The Art of Clashing

A very fashionable woman sits across from me on the max. Plaid pants, blue patterned collared shirt and headphones which matched the color blue perfectly, big sunglasses and stacked necklaces, long coat and a newsboy cap. Very cool.

She’s also wearing leopard print adidas with it which is a pairing I’d never have thought of. I admire people who put eclectic things together and it doesn’t clash. Or, it does but in a pleasing way. I’m intimated to clash with elegance. The best I can hope for is to do it accidentally; through a lack of refinement, the way a child might.

I can’t bring myself to clash with purpose. What a statement that makes! I can’t always tell what will go together unpredictably, I remember leopard print being described as a neutral and I’m still wrapping my head around it. To say nothing of the fact that I’m trusting the public to understand that I made this fashion choice with a clear head and a sufficient number of options. What I fear is that people will just read it as incompetence. It does generally seem like the people who dress unconventionally well care less about public opinion, at least when it comes to their aesthetic.

So, I stick to the rules more or less. Is this a deep-seated need for approval? Im not sure I like being perceived at all, actually, unless it’s on my terms. If I’m on stage or at an event, I like the attention but I feel ludicrous at the grocery store in anything too cool. That’s the funny thing about looking cool, is that you eventually have to do some regular shit and it and the practicality lays waste to the whole vibe you’ve cultivated. And the more extravagant the fit, the more out of place it seems. You ever see goths pumping gas into a Nissan Sentra? It’s like a dog on its hind legs.