Dressing, fashion, style, putting on a hat is meant to be fun. That’s what I’ve read anyway. Usually the people who say this are also wearing pom poms on jumpers and vivid prints in clashing colours and glittery ironic mini Eiffel Towers as earrings.
Somehow they get away with it. More than get away with it: they look gorgeous and free and fashionably interesting. Me? If I tried that I would feel like a clown crossed with Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.
I’m a neutrals kind of girl. Navy, black, white and their loyal friends, no floral prints, no loud flashy earrings or necklaces that resemble a kids’ fun park. I might splash out and wear a sparkly sneaker, carry a pop-of-colour handbag and here is where I’m meant to put a third “colourful fashion” example but I can’t even think of one.
I’m kind of stuck in neutral country and the thing is I want to inject some starlight and moonbeams into my wardrobe, the kind I’m comfortable with. The kind I wear and they don’t wear me.
Then I read something (and I saw it in action too). Co-founder and Creative Director of Mamamia, and bold colour and print wearer Mia Freedman (yes, she does work a few desks up from me), wrote on her Instagram last week that she treats leopard print as a neutral. Ditto for camouflage. Only she said: Ditto with camo because that is how people who wear bold colours with sequins and clashing prints talk.
It was like an immediate jolt of cognitive behavioural therapy for my fashion thinking. It changed my thoughts on neutrals instantly. Somewhere deep inside I’ve always known this to be true as I already own a few leopard and camouflage prints. They are the only prints I own. But now I know what to do with them. I can have fun with a print and control it at the same time. It’s like having your cake and eating it too for a neutral-aholic.
