A piece of you in me.

In the spring of 2006 I was a clueless 19 years old girl without a single idea of what the fashion design was. I never followed the trends or read fashion magazines and I was told in class that it needed to change my mind.

That I needed to buy some basic magazines every month. Glamour, Vogue, Tendencias and Harper's Bazar became something I needed to buy as cigarettes. And with the years I added Neo2, the British Vogue. Or Dazed and Confused, Must and Nylong were tags in my browser that I always visited. Afterwards the fashion blogs, Fotologs, Lookbooks...

Suddenly I was in a universe of fashion designers, celebrities, trends, colors, inspiration... And the thing was that I was learning.

A lot.

I always critiquized the fashion magazines for creating a need we didn't have. Critiquzing the consumism I always fought against of.

But I was wrong.

Fashion is an art. And fashion magazines are able to take to our hands pages and pages of art.

Is a fact.

And saddly is unknown for some people (The kind of people I used to be) and maybe is getting now the recognition it should had had long time ago.

Sure, I still have some reservations towards the art of fashion. Opinions I would share some other day. But I can't deny that fashion is an art and designers are artists.

I was aware of that the first time I heard about Elsa Schiaparelli who soon became my favorite designer. A fashion icon I needed to know everything about of.

Someone who I deeply admired.

And starting with her I started understanding the catwalks, the designs, the trends, the ideas.

When I was 16 or 17 I wasn't able to understand the impossible outfits I could see in the TV or in one of my mom's magazines.

Now I do.

Is art.

As simply as that.

You don't look at a Picasso or one of Giacommeti sculptures because it has a defined form, or idea. You do it because is art. And you enjoy it. I was able to enjoy and smile to the surrealist art.
And suddenly I was able to take fashion as another form of art.

Because so little people has the talent to make you feel with their work. In my case, I couldn't help but the moment I saw a piece of art I liked. Not a mocking smile but a smile of admiration.

And that's what some fashion designers are able to make me feel.

Elsa Schiaparelli was the first one.

Maybe because I liked surrealism, or maybe because now, years later, I'm able to sit and watch an image of something she designed and enjoy it beyond the cloth or the era.

Maybe because I could see her direct relation with surrealism, dadaism and a lot of isms made cloths.

Maybe this finding lead me to find the beauty in the surrealist fashion. That fashion that looks great in the catwalks. Those clothes that are walking pieces of art.

And if Elsa was who I think started this trend (If I'm wrong I would like to be corrected) Alexander McQueen was who finally made me realize that fashion is art.

It was in 2006.

Pardon me, but I didn't know who Alexander McQueen was. Sure, I could had seen some pieces of his in a page of a Vogue, but I had never sit and watch his work closely.

The first thing that took my attention of that collection was the hair of the models. A friend of mine told me the moment we saw the image of Anna Marya Urazhevskaya wearing one of his Spring ready to wear collection pieces, was that her hair looked like mine recently awaken.
I couldn't help but laugh. But it was truth. And image after image, I don't know if because of the hairdo, I couldn't help but think about that comment and smile.




I know, it wasn't yet about the clothes, but when I got home I began to look some pieces. To look closelly at the collection again and again. And to look for more pics of his work. And I discovered his shoes. I love them. From the simplest piece to the most bizarre thing that he could had marvel.



He was definitely a sculptor of shoes.

Of clothes.

In that collection he was showing us some pieces with a really exaggerated round hips, impossible hats or hairdos, nightdresses with awesome volumes...

A walk throw centuries of fashion taking for me the term of romanticism to a brand new level.

He took my love and admiration for fashion to a brand new level.

He, (with some others) became this girl someone who stopped being a skeptic prune who thought that fashion was for shallow people in someone who could see the art in a piece of cloth.

And I'm never going to be a fashion designer, I found my pleasure and ambition in life in something else, but I'm always going to smile admired when I see my folder of almost 2G filled of pics of his work.