I just finished reading the Barry Shwartz book, “The
Paradox of Choice” and it’s one of the best things I’ve read. Whilst my
interest in fashion seems a fairly fluffy thing to apply it to, it got me
thinking that the way we choose to dress is basically just another area of life
where our brain limits what it thinks it can get in order to minimize stress
and anxiety! Sounds weird? Well I’ll explain.
A new fashion season means loads
of new clothes on the high street, but I’m not as fond of this as a style
blogger might appear to be. The fact is, whilst I enjoy dressing well and just
naturally throwing things together, it becomes stressful at the point where you
wander into a big store and are faced with racks of corresponding blouses and
shirts all appealingly arranged to reflect how you might put them together.
There are a dozen blouses you could put with the new floral skirt and fifty
pairs of quirky sandals that would go with them. I look at this vast choice and
I have that weird feeling of both aesthetic interest tempered by mild anxiety.
Where do you even start?!
I love dressing up, dressing well, and dressing to
feel sexy but I can’t seem to do it by the rules of the high street. This is in
no small part financial, because for me, there’s only really scope for one or
two treats a month (and they have to be low key), and when you walk in any
given high street store, if you’re inundated with nice items you could see
yourself in, I don’t know how I’d choose one over another. Whilst they are all
nice, they don’t justify your £30 more than say, the next nice cardi or dress.
Of
course, being natural problem solvers I’m sure humans find ways to make
decisions easier for ourselves, by having a ready prepared mental template of
what constitutes our favourite things, in any area really- whether this is the
cut of a dress, a potential partner’s smile. There are certain things that
catch my eye; I have a “type” where fashion is concerned as much as I love
guys with brown eyes, but if I had infinite funds then I’d probably be in more of a
position to wear all sorts of the new lines in the shops. (One boy with brown eyes is more than enough though!).
The only place I can
really go mad is at a carboot sale, where a woman of my size is having a clear
out and not charging a bomb for it-finding something unusual for a fiver as
opposed to £35 is a thrill I’ll never tire of. So to anyone who wonders why
style bloggers exist, and why they don’t go and take photographs of the trees
instead, maybe there’s more to it-maybe we just like sharing the style we
choose, because it’s not as easy as it seems!
By the way, for anyone who is wondering why
we find decisions tricky, what leads is to make the decisions we do, and the
unusual conclusions we can draw from it, I highly recommend Shwartz’s book…
