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Sue's avatar

I love seeing the clothes worn: it brings them to life and perfectly illustrates your words - together they have excited me to look at my own wardrobe and make my own clothing stories, stories that tell of me and not the me I wish I was. Thank you for your wisdom and inspiration- and the freedom you gifted me

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Hanna's avatar

I think modern life is all about trying to make us reach endlessly towards a person that doesn't and can't exist, and we really step into our own power and possibilities when we instead embrace the person we already are xx

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Carole Baker's avatar

Hannah, I really enjoyed your post. I, too, only wear natural fibres. It is good to see photos of the clothes. Growing up, I was lucky to have a mother who was an excellent dressmaker who copied clothes for me. from the French magazine “l’Officielle”

I am a hoarder of beautiful fabrics and I have always had a tailor make my pants (always with extra deep pockets to prevent pickpockets) and jackets. . I am busty with a high waist and quite long arms. These tailored clothes I still wear forty years on.

In Sydney, Australia there was a Fabric Shop named “Fabric Fantasy”, in 1980’s and 1990’s who sold fabrics which were leftover stock of suppliers to Italian fashion houses. Hence my fabric horde. I have from Claude Montana, Dolce and Gabbani and Gorgio Armani. Many of these have a lovely drape to them. I tend to make or have clothes made that are perfect for jewelry. So high necks and fairly plain with a shift shape, A line or jackets with

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BornAlive's avatar

that is my dream. i have a closet full of clothes i’ve collected over the years but i also wear every single thing. people have told me i look different every time they see me. i believe im dressing the multitude of selves♥️🥳

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Hanna's avatar

oh this is such a fab comment!

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BornAlive's avatar

🤗

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Fanny's avatar

Hi Johanna, love this kind of post, it's good to see combinations of clothes thought of by other people, it always gives me new ideas for my own wardrobe! I'm a little curious: how old are the French women you speak of, who smoke a lot? I'm a French tall thin woman of 41 and I find that my generation do smoke less than my parents' generation (who are 71 and 78). Anyway, cigarets don't necesserally make you thinner: one of my mother's friend who's been a heavy smoker all her life is super busty, with very large hips. She's a very good dresser, always super elegant, because, as you say, she respects what her body looks like. I would go further and say that her clothes actually celebrate her shape. And it's beautiful!

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Hanna's avatar

Sadly I am seeing a lot of younger women taking it up again. Maybe not in the city, I live in the country - here, the majority of younger women (30's and 40's) smoke fairly heavily. Strangely I don't see a lot of the older women smoking, but I do see that kind of brittleness that comes from a lifetime of not really exercising but also not eating. Do you live in the city or the country? And yes, people who look good and well put-together are always people who have embraced their own bodies, which also largely means embracing your own being. It's deliberately harder to find clothing that fits not-slim bodies, because to me this is another way of controlling us and making us spend our time and our money and our brainspace trying to conform. It's so freeing to see your own inherent beauty.

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Fanny's avatar
4dEdited

Also, here, I sadly see a lot of vaping. How can people be so stupid as to think that they've invented a healthy alternative to cigarets? As if. A load of plastic and rubbish, filled with who knows what kind of crap. No legislation, no safeguards. But sure, it must be so much better than cigarets.

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Hanna's avatar

Oh god vaping is somehow even more evil to me. At least with cigarettes you know what you are doing. Plus vapes are a major user of coltan, mined by enslaved children in the Congo.

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BornAlive's avatar

wow. what we really don’t know about the world we live in.

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Fanny's avatar

I completely agree. There's such a huge cognitive dissonance here. As with clothes, peopple are just thinking: I'm going to do something that'll be better for me (spoilers, it's not) without 1. thinking about it long enough to see that it has to be bullshit and 2. thinking about the repercussions the manufacturing of this product is bound to have on other people somewhere on this planet. It's amazing to me.

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BornAlive's avatar

someone i know calls it smoking robot d*ck😆

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Hanna's avatar

which I think is about the right name for it

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Fanny's avatar

You're right, I live in a city and have all my life. Interesting to know that there's such a difference between rural and urban life in that aspect (as in many others, actually).

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Hanna's avatar

Such a difference. I'm partially from the deep country in Australia but spend much of my employed life in cities. Time moves differently in the country.

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Ollie's avatar

I love reading all of your writing. You're spot on with all the things. We all have so much and too much and the earth is suffering for it. I too much prefer older, well made things. Thrift stores are sadly mostly full of cap now.

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Bronwen Griffin's avatar

Thanks Hanna your pics are wonderful! I love seeing clothes in context and seeing how they work together

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BornAlive's avatar

♥️

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Dorothy Wedderburn's avatar

Thank you for another great post. It's so nice to see the clothes being worn, that's how they come to life. And pairing is such fun! I've had some of my clothes for 30 years and more, I put them away and then rediscover them. Sometimes I alter them (to suit my changing shape as the years pass). I cannot understand how anyone can buy something they like and discard it after only wearing once, surely if you like a piece of clothing and feel good in it, you want to wear it more often. And I do agree that natural fibres feel so good to wear..

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