What It Means to Be a Black Fashion Swan

Once upon a time, for a little while, I worked as a fashion professional.

I count myself as a white swan – a quite nice and beautiful looking female person who runs within the world of fashion victims. The double pronunciation of the two word’s “shh”, fashion professional, makes it sound harmonic but it really isn’t.

In fact, it is everything but harmonic.

A bunch of people deciding what other people wear is strange and clashes with the whole idea of individualism. Everything you wear is a signal and reaction to what fashion gurus select. It is a silent acceptation that we decorate our social bodies with fingerprints of other people’s design, brand or no brand. The hymn of fashion weeks throughout the world mirrors this attitude.

Even if you want to protest against the mainstream, be a black swan, you are part of the system. Or to say with Foucault’s, or more extreme with Judith Butler’s words: The mainstream defines itself as being different from the periphery and vice versa. That makes the periphery strong, as it is the mainstream’s customer of excluded stuff.

Still, mainstream rules.

The point is, I am a fashion victim by heart although I might belong to those people who give some advice. Because that’s what we do, we give advice and do not dictate. Dictation is ironically left for people living in real life which is violent and situated more in the area of Russia where they shoot contra-Kreml journalists.

I just love clothes. I love fashion. This is why I stumbled upon fashion journalism in the first place.

Ironically enough, I studied war and conflict journalism but that is another story and shall be told another time.

How You Make Use of Being a White Fashion Swan

I worked as a fashion intern in New York City. Getting a glimpse of what it really means to be a fashion professional was part of the plan. So, I was counting numbers for beautiful shooting’s settings and walked on high heels six blocks to get art magazines to please the real fashion professional woman I worked for.

To be honest, I still enjoy every work connected to fasion.

See, I just made a mistake and wrote fasion instead of fashion what made me think of fusion. But I really think it is a fusion. Fashion is a fusion of society’s taste and individualism. To be an idol in the world of fashion victims you need to be creative in the circle of fixed rules.

You have to make use of your three T’s: taste, talent and tolerance as the real fashion hunter sees a potential in every individual style. Better to be eccentric than belonging to the norm. Just be careful here. Beginners fall into the same stereotype they try to disguise. Mediocre artists don't touch it. Only real fashion professionals can play with the norm. And of those magicians only a handful existed through history.

When my work is related to fashion, I simply love it. You meet people who love fashion as you do and that is a good thing. All the Anna Wintour’s and latest fashion swans take a back seat and what hits your well protected face is true passion.

That’s exactly why I keep on track.

In the end, you might have a say in the mainstream to create the periphery. Then you are a real fashion swan, maybe not white or black but in the true colour grey.