On why you shouldn’t be intimidated by fashion

-“I recommended you for the position. Are you interested?”

-“Sure,” I replied, not really thinking I would ever get it.
Worst case scenario, I’ll tell another friend of mine who is so much better fitted for the position to do interview,  I thought.
I had been admiring from afar Daniela’s progress in the fashion world. She, like me, came from a family of logical thinkers who didn’t fully understand the use of a creative mind, yet was succeeding at an incredible pace. I was at the beginning of my journey through motherhood, and never thought something like that could happen to me. Also, I wasn’t sure I could write. What would I say? I’m not a writer… am I?

Glamour held a special place in my heart. Through my teenage days, it was the magazine I turned to the most in an effort to understand what being a woman was about.  I didn’t have a mother to look up to, because I lived only with my father. Now I could give my grain of salt to all those other women, who like me, were turning to magazines as a source of information.

As time went by, I started understanding and loving the role, but I would always feel the impostor syndrome: I had never considered myself a fashionista, yet suddenly everyone made reference to me being so glamourous: “Well of course! She works for Glamour,” they would say. In reality I was just slowly figuring out and studying this world. My way of dressing hadn’t changed much through the process.
Eventually, I started believing it.

It’s not that working at a magazine made me, all of a sudden, dress better; it’s just that Glamour was my excuse to let that side of me show. It’s almost as if it gave me permission to play with color and forms the way I had always wanted to, yet didn’t because I was a marketer and a mother, and marketers and mothers dress conventionally, right?

My point is, don’t wait to have permission from a title to allow yourself to be who you are, and most importantly, don’t be intimidated by fashion. It’s not rocket science only meant for a select group of people: it’s just letting yourself express who you are through clothes, accessing the visual vault in your brain, which is a mix of what you see in the content you consume everyday (via instagram, web, magazines, books and museums), and taking risks.

Trust me: for me, even coulottes were intimidating at the beginning; I always thought those were pieces reserved only for fashionistas. Turns out, they are not, and you don’t have to belong to a square little drawer that determines who you should look like. So go ahead, if you love fashion, just wear those trendy pieces that you would have never worn before. Take risks. Have fun, and enjoy the process. Never forget that you are the master of your own journey.