Friday 8 February 2013

freedom is not for free


22/03/11: Vivienne Westwood ring // tao for Comme des Garçons knit // limiFEU skirt // +J for UNIQLO leggings // y's x George Cox shoes

having spent five years in New York City on top of going to Parsons for university, i've come to learn more than i thought i ever could in the art of self-expression. i credit most of what i learned about the relationship between personal style and the freedom of expression to my time there - whether it was through the friends i made, the classes i took or the walks i would have through the gritty city streets. 

in retrospect, it was not a difficult time for me at all. it was a lot of work, but i didn't suffer.

but something just happened earlier today that made me realize why.

i have a dear friend who is unique in the extreme. and by unique, i mean for New York. Tokyo is her soulmate city, without a doubt. 


Tea & Sympathy was our thing, though. 

whether she knows it or not, she has been one of my ~silent muses~ as she dresses herself from the inside out. i've never met someone quite so self-aware, of both her aesthetic and her influences, and it's endlessly fascinating and inspiring to me. as a child of the internet, she opens herself to criticisms by people who take her at superficial internet-persona level and looking the way she does (and refusing with great adamance to not change it for anyone), she does. and often.

unfortunately, her online presence has attracted the attention of an even more unfortunate cretin in her class. 

some awfully disgusting judgmental things were said via an anonymous ask on tumblr and my said dear friend responded with a sharpness i've never been more proud to see her display. she is my beloved 後輩、so i feel very protective of her even though i know very well that she's capable of taking care of herself. 

it got me thinking about how this unnamed, cowardly waste of human life only reinforces how brave The Different, The New, The Unique have to be. it takes courage to not only find who we think we are, but even more so to dress the part too. while i do get hit with Special Snowflake Syndrome once in a while, i know for a fact that i do go out of my way to sometimes not "offend" people by the way i dress. which is ironic, considering how much i admire those who could not give two sh*ts. 

so i'm learning to let go, learning not to care as much and dress the way i want to and feel is right just for me.

starting with wearing these ugly-amazing deerskin sneakers by Number (N)ine x Converse again, in spite of them being a size too big, made for men and my mother wanting to set them on fire:


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