Power Fashion Couples

Just the other day I was writing my last paper of Broadcasting Production III, an easy paper I must say and one of my class mates came to me and said, “ you know, I really want to meet your boyfriend.” Yes I do have one luckily enough. She went on to say, “I want to see how he dresses, does he love fashion like you do?”  Blushing, I flew his kite for him and conceitedly said, “well he loves fashion more than I do actually,” which is true. My man loves fashion as in, always on trend and his taste is a little, bit expensive, but hey show me a man who has great fashion sense and who doesn’t splurge a little more.

This class mate of mine held the slowly-becoming-interesting conversation by applauding, “ well that’s great because it’s a weird thing to see couples who are utterly contrary when it comes to fashion. It’s even worse when the guy loves fashion more than the girl.”

I waved a smile and she gave me a compliment for my great fashion sense. I get those a lot. See, last year in my second year in varsity I was accoladed with the Student Choice Award’s Trend Setter of the Year 2012 and trust me it was a big deal. It was more significant than the Broadcasting Student of the year award. Fashion has always been part of my life.

Raised by a grandmother who fully clad up for going to bed, it was a given that that was going to have a huge fashion and style influence on me. My grandmother was an extremely clean, stylish and very Victorian woman who believed in looking good and neat. She used to say going to bed without washing your face and feet is bad behaviour and only men are allowed to do that.(Well my grandfather disputed that.)

So I grew up loving fashion a lot. I know this will sound a little bit cliché but I was a little bit of a tom boy growing up. I grew up delimited by boys and we will play football in my grandparents’ farm in Swaziland. When it rained we will go out and play with mud in the rain and nail polish and “staff” were never on my mind back then.

To me beauty was what my grandmother was. So when I was around 11 I started seeing myself differently and believe me you it was not puberty, see I’m part of the generation that actually went to puberty at 13 not 9 like this new generation.

With going to church and having to wear dresses every Sunday, the girly girl within me awoken and I started to see the beautiful, pretty things in life. I started to appreciate watching my mother put on Ponds, at that time I loved how her hands moved delicately around her face when she was applying it. I knew right then that I wanted to use Ponds too but I had to wait till I was 16.

My grandmother was very Victorian, she wore heels to church. It was a long distance from our place to church but she walked that distance in those heels with conviction and you will never hear her complain about paining feet. They did pain I think, it’s just that she was always quick to take care of them by massaging them every night. Something we don’t do because we believe the only place to massage our feet is in beauty spas.

My grandmother’s two door wardrobe had beautiful clothes, I remember a brown long fur coat and she only wore it on special occasions, winter. Her wardrobe was filled with pastels, ruffles, lace, silk, and tribal prints.

Thinking about it now,, if it had existed today, it was going to make Lela Rose run for her money. Everything inside that wardrobe was girly and pretty, and she had lots of scarves which she wore every day, regardless of the weather. 

My populist grandfather on the other hand was a Bruno Mars of his time. He had swag like that. He was the cleanest old man I’ve ever seen in my life. I remember those Sunday mornings, (he never went to church) where he will sit outside and be in awe of his huge farm and then take black sheen to dye his hair. His hair was growing white and he didn’t want to look old.

After dying his white hair, he would take the longest bath a man is ever allowed to take and gear up with his vintage, jazzy suits. He always had a knobkerrie with him; I think it was an accessory, a dangerous one.

He carried it with him all the time. And I think, looking back, I’ve learned something from them vis-à-vis having that one item that make you stand out. For my grandmother it was a scarf which was her statement piece and for him it was the knobkerrie. For me it’s the colourful lip stick and pearls. I can’t function properly without bright lips, for me they add colour to my smile and brighten up my face. For my grandmother, the scarf might have been a symbol of respect as most black women did that, but she turned it into a fashion statement piece and every time when she wore it, she wore it with delicacy, élan, and sumptuousness.  

My grandfather on the other hand might have had a stick as a weapon of protection but it turned into a fashion accessory. Nelson Mandela once said the walking stick he carries with him is not a symbol of him growing old but it’s a fashion trend. Well we know how stylish Mandela is.

My grandparents were married for more than 40 years before death did them apart within a period of 3 months. But they were different individuals who had everything in common from fashion to the way of life but yet lived it differently from the other.

They both loved fashion, my grandmother was very Victorian and grandfather very vintage and soulful. They both believed in looking good and didn’t just invest only money in it but time and love. And to me that made them a great fashion couple. Together they looked seamlessly well dressed and I don’t remember even once my grandmother choosing an outfit for her choosy husband but yet when they were both done dressing up they looked so fitting and toning as if one brain had styled them.

That’s a power fashion couple.

So my class mate reminded me of that and looking at it today, most celebrities actually do come across as power fashion couples easily. For them it might be because they have stylists who take care of their clothing but there’s an element of that. Look at the stylish Obamas, I might not agree with anything they do politically but the way they dress comes across as well primed and meditated.

For me that’s one of the things that make a good power couple. We have to be different people but yet fit in the puzzle of life and the way we go about in that life.  I don’t want to be wearing a pencil dress and my man wearing sweat pants. No, that’s not acceptable.

As a couple, (not that my advice is credible), but you at least need to try look differently-similar. I’m not saying wear denim to denim just like Justine Timberlake and Britney Spears once did once upon a time, but do be in the same page. This means sporty=sporty, classy=classy, vintage=vintage.

Hence I love men who wear chinos because they make it easy for a girly girl like me to wear anything and still look incorporated. Of course you may disagree but my class mate agrees with me.

Mama Knows Best

How many times has your mother or any female custodian in your life told you not to use a certain beauty product and you never listened and ended up with messed up skin? Ye, a thousand times right? I know. But don’t bit yourself up for it yet, there’s still hope for you to be a good daughter and listen.

