STYLELABS

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  • MAN IN PASTEL BLUE

    His heart beats in rhythm with poetry. Entering the room, he fills the entire space. He falls in love to the state of arrhythmia. Sends bouquets of flowers. Every week. Spends her royalties on her favorite silk lingerie.

  • LADY IN HOT PINK

    Dancing is like reading books, like all your lovers and countries you have been to. It is an experience that changes you forever, your whole body, the way you walk, your posture, your every movement, and your gesture.

  • LADY IN UMBER

    There are people you remember, no matter how many miles, kilometers, and hours between you. They are imprinted in your memory, the details of their lives are part of your DNA, the print on the dress on that day you spent together, the scent of the perfume, or the sandals…

  • MAN IN EMERALD GREEN

    Man in Emerald Green

    Changeable, like the weather in the Nordic capitals. He is never like the others – his uniqueness is just about being unique. Sometimes you get mad at him because he turned everything upside down again. But then he leaves, and you already miss him and promise yourself not to be angry with him. You know you won’t keep this promise and smile.

  • LADY IN ULTRAMARINE

    There she sits. Passionate and reserved. Enjoying herself. Her earrings and silk blouse were inspired by royal Dutch porcelain. And the bracelets she got from her journey to some god-forgotten Mexican village…

  • LADY IN LILAC

    Summer. Meetings with friends on the busy streets. Chats about nothing and everything in the world. Sweet-scented tea with your favorite dessert in a small cozy cafe. Secret boutiques and private art galleries. Beautiful shoes. Airy. Breathing room.

  • GOT STYLE?!

    “Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person’s skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.”

    – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

    When it comes to personal style many fall into the mind trap of “either-or” – either this person has a great style or not, either “the sense of style is naturally given” or it’s lacking. Style is often seen as presence, lack, or absence – is often attributed to the person, rather than an outfit, situation or period of life. Style/no style becomes a tag. A tag that we sometimes tend to embrace without any consideration.

    You may ask – what’s wrong with that? The case of “I’ve got style!” seems more favorable. Fashion designers from Channel on have been creating the myth of style and good taste over ever-changing fashion claiming that garments that they offer will fall into the category of sacred timeless style (so, how did we end up with fast fashion?!). The entire world of fashion media including the up-rising cast of the street-stylers has been striving on the illusion that style is something you can get, like a pass to an elite club. With such an approach I can see at least two possible pitfalls. Let’s say you’ve got it – THE STYLE. Does it automatically make you better, cooler, and more advanced than those who don’t? Sounds slightly snobbish to me, yet, throughout my life I’ve seen such attitude too many times. Another pitfall is, perhaps, the rigidity of such attitude. What if your life changes? Your scenery, environment, family, or work status. Would you stick to the changes or your style? If fashion changes would you still be true to your style? Ridiculous as it may seem, this devotion to a certain style often makes even fashion designers go out of fashion.

    To my mind, the second type of tag – “lack of/no style” seems even worse. Especially when it comes to women of all ages (boys are catching up, seems like). Many of us way too early learn that we lack it. We learn it from our parents (who often seem to know better) and, most painfully, we learn it from our peers and playmates. This often leads to horrible misconceptions about one’s own appearance and abilities. I find these tags unfair and debilitating.

    Once style is seen as character trait or person’s feature that you don’t have, it gets really hard to motivate oneself. Why should I bother if that’s not who I am? How can I compensate? How can I live without it? Sounds like a loss of a body part or an organ. Unfortunately, I have seen such attitudes as well. The ugliest side-effect of such attitude is another type of snobbishness and anxiety – when people who consider themselves lacking style get rather aggressive to those who they consider as possessing this “magical feature”. Nothing new. We all read the fairy tales – characters who are obsessed with their looks are shallow, mean or stupid. With some Narcistic flavor. Mirror, mirror on the wall…

    I’ve started this post with a quote of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is rather far from issues of style and fashion. He describes the state of flow, which to my mind can be seen as a perfect metaphor and a healthy attitude to personal style. Flow is very “verby” noun – a flow it needs to move on, otherwise it stagnates. In order to possess it one needs to at least get into and somehow go along with it. The same is fair for the personal style. I see it not as what you owe, not a personal feature, it’s a process of acquisition – of habits and manners, things, skills, adornments and experiences. Style is also an adjustment – to our peers and requirements, to our changing body and perception of body within current culture, to our personal ups, downs and transitions.

