For a while, I strongly embraced a maxim I learned through the many lessons I have gained from the sartorial legacy of Chanel. I chose to wear simple clothes as the background to lavish ornamentation in the form of bold and usually golden accessories. I still adore the timeless contrast between simple clothes and notorious complements, but in the quest for one´s own style and sense of taste, I have discovered new truths about the aesthetic I feel reflects me the most.
New York is a city that encourages you to veil yourself. I arrived and wore black – in skinny jeans, rock n roll boots and leather jackets. As the city grows in you, the need for uniformity abandons you and you feel more enticed to elevate yourself in heels once again, to reencounter color and to recreate mixture. I am, I believe, an incurable modernist. I believe in timelesness. I believe in elegance. And hence, my deep study of Chanel herself. But I am also slightly romantic and have an undeniable nostalgic streak. I adore old-school glamour as much as I twinkle with affection when my eyes wonder towards the skinny, long-limbed creature with the effortless coolness conceded by the codes of rock n roll. And I also adore women who dare to go sculptural in their chosen silhouette, and women who are brilliantly gifted with the power to create combinations I would have never dreamed of. And I declare myself a hypermodernist, who cherishes the contrariness that characterizes our present moment.
But someone once told me that I should look a bit beyond Chanel and look for what makes me unique in a world unprecedentedly obsessed with fashion and dress. Where fashion is itself the most fashionable of things. And so I pondered upon this motivation and came to see that I am not the authentic urban sophisticate, neither am I the rock n roll creature bred by Manhattan streets nor I am the gifted creator of an individual fantasy lived through variety and visual cocktails of pattern and texture.
I am a woman from the Caribbean, where the sun is golden, the bay turns grey as sailboats oscillate sweetly under the pink-dyed sky. A place where shocking pink comes in the form of flowers dripping over pastel-hued balconies, with antique columns that scatter across black and white chess floors. And so I have discovered that my deepest sense of style is entwined to an almost ineffable feel that mixes all things maritime, Mediterranean accents, color, flowers, romantic fans to fight the heat. A style that is deeply provincial and simultaneously global. People from this latitude understand what it means to experience the world with flavor and sophistication. I declare myself Caribbean Chic.
Vanessa Rosales –
Clutch: Silvia Tcherassi
Sunglasses: Vintage
Fan: Bought in Chinatown, New York
