Fashion isn't often credited for being inclusive or helping people to get through however it helped me significantly. It saved me almost.People often see it as a way of defining people and not them to be shallow, the fashion set are looked on as cool and as royalty to people like me but to some outsiders, they seem ridiculous and far too absorbed in a material world. I however found it to be a saving grace. In secondary school, there are many things that you can be judged on and it seems that there is nothing more important than the opinions of your peers. Fashion was a world I could escape to because my actual world wasn't too great, the glamour and the notion of knowing that somewhere designers were planning what would be worn by many next season and replicated a thousand times over on the high street. When I sat alone in maths class and people were whispering about me, I could block it out by figuring out what I was going to buy for the upcoming season and doing sums of my own.e.g. pinafore dress + checked shirt +long pearl necklace + patterned tights = the perfect nod to the punk trend. This helped me get through numerous maths lessons which were traumatic for me because people would whisper about me, the teacher couldn't control the class and I wasn't particularly interested in the significance of ridiculous number that starts 3.1415 (from my memory, it could be wrong). I used to buy a lot of magazines (Look, Elle, Vogue, Glamour, Grazia) and they would help me to focus on something else, a world that I one day had a hope of being in. People accuse fashion of being taken too seriously but I enjoyed that there was tragedy, controversy, art, creativity and so much more in the fashion world. It can laugh at itself, Anna Wintour is extremely respected in the fashion world but ridiculed by some of the outside. I felt that it was ok that I was bullied because one day I could be included in something bigger and it wouldn't matter what people at school were saying.
People also always seemed to see me differently on non- school uniform days when I was in clothes that were normal and fashionable and actually complimented me on these days which I found amazing. The day that I started being seen differently by my peers was on the day of a Geography field day trip where we were allowed to wear our own clothes. I'd made a normal amount of effort and hadn't put on anything extra special, just some black, skinny jeans, pumps, a tightish t-shirt and a leather jacket but everyone seemed to see me differently that day. The boys said I was fit and the girls loved what I was wearing, I was still the same person but dressed differently. It made me stand out and be included all at the same time and I'm forever grateful for that.
Fashion gave me a sense of being and I recently started writing fashion articles for the university magazine which has given me even more confidence.
You should try and find something that allows you an escape and make you feel like you can do something worthwhile whether you're feeling low or being bullied, it's important to find.
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