subject: Making A Fashion Statement [print this page] Everyone has made a fashion statement that they wish they had not. Everyone has a photo floating around out there that's less than flattering and even maybe a little bit embarrassing. The best that anybody can hope for is that the pictures dont end up on the web. Anything less than worldwide exposure is going to be okay.
Most of these fashion faux pas come from making bad decisions and falling into the trap that trends and fads pull people into. However when you are young these traps are much easier to fall into because when everybody else is doing something, like leg warmers or parachute pants or wearing their pants down low and super baggy, then it really is tough not to do the same thing. Everybody wants to fit in and sometimes simply wearing the same cloths or similar fashions is enough to make anyone feel as though they are part of a larger group.
Sometimes the fashion statement is carried out in order to differentiate that person from the group. You will often times see young people dress more and more bizarrely in order to be farther and farther from what is regarded as normal. This is where the fads start because regardless of how weird something looks to me or anybody else, it makes a certain sense to other people.
Sometimes something cool comes out of the experiment, but usually the trends simply fade away into obscurity and never show their heads again. The only time they see the light of day is when you happen to be cleaning out the closet and you pull that old box of photos out and start looking at those early years, back in high school. These are the times when the most embarrassing things manifest. These are the years when you experiment and every year you can have a new thing, a new style and it was always evolving and changing.
Luckily there is normally photographic evidence and you can go back and laugh at the cloths you and everyone else wore and the silly haircuts that seemed like such a big deal at the time. Sometimes you'll see things which are timeless and you wish maybe you had played it a little more conservative on picture day. A polo shirt and a nice pair of khakis would have looked just fine today as they would have twenty years ago.
