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| Sketch by Donna Karen |
I am so excited about this new blog. The more I write for my dance community, the more I find myself wanting to write on everything else. And as I've faced health issues that no young person should have to face, I have found myself in bed for days, bored and glazed with that "Hulu" daze one falls into and increasingly fascinated with fashion sites and writings.
No, not your ordinary fashion. My mother didn't allow me to wear make up and a next door neighbor had to teach me how to shave my legs, so fashion... well, femeninity, to be more honest, was not groomed or grown until my twenties.
By then I had discovered dancing. Ballroom dancing, as most of you would call it. I danced swing, I danced country western, I danced salsa... I danced and danced and danced.
And I still remember that day. That day a dancer at West Coast Swing convention came up to me and said, "I just want you to know, my dance teacher and I think you are the most beautiful woman in this entire room. We just want you to know that."
And then he walked away.
I will never forget that day. It changed my life. Someone said I was beautiful. He didn't give me his name, his teachers' name and he didn't even ask me to dance. Looking back, I think he might have known, somehow, that I didn't know I was beautiful. And he thought I should be told.
Of course, it took me a long time to actually believe I had any beauty in me, but he planted the seed. Dancing helped it grow (rhinestones and high heels can do that to you!), but opening my studio changed everything.
Long story short, I learned that I was beautiful and I learned that women are beautiful. All of them. And I learned that I had an eye for beauty... not just for choreography, but for excellence... period. The more I grew as an individual, the more I trusted my God-given instincts, the more I found that, if you put me in a store, I will only notice the most expensive items on the racks... even from across the room (Nordstrom Rack has taught me this lesson over and over again!)
And just now, when I 'Googled' some kind of fashion term to find an image to top this post... and I snatched one out of a few hundred in two seconds... yeah. It has a Donna Karan signature. I can't help it. It's that bad.
It's become almost a joke with my husband. When I go to Vegas, I don't play, I don't gamble, I don't eat and I don't go to the spa... I walk. I walk to the shops and take a million pictures of beautiful things. They have the most incredible and diverse selection of designers and labels and jewelry there. Finds are still few and far between (I am so picky, after all), but they make me feel warm, fuzzy and fabulous from my tip-toppy insides to my toes when I see them in person. Purrrr...
And so, the more I write, and the more I read and the more I gaze upon fashion, the more I realize that I don't just "want" to write about these beautiful things... I HAVE to write about them. Just check out this little piece I wrote on my DANCE blog! And it is still one of my most popular posts... so it's time to write on fashion that catches my eye in my own little corner of the internet. So I can be happy, my husband can be happy and hopefully, some of my current readers will be happy. I will say though, that I can't wait to hear from new ones!
So if you are a dancer, I highly recommend subscribing to this blog anyhow. If you are going to dance, that means you are investing in excellence, and that means you need to develop an eye. And you can do that by watching more than just dancing. I love this quote- it puts it so well:
"A dancer should learn from all the arts. Go to museums and look at the paintings. See how they balance things. Everything you do in the arts enriches you."
-Alicia Alonso
And so, let us learn from the art of fashion... fashion that defies the ages and the trends. I once read that Iris Apfel (a famous fashion icon) has been collecting her costume jewelry for 50 years. I no longer shop or browse for "trend" pieces... I browse and shop for timeless pieces. So I've decided...
Good Fashion = Good Taste = Good Art
Period.
And now, let's enjoy developing our eye... together!
xoxo,
Katherine
Love this post! I have been seeking lately to approach dancing as more of an art, as a thing of beauty and expression, as opposed to merely a form of feel good entertainment or a way to show off.
ReplyDeleteI am so happy to hear you talk about this, as it has been on my mind for a long time, but i have never heard it mentioned anywhere. Hope you write about this topic more.
-Matt