    An important part of the flow is our ability to create it through one’s own efforts and enjoy being absorbed by the process itself. Style also requires effort – choosing, trying applying, re-considering, maintaining, saying god buy to what no longer serves a purpose… But these efforts can become fun once you start developing them playfully and enjoying yourself.

    Imagine that you’ve got an amazing personal style. You are still yourself, with your current body, job, family, and surrounding, but somehow your style is brilliant and breath-taking. What do you feel when you look at yourself in the mirror? What emotions are feeling your heart? What routines do you have? What do you enjoy the most? How do you walk? What is your posture? What do you see when you look in the mirror? What things have you got?

  • EXOTIC FLOWER

    Last summer, in August 2019, I had one get-together that had a special meaning for me. In terms of style as well. My university mate and I managed to find time in our busy schedules and see each other. I would love to share my sensation because although she is unique, there are people like her – an endless source of style inspiration that surrounds us in our everyday life. When we let them shine through us and pay attention, we can learn from them more than reading books or seeing a hundred of Instagram posts. Or rather, learned in a different way.

    So, there she comes. Her long shiny hair nicely put in a bun and neat makeup is on. Just a day before she had returned from abroad, she still recovers from jetlag and hides her tired eyes beneath huge sunglasses, but the moment she sees me she takes them off, and her face lights up. She smells soap and some gentle perfume, and I inhale the air almost as if I were in a bakery, or flourishing garden – I don’t want this cloud of barely noticeable fragrance to move away and disappear. And she is dressed in her very peculiar manner: leopard print and neon, and silver, and gold are put together in a way that doesn’t look sassy at all. Texture and cut, the type of print and fabric – all of its hades down and subdues the boldness making her look like some exotic flower that is about to blossom, and almost puritan. Almost.

    As she talks, I can’t help admiring. Her posture – she holds her back and shoulders straight with natural ease. This elongates her neck and adds grace to the look. And she takes her time. We both are short of it, we both are in a hurry, yet she takes her time when she moves her hands, or when she talks and listens to me. That fluid pace turns the short time of our conversation into pleasure comparable to wine-tasting or this feeling when you hear music and let yourself sway with a flow.

    Do you know what I find the most impressive about this friend of mine? Her attitude. She is beautiful. She has always been, everything about her. As the song goes, “Well versed in etiquette, extraordinarily nice”, but she always wears her beauty with dignity and she never makes you feel not beautiful enough, just like birds of paradise would not get shy or haughty of their feathers because you have baggy jeans or sweaty armpits. Extremely inspiring.

  • NEW-NEWER-THE NEWEST

    “You come first, the clothes later. Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Be creative.”

    – Karl Lagerfeld

    Early spring this year, I was happy to help two amazing people. Just in time before the lock-downs one of my friends got read of a smocking that was taking space in her wardrobe without a purpose and another friend was happy to become its new owner. This smocking was quite a traveler – from London to Zurich, Zurich to Saint-Petersburg, and finally from Saint-Petersburg to Moscow. That was love at a first sight – the fit, the lining in deep purple silk, the buttons… Then we started thinking about what to match it with. And ended up with a few ideas. For example, to wear it with silky palazzo trousers or something pajama-like underneath.

    I was happy to share this idea with a smocking’s previous owner to her great surprise. “I’ve never thought of it! But that really sounds interesting” – she said.

    This made me think of a strange and sad phenomenon of our time. We are often encouraged to be brave and try new, but trying new means literary “new”. In the past decade, we have got used to the experience of “newness” – checking a new exotic cuisine, learning to dance, or jumping with a parachute. Unlike the above-listed experiences buying a new dress or a pair of shoes is less challenging, it’s often cheaper and doesn’t demand much effort. But it has hidden costs.  Not to mention environmental damages caused by overconsumption, it damages us. It often distracts from our style because such purchases are often impulsive, filling our wardrobes with things that often stay there with the price tag on. But worst of all, “new for the sake of new” slowly but steadily erode our creativity.

