One girl’s fashion is another girl’s no-no

By Dorcas Mutai  

I am a huge fan of fashion blogs. I even follow a few fashion blogs (I think that’s what you get when you combine a video and a blog).

But let me set the record straight here, I am no fashion guru, never have been and I don’t see myself being one any time in the future. The reason I look through fashion blogs is really out of curiosity, and then I get hooked.

For some reason, most of the blogs I follow belong to plus size women who know how to rock their extra weight, yet sometimes, the clothes they put on leave me cringing. For instance, when you put on an outfit, say a jumpsuit and pose for the camera, you look absolutely divine (well, most of the time) but wait until you have to actually start walking.

I shudder to imagine how you could walk in such a precarious outfit, with thighs and things getting in the way. I know what I am saying because I am curvy.

If you asked me right now what my take on fashion trends was, I’d say, fashion, smashion. I am the kind of person who will ‘die’ with one trend as long as it looks good on me.  

Take for instance the boot cut jeans, the ones that have been there for eternity until the skinny jeans took over. For a curvy lady like me, boot cut jeans actually flatter my figure. Skinny jeans, on the other hand, do quite the opposite. I read somewhere that you should only wear skinny jeans if you have skinny genes, and I clearly do not.

 

I look at the other trends that are making a comeback and I shudder to think that I might even be caught dead in them. Like the pleated skirt, both short and long; the type that used to be worn only by members of a certain sect. These have now have made it onto the top five hot outfits to have.

How do you make me, a person that had a traumatic experience with a pleated skirt while growing up, wear one? I remember that day like it was yesterday, when my mum bought me a red, mid-length, pleated skirt with a matching red stripped shirt then made me wear it during Christmas.

It did not help that I was a tomboy who lived in trees wearing her older brothers’ hand-me-down shorts and jeans, or that I cried myself to the verge of dehydration. The harder I cried, the more determined was her resolve to make me wear it. She took it personally that I did not accept her gift with the squeals of delight that greeted her when my sisters got their ‘Christmas clothes’.

Since that traumatising incident, I looked forward to my first pay check and resolved to buy and wear only what I felt looks good on me, and not what looks good on Rihanna or Beyonce. Not what the self-proclaimed fashion gurus on the thousands of fashion blogs say is the entire rave.

This, however, does not mean I don’t envy women who can pull of daring clothes; I actually do. Still, I believe that having a fashion sense is understanding your body and what you would look in. So, if you see me in town in my boot cut jeans, just wave and walk on by in your twirly pleated skirt, because one girl’s fashion is another girl’s no-no.