Keira-anne.com

I won’t even tell you which one was me - the answer is obvious.

I started choosing my own outfits in kindergarten. My favourite pairing, as I can recall, was a top with big, pastel florals matched with a pair of very light washed overalls. I always felt my best in that particular clothing.

The fashion in my journey through childhood, adolescence, my late teens and even my early 20s was dominated by what I thought looked great at the time. There was the expected neon period, the time when I simply had to have Hammer pants preceding the to-die-for upside-down triangle branding on the butt of Guess jeans that everyone was sporting in seventh grade. I went through a brief period in the summer of 1996 in which I thought perhaps I’d go “punk.” The purple hair and British-inspired monstrosities didn’t last long.

By the time I reached my early 20s, I thought I knew what I liked to wear and what I felt comfortable in. Looking back, I was clueless even then. In pondering my dressing disasters, two particulars stick out like sore thimbles: 1) I had no idea what a proper fit looked like; and 2) Accessories? What?

Photo: Fashion In Liverpool

Then came the turning point. Then came 25. How I came to realize that something about my appearance was beyond awkward, I couldn’t say. But it was at that point something near-magical happened: I discovered shoes; I discovered handbags; I discovered the marvel in rotating jewelry; and I discovered how to buy clothes that fit.

Over the past three years, I’ve taken the basics of outer beauty and dressing one’s self and began to build with those tools. Now my hall closet is stocked with boots, stilettos, Keds, ballet flats, and pin-up girl kitten heels. The bulging jewelry box on my nightstand is stuffed with hoops, studs, feathers, chains, pendants, bracelets and rings. And my walk-in closet (yes, my walk-in closet) is adorned in denim and dress pants and skirts and sweaters and sweater vests and long tees and short tees and lingerie and ridiculously sexy dresses and matching bra-and-pantry sets. I count my blessings.

Photo: FashionInsanity

Very recently I discovered the bible, the bible being Vogue magazine. Never before have I found so much inspiration between pages. Cosmopolitan is yesterday’s news. I mean, really…how many different ways are there to give a really “stellar” blow job?

A girlfriend argued the other day that reading Vogue is pointless because she “just wants everything” she sees in the ads and the articles, and then feels inadequate when she doesn’t own it all. Au contraire, mon ami. It depends on how you look at it.

Being one who is still an admitted grasshopper when it comes to piecing together a smart look, inspiration is my reason for reading and inspiration is the entire reason Vogue was founded over a century ago in 1892. Though it would be lovely indeed, I will never be the girl with an assortment of Gucci bags, poppy-printed Prada dresses for spring, eccentric Dolce and Gabbana gowns or a new pair of Christian Louboutin heels for each day of the week. The few that can afford such pieces have a luxury that ever fewer will ever taste. For the rest of us, those pieces were designed to inspire.

Perhaps some may see this post as shallow and a pointless waste of writing time. However, I doubt there are many reading this that don’t understand the feeling of those rare, once-in-a-blue moon days where you step out the front door and feel more on your game than usual, and thus chalk it up to “looking good.” It’s not selfish or the aforementioned shallow to want to look fantastic. Self confidence doesn’t come easy even at the best of times, so sometimes there are days where a fabulous pair of shoes is the only first aid kit that will do.