How Mimicry Made Me More . . . Me.

The bandana thing did not arise organically.

In fact, as far as fashion revelations go, this one was pretty darn forced. 

As has oftentimes been the case over the last couple of years, I saw it online, I liked it, and I copied it.

I then loved it, got obsessed with it, wore it every day, and resolved never to go neck-accoutrementless again due to the ample amount of warmth it surprisingly provided the rest of my body. 

That being said, I also took on a large amount of guilt while doing so. 

Guilt which presented itself in the form of over-styling to the other extreme. Instead of finishing the outfit with other out-sourced fashion finds, I found myself pulling an amalgamation of very personal items to sufficiently balance out the fact that the one item very blatantly came from an extrinsic source of inspiration. 

Everything else, I concluded, would be 100% self-inspired. 

In the end, I was left with an outfit so incredibly ME, that nobody could really mistake it for trendy. 

Which is fascinating, right??

I mean, after all, the outfit did start with a copy-cat piece. 

But I've been thinking: What if, after all the whining about the homogenization of fashion and the lack of original thought, there's something about internet trend-mimicry that almost makes us more in touch with ourselves?

Could maybe the very honest acknowledgment that part of what we're wearing has been poached from someone else make us even more in tune with the part of it that hasn't? 

In the past, trend mimicry has been less obvious. It's been ignorable. Everything's happening so slowly and organically around us, that we're more likely to slowly lull ourselves into that strange sense of complacency in which we convince ourselves that we always have and always will love t-shirts & jeans, etc, etc. 

But maybe -- maybe, the fast pace of trends on the internet will be able to shock our senses awake. Maybe we'll begin to compare and contrast that which we see online with that which we feel inside and stop convincing ourselves that the tastes of others are in fact the tastes of ourselves. 

Like I consciously combatted the bandana, people will consciously counteract that which they notably copied with items that are even more representative of their own aesthetic.

It's almost like creating an incredibly artistic cover for a plagiarized book; By devising something original-enough to combat the copied component, you end up with a piece of work more meaningful and representative of you than anything that you've mimicked. 

Would it be too wishful to think that somehow, the internet might provoke more original style than it squashes? 

Cheers.