Fashion Blog: The Importance of: Playing Dress Up

Sunday, March 13, 2011

The Importance of: Playing Dress Up

"I have a dress-up chest at home. I love to create this fantasy kind of thing."

- Kate Moss

When my older sister and I were growing up in Jacksonville, Florida our most favorite pastime during our teenage years was to play dress up. We'd do it all -- the clothes, hair, and accessories. We'd spent hours on the weekends playing dress up with our new finds from the mall and put together endless outfit combinations. A decade later, I'm still doing exactly what I did when I was thirteen, except with a little twist of fantasy. I'm always dreaming about just lounging around the house in a full length ball gown and having Sunday tea parties complete with wide brimmed hats and lady-like gloves and eating macarons with my tea. I think in our present day society where kids are growing up way too fast and they're always on the internet and texting, some people forget what it's like to be young and have fun without technology. At twenty-four I'm still a kid at heart. I think it's important to keep that alive. You can't take yourself too seriously there's enough people like that in the world.

For this "attempt" for a photo shoot, I tried to keep it young and fresh so I opted for no make- up and just natural and messy morning hair. My dream is to become a stylist and be able to style high fashion couture shoots one day, so I'm not as comfortable being the one on business end of a camera. I want to put together the set and clothing ensembles and be as far away from the camera as I can. It's a lot of work to style and direct yourself at the same time! This photo session which took place in my tiny bedroom is supposed to be as playful as the idea that it represents. To reduce the awkwardness that I felt, I laughed, danced around a lot, and refuse to make eye contact with the camera so you'll notice that a lot in the photographs. I wore a lot of my most favorite pieces from my wardrobe like strapless dresses with sweetheart necklines and voluminous tea cup skirts and tiered dresses. So never grow up Peter Pan and come take a look at these photographs and I hope it inspires you to put together your own make believe dress up session!

- Love, KB