I remembered one day, a couple of months ago, when I spent majority of my morning in a museum. Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany. There is one painting I adore from there. I even bought it as a postcard, framed it and put it on the wall in my bedroom. It’s Sylvette by Picasso.
I call her Lydia because she reminded me on Lydia from Beetlejuice. I find the painting powerfully and mesmerising beautiful.
/ While writing this, I googled the painting for the first time and what came up is that the model’s name is Lydia Sylvette David, married Corbett. Talking about coincidence by calling her Lydia. /
For me, she represents feminine, powerful beauty. There is something about this painting that attracts me. She looks like she has barely any makeup on, her hair looks effortless and her clothes looks like she is modern and unique.
This was my second visit to this museum in two years and this time, I started to notice that the paintings that touched me the most and attracted my attention were the ones with, for me, naturally beautiful women. They looked like they barely wore any makeup and their looks were effortless, like Sylvette’s. Sometimes, they were dressed in beautiful clothes and sometimes, they wore simple and plain outfits. What was common about them was that they looked occupied in their own thoughts, they even looked sad. I find something very powerful in sadness and being caught in your own thoughts. I find it attractive and almost magical. It makes me imagine what are the women from paintings thinking of, what is their life like. And I find them so feminine.
What is a beautiful woman for me?
A woman who looks proud of being a woman and she derives power from it. A woman who is not afraid of her own emotions, wether they are pleasant or unpleasant to her. She is not afraid to show her natural beauty: she wears natural makeup, just to emphasise features on her face she finds most attractive; she wears clothing in which she feels powerful and which represents her uniqueness and beauty.
Of course, everything I described are the characteristics I strive for. The way I would like to feel in my own skin.
I’ve been contemplating intensively about it for the past year or two and became more and more aware of what I find beautiful and what I consider as external representation of my true self.
We all have somewhat different views on what is beautiful to us and what we find attractive. What I think is important is to incorporate it in your own looks. Although it’s important beyond words that my beauty shines from within out, sometimes I need to help it through by a piece of clothing I find beautiful, accessories, my hairstyle or some makeup.
What I’m doing to make my looks represent more the way I feel inside
- Lipsticks. I have a small collection of Urban Decay lipsticks (from neutral to bold ones) and I decided I will wear lipstick everyday. It is a bold move for me, since I’m scared of bringing attention to my looks (more on that on one of the future posts).
- Make up. I decided to wear natural makeup (also connected with being scared of attention): a bit of concealer or light liquid foundation, a bit of mascara (I have black lashes so I just recently started to wear mascara everyday), a bit of blush and a light pencil on inner corners of my eyes and under my eyebrows. If I feel extra bold, I will put some clear gel on my dark eyebrows.
- If you want to learn more about natural makeup, I recommend Lisa Eldrige’s channel on YouTube
- Clothing. I started to learn about fashion and about my taste in fashion through various resources, mostly from YouTube:
- Use Less channel – great videos about capsule wardrobe
- The Curated closet – great book and workbook about finding your style and building a wardrobe in which you will love each piece and be able to make combinations you just love, love, love.
- Justine Leconte channel – if you want to learn about fashion industry, the way clothes are made, how to recognise good quality from poor, she is the perfect resource
- Rebecca Jacobs channel and her website – her Ignite your style challenges are great motivational tool to push yourself to experiment more with the clothes you already have in your closet
- Chriselle Lim channel – her oldest videos like how to pack for 10 days, how to match prints etc.
- Ashley Brooke channel – great resource on trends and what to buy where
- And I’ve saved my biggest discovery and inspiration for last: Fashion as Design course from The Museum of Modern Art on Coursera. Highly recommend it! Interesting and fascinating content on history of fashion, lifecycle of clothing and statement pieces. And all delivered in a very understandable and interesting way. It changed my perception of certain everyday clothing pieces and made me appreciate them more, even find them more beautiful, now that I know how they were invented/made.
I wish you all the inspiration to make your looks the way you find most beautiful.
Written with love,