Licorice-toned liquids, survey the buzzing tangle of people from a throne in the sky. Each bottle sourced for splendour, their liquid insides boasting of Hungary’s Paprika, gold flecks found at the bottom of Brazil or a sleepless serpent from Japan.
Each acquired taste is numbing at first, as it readies the tongue for the harsh reality, depth and then the warmth that quickly follows. Next to sex, its one of the only thing that brings adults home at the end of the day or keeps them away.
Vintage, port, spirits. Fashion and people are a lot like dessert wine. You need to catch them at the right time to be able to taste their complexities in the full. It doesn’t matter how long you have preserved their place or how high the cost, some stay true to their taste, while others just get wasted.
Much like alcohol, people are not timeless. Yet, the allusion keeps fashion in date. Endless sequels to the old.
Being timeless in the public eye follows the formula of ageless supermodels, who scrub off their cellulite in secret. It also has a part to play in the glowing intrigue of Co-Co Channel’s little black dress. It’s that one tone lighter lipstick, thats made it’s home in your bag for decades.
Could it be there are products or brands out there that can suffice this ‘timeless’ look throughout the ages? Like a Revlon red-lip, a Tom Ford satin silk eye or a Channel tweed twin-set?
Or perhaps it is safer to say, being timeless takes on many forms.
It also can be born into people, like that one friend people always say should have been in another era. The walking embodiment of Daisy Buchanan’s charm mixed with far too much jewellery or hair that would twinkle if under a swaying chandelier. Always light with laughter, yet as quick as a hedge-cutter.
When I think of timeless fashion, I think of unidentified people dressing the streets and themselves in their own controversial and clashing formats. You can’t help but wonder what curveballs life must have gifted these beings, in order for them to think in ways the rest of the world wouldn’t dare.
There, breathing and bright is a person wearing a slideshow of the most nostalgic colourings, patterns or feathers of deceased decades. Of times people feel more connected to, then perhaps the present.
At work one day, I glanced up from my dusting to find a lady in a hoop-skirt, hair pristinely curled and swaddled into place. I was so taken aback by her presence it made me forget I had to make my daily $1,500 PB or finish dusting.
I can still remember her straw heart-shaped handbag, coupled with a yellow hooped skirt. Her red lips lunging off her face as she told me of the time where she just wore what everyone else did. And then, how she truly grew into herself when she first put on a peti-coat hoop skirt. After forty-two years of ambiguity, she was finally herself.
She said from that day onward, she never wore a simple 59.95 dollar tee again. She would rather invest her money and time into hunting for new pieces to add to her dress archive.
Without her style she was a married, mother of two working as a medical receptionist just down the street from my Uni. But with it all, she had dressed herself into someone I wanted so desperately to be.
A lot of people would say Audrey Hepburn is the black and white portrait of timeless, in fashion and life. She is a representative of time where photography was the only form of capture. Moments meant more. Sold for their unreplicated worth. ‘Likes’ were communicated by the enthusiastic tongue, not a button doubling as a status update. People’s knowledge and understanding of a moment, without technological assistance meant that everything meant more. People. Opinion. A photograph. A skirt.
I can’t help but think of today’s timeless ideal being associated with Bella Hadid. She’s not blonde. And from living 19 years a blonde, I knew my adoration of anyone who didn’t share the same roots was indeed something special. Her outfits a confusing confession of grudge, futuristic-Tokyo, 80’s and Sports-lux, transformed under the glowing lights into a moment.
Her body angular, wafer thin; a reminder of the contradictions of the modelling industry past and present. Her fuller frame eaten away over time. Her skin white sorbet. Her hair an unexpected block of brown chocolate. Too dark to be natural, yet your mind entertains it anyway because the whole picture is so mesmerising. She is the Alexander McQueen of fashion. Someone who stands slightly away from the spotlight, whether it be with her private life or with her opinions. The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show (2016) proving this lapse in her casting, compared to the rest of those prancing about in pink-bathrobes. Wherever she goes, she accessories her quirky canvas with a blank stare, which is stunningly sad all at the same time. An eclipse in the industry.
A moment you can stop and drink it all in. A moment you can taste, over and over again. A moment which has the power to re-stain your lips whenever your mind wanders there.
A moment that stays long after the day is done and you were still young…
Beyond-curious 