027: Algorithm Style

What's old is new again.

Recently, I had a crisis of style. The trouble was crystal clear: I felt old and boring. I had never really been one to be so concerned about the superficial signs of aging; if anything, when I looked at photos of my much younger self, I conceded that we'd all been done a favor. And then quite suddenly, each time I stepped into my style, one that I thought I had been happy and content with, I repeated to myself like a mantra: old and boring, boring and old. 

Over the past few months, I'd been experiencing some changes and difficulties with regard to my health, a domino effect of the physical into the mental, which had made me feel at once too tuned in and so very far removed from my body. Physical symptoms took an emotional toll, and my body's discrepancies, albeit temporary, felt overwhelming to endure. Instead of accepting that my body was in a state of flux, and, if anything, was calling to attention the need for overdue care, less to do with age and more with self-neglect, the mantra taunted me. Old and boring, boring and old. 

Wearing a dress from Dries Van Noten’s 100th collection

My insecurities at an all time high, I logged on overtime and began to pay close attention to trends, what was popular, what was everyone wearing. Perhaps I could embody the tiny subsect of the fashion of the early aughts stamped as Y2K, or perhaps a core, name any. My closet of vintage and secondhand pieces I'd put together over the years looked staid and fuddy. Maybe I could adopt a neutral palette and go the way of stealth wealth, or is it quiet luxury? Make like a Swan? I wanted to overhaul my wardrobe for one that matched my inescapable algorithm, the central pillar of youth, sexiness, and relevancy. Everywhere you look, one-hit wonders seem to have more cultural cache than long haulers.

I recently got back from a trip to Italy. It was short and sweet, and we would be moving around a fair amount which meant that I needed to pack clothes that were versatile in terms of their styling and could take me from a day at the beach on an island of fourteen hundred people, to dinner in Milan, to ferries, trains, and planes. I'd been feeling quite low, and packing became a bit of an emotional minefield; more or less nothing I owned could be classified as an "It" (not the clown) item, little would top the Must-Have charts or make an SSENSE wishlist. Pieces I had spent a concerted amount of time and money buying, bits like Prada skirts and Dries Van Noten dresses from the designer's 100th runway collection, looked outdated (according to what timeline, who knows?) and not quite like anything that was currently popular online. I had half a mind to overhaul my wardrobe to escape this feeling of old and boring.

Insecurity and the algorithm are a hellish combination. The latter feeds off the former, perpetuating a marketing cycle that mirrors our perceived inadequacies that then propels overconsumption. For the terminally online, difference, authentic creativity, age and body positivity aren't markers of beauty and vitality, now thanks to a miracle drug and fillers and blephs. Trends, which are risen and die faster than a Zara haul (so many crimes and calamities later, they still can do no wrong), are less of a helpful suggestion or a gentle nudge, but entire ways of being, and in subscribing to them, whether by way of a new jawline or a monochromatic feed, one is that much closer to youth, relevancy, and of course, virality. The intensity with which the algorithm propagates trends dissuades from curiosity, learning and self-discovery, and promises a belonging and contentment that never arrives.

Before I'd even boarded my flight to Italy, I was fretting over how mundane I thought I looked; in my crisis my style seemed too singular. I wanted to be someone else. During the first few days of my trip and much to my husband's consternation, every time I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror wearing my old and boring clothes, I fussed over every detail, feeling deathly uncool. What I wore didn't resemble that of the Internet's appointed Cool Girls and It Girls (to be classified as a woman is aging) and Influencers. But something strange was also happening: in the moments I could get over myself, I found myself intrigued by the styles of Italian women not just of my age, but also of those in their forties and sixties and eighties, women whose styles appeared untouched by any algorithm and informed by a sense of self.

The Italian word for old is vecchia, vecchio in the masculine form, but it is never used to describe a person; to do so is a sign of disrespect. In English, we use it brutally to devalue ourselves and others. At the beach, hunched over in my swimsuit, I watched women in their seventies and eighties looking phenomenal and unaffected in theirs as they swam, gossiped, climbed rocks, and reclined in the sun. Dare I say, and in the most respectful way, they looked downright sexy? While the algorithm had me trained to revere concave abs and rigid rears, these women could send every arched-back bikini pic packing. In their presence I felt myself loosen up, and begin to realize how ridiculous I was being. There was certainly something I could learn from these women.

Getting my groove back!

By the end of our trip, wrapping up in Milan, I was no longer thinking of my style as old and boring. Walks around the city or a pause at a cafe became something of an anthropological study. Women of varying ages, shapes and sizes and so differently dressed possessed a confidence in the way they moved in what they wore, untouched by the algorithm. A divine woman with cropped greying hair in a Prada skirt from Spring 1998 (I hadn’t packed my own skirt from this collection because maddeningly, I thought it made me look…old and boring); a woman around my age in electric purple trousers and a canary yellow sweater, swathed in an olive green field jacket. A few hours before my flight to New York, I went to see Alessia Algani, owner of Shop the Story and one of the best dressed people I know. She wore a slouchy sweater, wide-leg cropped trousers, shiny silver boots, and looked achingly cool.

Are we all prone to insecurities and inner-conflicts? Absolutely. I’m sure that the women I felt so moved by had wrestled with their own inner turmoils – body image, age, every cruelty women are made to feel about their appearance and intellect – but their styles bore a certainty that is informed by self-exploration and a conviction that what looks best is what speaks clearest to oneself, not what others prescribe, one that cannot be replicated. Trends informed by the algorithm masks one’s identity, what interests them, what makes them tick, the mystery and desire to know more about them is replaced with a blank sheet that communicates nothing of the self and is reflective of no one. Style, and there’s no such thing as good style or bad style, draws you in, keeps you guessing and leaves you wanting more, and belongs to no one other than its beholder.

On the flight back, and rather aptly, I watched Sunset Boulevard for the first time, the age old cautionary tale of a youth-obsessed culture and the monsters it creates. It’s a warning few of us heed to, sacrificing the joy of being ourselves for the fleeting pleasure of brief acceptance and validation. Suffice to say, I no longer feel old and boring.