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Fearless: Why You Have To Dress Elaborately This Season

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Spring 2016 [Photo: Facebook/Zimmermann]

Sometimes I like to wear clothes that look as elaborately worked as a Virginia Woolf novel.

Knitwear that is woven with a thousand and one paths for the eyes to take, and dresses so intricately detailed my body becomes a relative world with linear patterns and circular motions, and tiny seams holding the structure together.

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Trademark Fall 2015 [Photo: Trademark]

I remember trying to read my first novel by Virginia Woolf. I was 16 and so wholly engrossed in my own daydreams about the boy I fell in love with, through one furtive glance in class, that I barely read past page 32.

That was also the year when I wore plain t-shirts and denim to school, to blend in the crowd and be forgotten by any faces I would come across, so that I could daydream my days away.

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Zimmermann spring 2016 [Photo: Facebook/Zimmermann]

There is an intricate, never ending kind of feeling in a Virginia Woolf novel. A glance is not just a glance and a wave is not just a wave but the passing of time. The same goes for elaborate clothing.

A skirt is not just a skirt when it hosts the perfect pleats and a blouse is not just a blouse when its sleeves are gathered to form a striking Victorian-inspired shoulder.

Denim Raw Hem Ruffle Midi Skirt in White £38 ASOS

Every time I wear elaborate clothing I know I am carrying the work of so many hands that worked on the piece.

When I wear pleated skirts, I imagine the delicate hands of old women holding them up from under my skirt and when I wear pieces with structured shoulders I recall a time long past, when English women wore their pallor with pride and there was a queen who only wore black to mourn the one she loved.

[Photo: Instagram/ saintrecords]

Fashion this season enables such elaborate looks. Nothing is too unimportant — the edges are lined with scallops and the back of a dress becomes a dramatic cape.

We have delicate bows on our shoulders that hold our dresses on our bodies and intricately patterned scarves we can tie around our neck.

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Johanna Ortiz [Photo: Facebook/Johanna Ortiz]

So let us all dress up as elaborately as a Virginia Woolf novel this season. Let us have breakfast al fresco while donning an off the shoulder top, that shows off our clavicle bones — our shoulders that have not seen the sun in a long time — with dramatic edges like Johanna Ortiz’s pieces.

Let’s wear lace up ballet pumps which tie up to our knees in a woven path determined by our fingers. Let’s twirl in pleated tops and skirts, our hair down and wavy, as the waves in Woolf’s novel move.

Are you on board the elaborate trend yet?

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