20s

Nope,  this is not a blog post on my love for the 1920s era.  It is more of a personal post  about the confusion I feel the 20s are. And no it is not a Girls  loving like post of ‘why won’t my parents give me money’ and love problems, luckily I am beyond that  thinking sphere/ those problems- frankly I am sad that people recognise themselves in those characters and that  is how our generation is seen. As my avid followers-  if you exist-  may  have noticed  my absence from tumblr has catapulted downwards ever since my move to London. An MA, internships, job and a social life are hard to juggle, and I barely manage to maintain those,  so when I arrive home all I feel like doing is fall onto bed. I wonder how other  bloggers do it. I met Susie Bubble at the Vogue Festival  yesterday, I should have asked her, instead I took a picture to document it. ( Later checked out her blog and turns out my cover picture from last year’s festival  was on her blog.. yet she did not recognise me! :P ).  But back to the subject. As I was browsing through the stores on Oxford Street ( I call it research for my course,  and it is actually true) I realised that when I was 18 I knew all the collections from Zara and H&M ( my then favourite stores), I was more determined on the direction I was taking and well I felt life was magical. Luckily  I still am  amazed at the beauty of life and I like to believe that  the centre of my bubbly personality  has not altered too much. But now having known the worry of making rent and realising soon I will need to sustain my lifestyle without the help of loans  and parents the worry is kicking in and I feel that 18 year old savvy girl slipping away  and I am desperate to hold onto  her. Hence my internal struggle. Let me develop further. I recently found out that in a group work i annoyed a friend. If I can still call her friend. As she  refused to tell me how I might have annoyed her I wondered :  why even bother saying if you won’t explain it to me ?I nagged her  about it for about 10 mins  and then I slowly realised I actually genuinely did not care. I do believe honesty is the best policy  but sometimes stirring things is worse ( I still do not understand why she told me I had annoyed her and somehow no longer see her as the friend I perceived her to be) . 18  year old me would have cried about it and would have not been able to give a group presentation 2 hours later. The reason I asked for a reason was more because I felt I needed to know  and well I am curious, not because I cared. In your 20s you are learning to not care as much about petty things ( because frankly she had annoyed me too but I had let it go balancing the positives of her work towards the project and not wanting to cause drama- there is already too much drama at fashion school). Of course the 18 year old me inside me is annoyed, and although so far in this post it may appear I am only writing because of this incident, let me reveal  something , when I started writing I had no clue I was going to dwell into that silliness. So far 20s are winning points since I perceive this as a mature improvement ( oh gosh I sound like a teenager  again “I want to be seen as mature” ) .  Enter the 18 year old / younger me debacle. As I was looking at an  Accessorize necklace with a camera decorated with flowers I thought that is so me ! And then I questioned it:  last time I picked up my SLR  was over two  weeks ago (I often lug laptop and books  around so my phone serves as snapshot taker) as  for the flowers I do still have a slight obsession with floral patterns ( although they are now battling a  recent-ish bow obsession) . Do I still want to be a part time photographer cos frankly I am not acting like it. I do. When I feel the camera in my hand I am in control, the thrill of developing prints in the darkroom is something I do still crave but is it possible to do it part time and not be an amateur?  You may wonder why am I dwelling into  all this inner questioning? Well  my dissertation proposal is due in two  weeks(!) and we have been advised to choose a topic that will be interesting for employers. I chose a subject related to sustainability and intend to pursue it but am unsure of the direction. Do I want sustainability to be the norm?  Is it possible? I did one year  of shopping only sustainably ( jeans and shoes excluded) and am still attempting but sadly mainly failing; i do have some new vintage pieces and a few conscious collection pieces -among which a conscious exclusive dress (<3) but I also have bought some high street items. How can this whole system be changed inside out? People died in Bangladesh while making clothes to sustain an  aspect of our current fashion system and yet the Uttoya incident shocked me more because it felt closer to home. But as they said at the Vogue Festival ”  our clothes carry the stories of the people who made them”  -shouldn’t this affect me more?  The  18 year  old inside me naively was imagining restyling her whole wardrobe in Zara.  Sounds like I have a split personality. I do not but I feel there is a fight inside of me as well as a question: do I have to choose a side? Do I have to choose fashion  branding/ marketing/ consultancy over fashion photography? Do I have to choose sustainability over high street  or can I mix it ?? Vivienne  Westwood says that what  matters is that you shop a piece you  will love forever, which  is all I ever tend to do. And this leads to my  before last question which may explain the whole post: why is it that  at 23 I feel more lost about most aspects of my life  than at 18?  And why am I fighting so hard to not let go of that stubborn 18 year old?