I was raised by a very delicate and Victorian grandmother who instilled the sense of beauty and taking care of my body in me with conviction. She later died when I had just turned 13 and I had to move in with my uncle’s wife who I stayed with till I was 15. My uncle’s wife was somehow influenced by the American culture. From the gold, leather and labels to the way she wore make up. It was too much. You know how Americans have a propensity to overdo everything? It’s just not enough for 2 Chains to wear one gold chain or for Lil Kim to have enough face lifts.

My uncle’s wife was and is still like that, I’m not saying she does face lifts too, no, she hasn’t reached that era yet, but she does over wear makeup. She had lots of beauty products that I never understood more especially foundation. My grandmother never wore makeup but her skin was as flawless as that of a baby. She only washed in the mornings and before going to bed and applied camphor. No toner, exfoliater, none of that stuff.

I guess the water did everything. My uncle’s wife did influence my love for brands but not for makeup, well so I thought at first.

When I was still living with my graceful grandmother my mother would visit us and I enjoyed watching her take a bath. I still remember all the beauty products she used because I had made a promised to myself that I will use them too as soon as I turned 16. She used Ponds for her face and Dove to wash it. At that time Ponds didn’t have a Face Wash hence the use of Dove.

I loved how she applied the Ponds in her face, the way she moved her hands and patted her face was too beautiful of a thing it made me admire her. My mother is a very beautiful, strong woman just like my grandmother. She used Perfect Choice for her hair. The women in my family somehow have long beautiful hair which I don’t have. Lord knows why. So my mom at that time had long, black, shinny hair that smelt like olives meet lavender. I never could comprehend the smell but it was breathtaking.

I told the 8 year old me that I will have skin as beautiful as my mothers. And I did for a while till this year. Let me let you in. When I turned 16 I was given the right to use any beauty product I wanted and of course I had to fulfil my child hood dream so I chose Ponds, Normal to Oily Skin because my skin is somewhat very oily.

For the past 5 years, I am turning 22 December; I have been a loyal customer to Ponds just like I have been to Nivea. It treated my skin so well I only had skin breakouts when it was that time of the month. Other than that my skin was perfect just like my grandmothers and my mothers. All was well and perfect.

I love magazines and they are good company but somehow they have a bad way of influencing our thoughts regarding beauty and somehow we women tend to take whatever advice we get from them and forget that we have different skin. What may work for my white sister can’t work for me. What may work for my black sister can’t work for me. And as for me beauty products that were never tasted on black people are just waste of money.

I love Elizabeth Arden and I believe that it has beautiful products, which is what women need. The makeup is perfect. Consequently, sometime this year I attended the Elle Editor’s Breakfast in Hyde Park and I was more excited about getting the Elizabeth Arden goodie bag than I was about the actual breakfast. It was worth a good R1000 so you understand the excitement.

During that breakfast we had beauty if not skin consultants from the beauty company who used some very scientific machine to scan, if that what it does, our faces. You put your face in that square box and it shows your face,,,, differently. Different as in like alien different. There’s a green light and that light detects any skin problem you might have. With me it detected the oiliness of my skin and dark spots around my nose which are caused by the oiliness. I can explain that better to you because I already knew it.

After that the consultant gave me 3 products. A Skin Balancing Exfoliating Cleanser (the name is long because it’s purportedly suppose to balance, exfoliate and cleanse your skin), Optimizing Skin Serum (I don’t know what a serum is even though ELLE’s Beauty Editor Lynette Botha has written about it a gazillion times I still don’t know what it really does) and then they gave me the Skin Illuminating Smooth and Brighten Emulsion (which I must say hasn’t made sense to me even today)

See, before receiving these products, I had gone on twitter 2 months prior to announce that I have outgrown Ponds and I was ready to say my goodbyes and grow up. I was introduced to Avon’s Solution beauty range by the security officer at the institution I intern for. She sells Avon so I thought she knew best. And she knew best.  I bought the face wash, toner, day cream and night cream and it was good for my skin. My skin was much toned even though it didn’t contain the oil but it looked bright and healthy as I want my skin to be.

But then came the internationally recognised Elizabeth Arden and who says no to that? I didn’t throw my Solution range away I just kept it. For a week I was excited to be using an expensive beauty brand. But every day when I had to use it I had to consult the manual because I didn’t understand what was what and what was used before what. It wasted my time.

3 weeks down the line I realised that my skin was becoming toned but oilier. I currently stay in Pretoria and this side is very hot, I’m talking about 30 -34 degrees, so imagine the face sweating. But still I loved how soft it made my skin but I just became darker and oily daily and for two months I hoped my skin would get used to it and perhaps change but it didn’t.

Two weeks ago I started hearing people tell me that I was becoming darker. “You should stop using whatever makeup you are using” “when I first met you, you were a yellow bone what happened?”

People started raising questions but it was Elizabeth Arden you guys and it was worth a R1000 so I was not ready to part ways with it. But my skin comes first, and being the perfectionist I am, I had to do what’s best for it.

So I packed it all up and went to Pick n Pay to buy Ponds. Within 3 days my skin was back to its natural light and the oil remains where it belongs, inside. I still use Elizabeth Arden’s cleanser together with Solutions cleanser and toner and then topple it up with Ponds and be good to go.

I am glad I experienced this at just 21 because now I know for sure that not all products are good for everybody. Just because it’s expensive and popular amongst beauty editors, that doesn’t guarantee that it will work for me. I learned the hard way. My mother still uses Ponds, my uncle’s wife will never stop over using makeup, so it seems, and for now I am happy with Ponds too. It might not be the most expensive product in the beauty shelves but it knows a thing or two about black skin and that’s what I exactly need. A product that accommodates my black skin.

Yes mother, you can say I told you so now.