Getting on my fashion soap box for a minute, today. The topic? Why I strongly believe the terms “what’s in/what’s out” and fashion “do’s/dont’s” should be banished from all fashion vocabulary and rhetoric. These terms are constantly used in fashion mags, and fashion-devoted websites, and have irked me for years, so I’d just like to express, today, why they do….

Using a “what’s in/out” approach, and the like, is a shaming and condescending tactic, and is a short-sighted and limited perspective of fashion and style. Furthermore, to be quite frank, it’s an immature and unsophisticated way of thinking. This mentality puts fashion in a box, and because fashion very much lives and thrives in the creative realm, there should be no box – no limits – either in design, or in personal style. Fashion is a beautiful avenue to organically create, to inspire, to self express – nothing should be off the table when it comes to creativity. Using the above approach is like handing us all the same picture, the same box of crayons, and telling us to color our “art” inside the lines, when all we really want is a blank canvas – many blank canvases – and our own darn colors, brushes, and materials – beautiful materials that may be several “last seasons” old – thank you!

In addition, this tactic/approach discredits the source, in my book. It reveals a very juvenile (almost high school mean-girl), unsophisticated mentality, shaming us into not wearing something anymore, and pressuring us to buy the next, new, shiny thing, so that we can still hang with the cool crowd (“You can’t wear a tank top two days in a row, and you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week… so I guess you picked today” –Mean Girls). Didn’t we leave all that ridiculousness behind in high school? Haven’t we all developed confident, well-rounded, interesting, intelligent minds that recognize the ridiculousness and absurdity of this? It also demonstrates a short-sightedness that simply does not, and should not, resonate in any creative world – let alone fashion, of all things! You know what truly is outdated, and “so last season” (by like, 60 years)? This tactic.

In closing, it’s my hope that fashion influencers will stop using this type of tactic altogether, and will start embracing a much more welcoming, encouraging, and inspiring approach when it comes to presenting what’s new in fashion. They simply need to leave it up to us to determine what we’d personally like to do with our old, wonderful closet.

Stepping down, now Hope you all ignore the condescension, and embrace what’s inspiring and beautiful to You!

xx -Carrie

SMP Founder + Mama x 4