    How can I fit some old things in the most current trend? How can I alternate the items that I already have? Can I put them on in a new unusual way? How can I choose things that will serve me for years and won’t lose the potential of making a new experience? How can I get something new without buying new? If reinventing was good enough for Karl Lagerfeld, maybe it is worth trying.

  • JACK THE RIPPER STILL STALKS HIS VICTIMS… HE’S STILL IN FASHION. LITERALLY.

    With Corona-virus pandemic fully on, fashion texts almost got locked in contradiction. On one hand, we are offered the new trends and must-haves which we really must try before the lost summer 2020 is lost completely. On the other hand, this crisis has drawn more attention to sustainability and the ethical side of fashion (or, should I say, unethical). This discourse isn’t new, and its last huge hype was at the turn of XX century. The Young King, a fairy-tale by Oscar Wilde, be it written today, would perhaps be published in The Vogue magazine and quoted by every eco-conscious fashion-blogger. As the story goes, a young king-to-be sees three dreams on the eve of his coronation ceremony. In those dreams he faces Greed, Death and Famine claiming lives of people working at his astonishing dress for the ceremony. Filled with sorrow and sympathy for those people, the king comes to the ceremony dressed as a shepherd… Reading the Victims of Fashion by Alison Matthews David feels almost like stepping into this fairy tale, but, perhaps, much deeper, because suddenly we realize that an unpretentious “shepherd look” could have claimed more lives than the richly decorated royal gown.

    The book Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present is an extensive research of fashion through the prism of damages to life and health caused to both consumers and producers of clothes. The book is mesmerizing, easy to read and feels more like a novel. Every fact is served as a story, often very personal and detailed.

    The author, Alison Matthews David holds a PhD in Art History and currently works as an associate professor in the School of Fashion at Reynors University.

    So, what is the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the word combination “victim of fashion”? Our imagination starts creating the phantoms of crazy fashionistas who starve themselves to death or obsess about latest designer creations showing off their incredible taste and devotion to the shifting ideals of beauty. It’s them, it’s not us. Most of us like to separate ourselves from fashion, especially its not-so-pretty sides. The whole ethos of wasteful frivolous lavish fashion is built around the idea of drawing a boarder between ourselves and seductive perils of trendy outfits. But let’s be honest, who are the actual victims of fashion? Most often it’s us, ordinary people who wear ordinary clothes and other ordinary people who make those clothes. No matter how hard we try to set ourselves apart from the “dark sides” of fashion, it is here. It often hides in the simplest things, such as a pair of socks, an innocent T-shirt or a lipstick.

    The book Victims of Fashion invites the reader to take a journey to the trenches of Napoleonic wars, streets and theatres of Belle Epoque and suffocating factories. On the way you will get acquainted with real mad hatters, devoted ballerinas and cry over every child whose cotton nightgown has caught fire. And in the end of this journey, just when you start thinking that all of this horror is a matter of the well-forgotten past, the author will remind you of the present. Numerous illustrations – from caricatures and advertisements, to X-rays and medical drawings – make this book feel almost like a cabinet of curiosities.

    What I liked the most: Despite the fact that this extensive research puts a lot of ugly facts into the lime-light, it is not anti-fashion and it does not aim to criticize “the rich” or “the fashionable”. To some extent, it points at human monstrosity and hypocrisy. Through the mirror of fashion, it mirrors us. When flea poison saves thousands of lives from typhus and becomes an efficient weapon of genocide, it’s us, not fashion. When we stay happily unaware of how many workers ruined their lungs adding the fake holes to make our jeans look cool, it’s also us, and not just fashion.

    For whom:

    For the general audience: if you have never thought where your things come from, and who makes them, this book will open up a new perspective, and, perhaps will make you more attentive to these details. A possible side-effect – you might start avoiding green garments… and many other garments. Or, you might want to follow the steps of XIXth centuries doctors and upper-class ladies who took action and intervened.

    For fashion professionals: if you are researching fashion production, history of fashion, or sustainable fashion, Victims of Fashion will be a good addition to your library. This book especially addresses clothes designers and manufacturers offering a challenge – instead of sticking to “out of sight out of mind” attitude, it offers to take responsibility and take into consideration everyone’s safety at every step of making of things that we wear.