Look At Your Self??????

by Andrea Okoye

The secret to creating a trademark

 look is knowing who you are

and how you want to present

 yourself to the world. 

Have you ever wonder why people talk about you when you‘re not there? I bumped into Klint de Drunk last time, you know, he looks like a clown, always looking drunk. I met this amazing woman, an artist petite good hairdo, vintage dress on black loss. And a great sense of humour.

My friends had a cousin sister who visited for holiday - a gorgeous, beauty always with long human hair all covering her back. It’s always a surprise to discover how others perceive you, unwitting they cast your mindless I idiosyncrasies as your trademark look infer your “true identify” from those style cues. And because our culture is so media obsessed, many people use brands and celebrities as a way to label others. You happen to like Afro- wigs?  Soon you are a Rita Dominic look alike. you wear long-Dangling style accessories like Stella Damascus? People assume you’re her wanna be.

Collect wedged shoes? Bimbo Akintola is your rival.

Impromptu descriptions by friends or acquaintances are usually meant to be complimentary yet often they sting more than flatter. A couple of years ago ,for instance, I was peeved to find out that I had a reputation  for being “he only woman who could pull off  wearing beret and a  sneakers at the same time“ in thither words I was  a sorry mixed metaphor.

In having a trademark of you own, sometimes you don’t care about what people say about you as long as it’s not true. Either way, some people, possibly celebrities don’t find  being socially totem ized for their fashion lapses, as long as no one ever mentioned, ... their love handless, let ‘s be honest; more often then not we choose a particular look or signature styles to distract observers from what we perceive to be our must embarrassing flaws.

Yet imperfection is the mother of invention. High heels were engineered to add inches to the small structure of the French monarch Louis XIV. Perfume - making flourished in the 17^th Century before soap was introduced. Lycra came into existence when women demanded clothes as flexible as their measurements. And today, trendsetters are fashion outcasts who dress up in duds to assert themselves against the establishment, find the rub and you’ve got the making of the next fad.

But creating a personal trademark that turns a negative into a positive is no easy task. For years, as I tried to define who I was, I did my best to conceal my size rather than embrace it. I favour jeans to blur the contours of my body, loving hair to cheat on my proportions, and sleek, modern accessories to offset my curves.  My choice of wear had more to do with fudging than fitting. I also had a tendency to pile on accessories- The beret and sneakers syndrome.

Live and learn -“you cannot turn a negative into a positive” unless you want to manufacture a powerful trademark for yourself, it has to be based on something unique, different-even controversial otherwise it won’t work. Remember Derenle (sound city TV) he is so so controversial

Old fashion brands can become classic again, dowdy products can be repositioned as upbeat again, check out the Day Maxi gown, Mo-hawk haircut and so on.