Fashion & lifestyle

What If I Don’t Have Money?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Redefining style on a budget: exploring smart choices beyond fast fashion


What if I don’t have money? This is a question we are asked frequently, from young people and those who don’t have much money to buy quality clothes but want to change their lifestyle by cutting out fast fashion. What can they do? What are the options?

This is a topic we have explored and discussed many times with our community. We are aware of the reality, the tough times we are experiencing all over the world. In fact, we are all in the same boat, so we must find solutions together. Uplifting the lifestyle of our community is a crucial step.

First of all, we believe it is a matter of educating ourselves to consume differently, a conscious choice on our part. And there are things we can do, perhaps requiring a little creativity.

No money, but plenty of style


When we were young, we used to transform our clothes. For instance, we used to take a pair of denim jeans and unseam the legs. Then, give them the shape of a maxi skirt with a front or back slit, and resew. Same procedure for the short skirt version.
Grandma’s white linen slip-dress worn with a belt and a nice cardi became a summer dress. Don’t forget vintage ties. They can be cool belts. Training yourself to see and wear items in a different context is just a game of fantasy and style. So, open your family closets and play!

Vintage pieces are the perfect timeless choice. Investing in some good vintage pieces should be on top of your list. We just want to clarify what we mean by vintage: clothes coming from past years or decades. When we see second-hand fast fashion clothes sold as vintage on some resell platforms, we cry. That is not vintage! Vintage has a quality that lasts for decades, that’s not what fast-fashion can offer.

How to build a timeless wardrobe


This is our advice to avoid the look of a character who jumped out of Grease. We would suggest buying only two new quality pieces, one top – one bottom, and mix them with the vintage garments. In this way, your outfits will be modern and unique.
Timeless quality items will stay with you for a very long time. If you can, just add two more the following season and keep on mixing the new ones with the vintage. The ability to mix, by the way, is the fun side of fashion and the true essence of style.

So, replying to question: What if I don’t have money? Instead of eating up whatever brands make with the sole intention of encouraging overconsumption, we can use a little creativity to update our clothes. Give them a new life and mix them in fresh ways. So you can renew your wardrobe even with a limited budget.

We are grateful for the quality of our interactions that keep the discussion alive. Thank you, community!

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Masculine & Feminine

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Exploring the boundaries of style and the culture behind it


Style plays around the concepts of masculine & feminine. However, the line between them isn’t always well-defined, allowing them to blend and creating more space for freedom and creativity.

Fashion & gender


When selecting items for our boutique, we’ve always kept an eye on men’s clothing. We love picking up men’s items to mix in. In fact, we adore the duality of the masculine-feminine style. Additionally, limiting clothes by gender feels a bit too restrictive for us.

If you were young during the ’80s and ’90s, and your favourite designer was Jean Paul Gaultier–a true creative genius–you would later realise that you had seen everything possible in fashion and life. Forget the fast-fashion era; that was a wonderful time! Creativity was at its peak, and that unforgettable energy created iconic moments in fashion history.
All the concepts now popular in fashion were launched by Gaultier about 40 or 50 years ago. He was ahead of his time, with a unique attitude–definitely a genius!

We can say he was changing culture through fashion.

Masculine, feminine and gender-fluid fashion


Gaultier was the first to introduce diversity and inclusion, laying the groundwork for a gender-fluid fashion. On his catwalks, we saw everything–men wearing skirts, women in oversized suits, and a celebration of different body shapes. ‘Love yourself as you are and play with clothes’ sounded so beautiful to us.
Gaultier’s fashion has shaped our vision to a point that now, everything feels like it’s already been seen. Perhaps he took us to another planet, one made of love, acceptance and play.

Perhaps fashion evolved faster than society’s ability to adapt to the changes.

“Too much comfort is not good for creation.” One of his brilliant quotes invites us to reflect on the specific moment we are living.

Discomfort plays a role in creativity. We must remember it.

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Less Stuff, More Meaning

Reading Time: < 1 minute

An evolved essence of style: beyond trends, toward identity and purpose


Passing through the storm of the pandemic, we had the feeling that many brands had lost their grip, their meaning while a few others were able to sustain consistent work, somehow surviving the impact. Not because their message was new, but because, perhaps thirty years ago, they dared to propose a different viewpoint. By the way, that is the power of innovation, not everyone grasps the message immediately. It takes a time, sometimes even decades.

