old, and not hip

[mizkit]

I've developed the bad habit of watching stupid little "styling" reels on FB, very few of which are any good at all.

This last one was "what I thrifted vs how I styled it" - literally a shot each of the dress, jewelry, handbag & boots, which she then...put on. There was no 'styling'.

Why do I do this.

I mean, in this particular case, it was actually a good look. She'd made good choices. But I think 'styling' is a wild overstatement for what she was doing. I was expecting a revamped dress, at least?

There was another one that was like "how to style to hide you're wearing the same dress every day" which was, you know, wear a different coat/shoes/blouse/whatever, which, IDK, man, I'd just call that getting dressed.

I'm old, aren't I. Old, and not hip. :D

(A college friend of mine who got the same reel was like, 'I also thought, "Woah. You can dress yourself. Go you!"' which, not gonna lie, made me feel better. laughs)

Comments

[mrissa]

When I first heard of these I thought they would be things like...you know in the 80s the thing where people tied their T-shirts in a side knot to be coooooool? (I was born in 1978, so my concept of cooooool was keen but limited in the '80s. My babysitter was the height of cool. My babysitter was a very conscientious second alto in the girls' choir--not even the show choir--and would laugh like a DRAIN if she heard me say that.) Anyway though: I thought that the "styling" would be literally, here is a thing you do to wear the thing LITERALLY PHYSICALLY DIFFERENTLY.

And not, like, do you own earrings? put them on now.

I do own earrings, well done me.

[mizkit]

YES EXACTLY. I keep really quite looking forward to seeing how things are going to be styled, but I think I have, with this one, finally come to the understanding that they are not using the word in the way I expect them to be using it. Which is. You know. STYLING IT.

I just looked up 'styling vs getting dressed' or something like that, and ended up with:

"When you wear a top, you're wearing a piece of fabric. But when you style it, you're creating an ensemble. Tuck it into high-waisted jeans, add a statement belt, and throw on some chunky jewelry."

and

"Wearing is just putting clothes on in a hurry. Styling clothes is the will of looking good and matching your clothes for a nice looking outfit."

I'm sorry, man, that's just getting dressed. Perhaps it's getting dressed with some forethought, but...

[mrissa]

I can see a very few edge cases: I've had a few skirts with weird waists where I've had trouble figuring out what shirts to even wear them with, how the designer meant it to look and whether there were other options that even could work at all, and in those cases the "getting dressed" kind of styling would have been helpful.

But honestly I feel like in most cases they're saying "wear it well vs. poorly" or "wear it a way I like vs. a way I don't like."

[mizkit]

Right, I see your point, although I'd still call weird-waist problems more "how to wear this awkward item" than "styling," per se. To me, I guess, 'styling' is...I don't even know at this point. I mean like the girl this particular annoying video was in was stylISH, as in, had a specific vibe of hippie girl with cowboy boots kinda thing, like, it was A Look, but she didn't do anything, er, creative? To achieve the look? She bought all the parts as-is and put them on. It wasn't even "tie your t-shirt in a knot at the side" levels of 'alter the original items to suit the look.'

So, ok, I guess that's it: apparently I feel '*styling*' requires a certain amount of individual creativity in altering the parts to create a more interesting or unique look than the whole will achieve on its own, or something. :)