In the age of fast fashion cool, trend-hopping, Instagram, the word “style” gets lost in the noise. Sponsored fashion struts down runways, fashion weeks inform us as to what we “must” wear today, and companies place new merchandise on store floors before we’ve had time to wear out last season’s. But beneath the hype, beneath the hashtag and the gloss, there is a more profound question: What is style, actually?
Style versus Fashion: What’s the difference
Fashion follows the trends, the seasons, the designers, the in-being-in, the headliner. It’s all huge blazers right now, all small and neuter color in the future. Style isn’t. Style is how you greet the world being you, how you perceive yourself, and how you may wish others to perceive you. Fashion will inform you of what’s “in”; style will educate you as to in which is suited to you.
The great deceased fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent wisecracked, “Fashions fade, style is eternal.” The adage states the very thing quality style is: it matures, lingers longer than a trend will, and signifies something.
Authenticity Over Aesthetics
Style begins with integrity. It’s not copying celebrity style or replicating some fashionable moment which will be gone in seven days’ time. It’s finding something about you, your body type, and your daily life. A school of art student may be loving dramatic prints and narrow silhouettes, and a businesswoman executive may love dressing up in formal-like, monochromatic gowns. They’re chic—not because they’re following fashion rules, but because they dress based on what he is.
It is particularly essential in an age of super-posed photomania. We look too often, on TikTok and Instagram, too-posed things for the photo at the cost of personality or functionality. But timelessness is about continuity and confidence, and never impossibly perfect moments.
Cultural Roots and Personal Identity
Style is also based on the past. Sari, kimono, or shalwar kameez is not merely clothing—clothing are histories, inheritances, and identities. Most of today’s young crop are marrying new and old, new styles looking backward and holding on to the times.
To slip an ancient embroidered vest over jeans, or top a collection of home-made ethnic jewelry with a black dress, not only prepares one—it is liberty. It gives one a greater respect for where one’s been and the nerve to brag on it.
Sustainability: The New Mark of Style
There has been a push towards sustainable fashion in recent years—a quality, not a quantity; ethics, not hysterical revolution. Buying things of forever, supporting local designers, recycling or redoing clothes isn’t just being nice to the earth but fashion statements in themselves.
A guy proudly wearing a leather jacket that is 10 years old or a person who recycles the old to new is evidence that there exists some non-consumerist notion of fashion. It’s not what you put on, but why and how you put it on.
Confidence Is the Key
Finally, real style is a mindset, not clothing. The same t-shirt is going to look completely different on two people depending on the way one is standing. Style is in the stance, smile, and gait of walking towards an item of attire—not in the extent which it is or definitional.
We emulate style icons like Audrey Hepburn, Rihanna, or David Bowie not what they were wearing, but that they were so selfless and so extreme as themselves. What they wore was a reflection of what they were and not an imitated look.
In the time of commercial insanity, computers telling us what to wear, let’s just hold up for a second and reclaim our own personal sense of style. Style is never looking like everyone else or being the exception—being you, in your skin, and expressing that through what you wear on your back.
The next time you’re dressing, dress yourself to these questions:
Is it cool, or is it me?
That is the question that can be the answer to your best, most favorite look.
