A Year of Honest Mistakes..

It has been over a year since my last blog entry here at Educating Vintage and well it has been an eventful year of discovery and mistakes beginning with the death of my laptop which to date I am still rather mourning the loss of.
I started this blog in 2010 because I had a real passion for women (and men) to discover their creative selves, the people they were born to be instead of shaping themselves by the rules of in and out style charts. For me this dream has not changed I still firmly believe "there is too much emphasis in the modern world that style has to be confined within certain rules and regulations before it can be enjoyed and not enough people enjoying the art of dressing up". However within this last year I became a victim of giving in to those style regulations and I started to doubt my ability to talk about fashion, feeling I was not worthy or stylish enough to do so.
In 2010 fashion blogs were at their height, 14 year-old girls were front row spectators at every fashion week, (expensive) vintage fashion was commercial, and a person's success rate was based on how many followers they had on their number of social-networking sites.
At this time the local fashion magazine I was an editorial assistant at was in financial difficulty and eventually it folded. I found myself in a temporary job situation far removed from the fashion industry and after going to countless job interviews for fashion retail jobs (all unsuccessful) I started to believe I was not cut out for fitting in to what many people call the fashon world.
This past year has been an on-going inward (sometimes outward) battle with myself to realise again why I started this blog in the first place, which is at it's core a passion for fashion, but not necessarily in a commercial sense. I don't care for what's in or what's out I just love a pair of trousers that hug in all the right areas, a pair of heels that make you feel on top of the world, a nice blazer that means you're ready to start the day, something with a story to tell, and like many I just love a bargain! However none of these are the main reason why I love fashion, and why I believe so much in it as a positive modern day force. Whenever I think of fashion, I am transported back to late 2009 to a changing room/toilets in a hotel at a local vintage fair where I myself was trying to squeeze into a dress that had caught my eye on a number of occassions. Here I was surrounded by another 4 women who were doing the same with other sparkly vintage items that had caught their eyes. None of us 5 women knew each other and none of us had the same style or were the same shape, build or height but in that tiny space there was something there that just made sense. I might be going all airy-fairy here, but having these 4 women (plus myself) appreciate each others beauty, style and creativity was one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever been part of.
And because of that moment, you are finding me type this blog post tonight. I still struggle with moments of doubt but I feel like that this is even more reason to continue with the Educating Vintage journey. As I've said in the past Educating Vintage is not solely mine, I want it to be a creative place for people to express their individual style and their relationships with it. This is why Educating Vintage exsists and why it will continue to do so. Expect to hear a lot more from me soon and as always feel free to get in touch.
Blessings,
Love Helen x
Photo: Me in Mount Stewart House grounds - early 2010
http://beta.nationaltrust.org.uk/mount-stewart/