots. At the time I was convinced I wanted those thing —almost needed them, really. But looking through Bill Cunningham: On the Street, I can’t help but wonder: when it comes to fashion, who decides?
As I peruse his fashion-focused street photography, the images strike me. The collection, divided into decades from the 1970s to the 2010s, tells a story about the time-stamped and the timelessness, individuality and collectivity.
Two women on bikes, stylish by any standard but dated 1970s by their nylons, their trendy hairstyles, not to mention by the man standing at the side of the frame, collar open a button too far to show off that chest hair.
Two women, again, look like they walked straight off the set of The Golden Girls in the 80s, short hair reaching high and wide, cloaked in a Laura Ashley-style print that wouldn’t even see the light of day by curtains nowadays.
And then I come across the stirrups, stirring memories of a decade when we were, apparently, worried our pants would roll up to our chins without their aid.
Some of Cunningham’s subjects could walk off the page into any decade and look right at home. Others are so clearly a product of their time that if a sudden ice age froze them they could later be exhumed and their clothing would instantly identify when they were alive. Others yet are so bizarrely attired that they would have stood out even at the time, which I suppose is their point.
But who decides on the attire that will date us through our own decades? Are we at the mercy and whim of fashion designers. After all, it is they who decide the trends of the season, who set ludicrous creations on the runway that morph and make their way into our closets. Even they decide what’s timeless based on what they’ve decided from on high will be fashionable—the little black dress—or not.
And yet, what we wear is definitively a choice. Whether we are talking about this colour, not that. This pattern, not that. They may set the trends—those styles we must buy—but we decide which fads will live or die. We are forever intertwined, designers and the designed, so maybe it is both who decide. Or maybe the choice was never fully mine, as I eyed that black vest, white tee, black jeans, those cowboy ankle boots, because that was fashion as it was presented to me. I never found out but still, I feel like now I know my own mind. It still cries ‘get it in black’.
by Steph Percival (Twitter @steph_percival)
swim press 