Just be you this New Year

Kenya: Because I am a realist, I am not going to delude myself that this year will be any better as far as fashion goes. I have braced myself to inspect a similar parade of cheap shoes and suffer the limited social graces of assuming clods as was the case last year.

The spring in our footsteps is faltering with each passing hour of an endless January. Soon, cleaned-out Nairobians will be roaming the streets in dazed zombie shuffles, clad as if the clothes they are wearing have been thrown on with a pitchfork.

Resolutions that were made with misguided steadfastness will, before long, start to give way. It is January, and these are difficult times.

As such, I will excuse the outrageous fashion — or lack of it. I stopped making resolutions years back and therefore do not join in this ritual dance, where the moves are the same even though the music may be different.

You do not make progress through wishful thinking or sweeping statements without a specific plan unless you are a miracle worker. All the resolutions that I have stumbled upon so far have nothing to do with fashion or dressing — which is quite telling.

Most of these “to do” lists mainly enumerate weight loss, career advancement and education, family and love in the most ambiguous of manners, it is not surprising they never seem to see the second week of January.

Some fashion and personal style change may be inevitable, like a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly...or if you have a sense of style, like an incessant itch begging for a scratch!

The problem is that most people base their resolutions on willpower, which explains their disastrous ending. How about you approach it more like a business plan — well strategised with milestones and measurable action plans?

It is the reason moneyed celebs employ stylists to deal with the headache. Matters of fashion are no longer left to the whims of merely yearning for a pie in the sky. And if the stylists fail, well, you get them fired! Because when you pay, you say.

Lupita Nyong’o would not be the sexy fashion goddess she is today of her own accord, even if she had the money. She is a product, literally, of a good management team and stylists.

Instead of a fashion resolution, how about you just make you. This should not be difficult, because it will be just a matter of enhancing your personal style.

This is probably the equivalent of what those intelligent-looking faces behind rimless glasses or stirring motivational speakers would call discovering your purpose.

If you discover and know your style, there would not even be need for resolutions.

 

After all, has it not been made clear that fashion is what you adopt when you do not know who you are? So, do not be stuck in fashion. When you discover your style, there will be no need to change.

Making resolutions on matters fashion would be unnecessary and you would easily walk the same path as Daphne Guinness, the granddaughter of the man who gave us Guinness stout. Like she discovered, you would not have to approach fashion, fashion would approach you.

The good news is that should you be at a loss, trained eyes like those of Connie Aluoch can read you like a book.

Well, being one of the only two people in Kenya with a Masters degree in fashion, breaking down and styling someone’s look is like saying today is a Sunday.

She is the type to bring you to the realisation that a Gucci bag or French cut jeans are not what you need to step out in style, because it all begins with an open mind.

It is about something from within, which resides in personal style...in you. Now, that is what you develop and build. Not succumbing to the ephemeral craze of trends and repetitiveness of fashion.

That is the resolution you make, and no matter how quirky you end up looking in the end, you would not be weird.

You will be a limited edition. You.

And on that note, I am still not wearing socks!

TWITTER: @omondipaul