I have been thinking on the concept of personal style lately- mostly because I’ve realized that mine needs a revitalization. I’ve gotten lazy; what I actually do no longer matches my vision. I think that personal style is the assortment of themes that serves you well over the course of time; translated into the language of what fashion is currently. Occasionally I’ve got to put some thought into distilling that out of a general interest in fashion and a life with a lax dress code.

In the spirit of this, there are some things that I always like – maybe I stop wearing them because it is inappropriate against the backdrop of what’s in now, or I become tired of it for a time, or I simply can’t buy it anymore until the trend returns. There are also somethings that I’ll never truly like, and no amount of getting used to seeing it and no prevalence of a trend towards it can change that. Here are just a few that come to mind..

Four things I don’t need a trend to love:

1. Feathers. Not in the feather extension, cut thin and dyed way, but in natural colors or black, hung in the hair or sometimes as earrings.

2. Wide leg jeans. I’ll include in this semi-wide, super wide, big ass flares, wide leg trouser, you get the picture. I love them all.

3. Statement jewelry. I’m letting this encompass a lot, because its a concept that has served me well in a lot of different incarnations over a lot of time.

4. Rock and Roll. I mean this both in the way of fashion and music. I spend the pop and hip hop phases waiting for the Nirvanas, Black Rebel Motorcycle Clubs, and digging for Verbenas.

Four things a trend can’t make me love:

(I’ve tried to take my examples from lookbooks and catalogs to avoid the appearance of attacking anyone’s personal style.)

1. Round brimmed hats pushed back on the head. Hoss did this sometimes on Bonanza, and it annoyed me when he did it too, even though he was my favorite. I think the point of a hat is to have some jauntiness, a sharp, sly angle. The pushed up round hat makes the face rounder, more open, more.. dumbfounded to me. I know a lot of you have already embraced this trend – sorry, nothing personal, I just hate it.

2. Pastel or neon colored jeans. There isn’t any nuance to the circumstances I hate this in; I just dislike the way it looks, in pretty much every circumstance I see it in.

3. Tops that are feminine yet somehow sexless. I can’t think of a more concise way to account for all the trendy tops I’m throwing into this heading – many include one or more of the following: grandma crepe fabric, ruffles at the neck, peter pan collars, high necks with ties, poufy sleeves, stacks of ruffles… This is somewhat of a fine line, as I do like some things with a 1940’s influence – but only when they’re sexy, sexy, sexy.

4. Unrefined color blocking. I don’t like bright colors much; I don’t like oversaturated colors that would fit in on kindergarten classroom walls. So when fashion arbitrarily stacks chunks of colors like that together, it ads insult to injury. I don’t hate all color blocking; I hate this certain kind.