So many garments now feel like they belong to an old world, no longer appropriate. Some others, however, have carried forward their codes, values, as they are still modern, versatile and never out-of-place. They are effortlessly timeless.

In order to adapt to a new environment and to find a meaningful way to pursue our passion for design and fashion, we have to pay attention to select the right pieces—curating with intention, while clearing away the excess.

The new aesthetic develops around deeper concepts: timeless and comfortable silhouettes, soft textures, materials you love to feel on your skin. Fewer pieces, higher quality is what identifies a modern wardrobe.

Less stuff, more meaning is the evolved ethos #formodernhumans

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Evolution vs Revolution

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Exposing the flaws of a broken system


Exposing the flaws of contemporary economic systems raises a crucial question: do we need evolution or revolution? The Italian economist Guido Maria Brera released an interview to a daily newspaper which provided another piece, a fundamental block, that perfectly completes the picture of a broken system.

“With globalization, the weaker classes gave in to the masochistic exchange of their rights for cheap goods. Fashion, household appliances, mobile phones became affordable and gave the illusion of well-being. In the meantime, homes, education and healthcare are becoming less accessible. The result is dramatic: rights, hardly won, bartered for goods.”
– Guido Maria Brera said.

In short, cheap goods have distorted the economy. But the issues aren’t confined to one industry only, they extend far beyond. In fact, the entire system is corrupted.

By the way, reflecting on Brera’s words, the need for a change stands out. However, we thought it was just a matter of evolving, considering evolution that natural process which is part of human beings’ growth. In other words, we believed we simply needed to move to the next level of improvements.

But a system that is collapsing, a system that is completely broken, perhaps doesn’t need to be revised. Mere revision or adjustments here and there, wouldn’t work. If we just put a patch on it, we will not find a good solution. Because of common sense, we are feeding dinosaurs that have lost their purpose. Most importantly, it’s impossible to find new ways if we follow old patterns. Once we understand this, the next step to take gets more clear. Now it is time to challenge what we take for granted.

And, to achieve this, we do not need evolution–we need a revolution.
Reset and reinvent everything from scratch: education – economy – work – fashion – lifestyle.
Everything!

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New Beauty Standards

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Redefining perception and embracing authenticity


In our evolving process to become better humans, we are actively searching for a more meanigful lifestyle. Thinking about new beauty standards, expressing elegance in harmony with nature and getting rid of unhealthy beliefs are all things we need to do.

For so long we have been brainwashed to accept plastic dolls with ultra-white teeth as a beauty ideal. Ultra-white teeth do not even exist in nature, not to mention doughnut lips. How could we believe these were human features?
Are we sure that we look younger or beautiful by lifting our face or plumping our lips? And, if we want to eliminate plastic from the world, why do we put it into our bodies?

Self-acceptance and authenticity as the new beauty standards


We are human beings, getting old is part of our nature. We should accept it and live it positively. Real beauty is a direct reflection of self-acceptance, well being, and respect and love for oneself. But, there is a huge difference between taking care of oneself and become the plastic version of a human.
If we look around, we are surrounded by aliens shaped by plastic surgery, and they all look exactly alike. Our faces lost expressiveness.
As a reaction to that, the body-positive movement tells us to accept ourselves as we are, which is obviously the right attitude.

At long last, we acknowledged that beauty is diverse and ageless. Different body shapes, or freckles, diastema and so on aren’t defects but details that make us unique. The truth is that we’ve had a rather schizophrenic attitude to beauty standards. First, we believed in plastic dolls, the fakeness par-excellence. Then, we pushed self-acceptance to the extreme. For instance, promoting excessively overweight bodies as a wellness model is quite concerning.

While accepting oneself is a fundamental block in our growth process, selling unhealthy models as a new positive normal is dangerous. We tend to go from one extreme to the other instead of finding the balance.

The Romans used to say “in medio stat virtus” – virtue lies in the middle.
It’s time to follow the advice.

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