Corner View: Personal style

Jane at Spain Daily invites you to talk about a weekly theme relative to your corner of the world. Tune in to her entry today, and there is also a list of other participants you can click to read. The theme this week is "Personal Style".

I used to have a personal style. It was the classics: straight lines that never go out of style, simple lines in luxurious fabrics. Velvet dresses, cashmere sweaters, tweed blazers. However there was an incipient germ inside me that, along with the inevitability of aging, combined to bring me where I am today. The germ is hatred of shopping. I truly dislike malls, stores, and trying on clothes, so after a while I drifted away from the scene. Combined with aging (I'm thicker now and the straight lines don't hang straight anymore) and a more full life, I regularly fail to even momentarily enter a store. Add diminished wealth to the mix and now velvets and tweeds and satins are out of reach for me. The final nail in the coffin was that I never actually cared about fashion. I don't spend energy to seek it out nor do I travel any more to Paris or Rome, there is no need to entertain counts or Arab billionaires or global importer-exporters at Le Grande or on the Med. Now I am content to stay at home and write in my lounger pants and substitute teach in jeans. Thus in photographing a piece that represented my personal style: it came to me that now at nearly age 50, I have none.

All the clothes in this closet, my one and only closet by the way, are hand me downs, ebay finds, yard sale purchases off the cuff. None of this represents my favored colors, styles, or fabrics. My personal style is whatever I happen to be wearing at the moment - which right now are Chic jeans and a tattered DKNY sweatshirt. Sigh. Let's hope my fabulous personality makes up for the lack.