Be a couture fashion designer in a snip

Why spend loads on deconstructed couture designer clothes when you can be a DIY raw-edged, deconstructionalist designer in seconds?

Here's how:
1. Feel confident.
2. Take a pre-made garment from your wardrobe.
3. Have a loose idea of what sort of shape / design you want to end up with.
4. Wield a pair of scissors with abandonment.
5. Enjoy the snip, snip, snippety-snip.

I'm finding surprising fulfillment in the cutting up of selected skirts, tops and dresses that have languished unworn but still much loved in my wardrobe.

It started quietly several weeks ago with the snipping of hanging threads I think. It was compounded by my huge decluttering.

Like some weird force of nature - a quaint rebellion against the ridiculous notion of mass slavery of women to made-up media fashion trends or perhaps liberated inner child therapy or just a whim -  it has escalated into major garment alterations that are exhilarating (but not in a "Girl, Interrupted" way you understand).

My latest slashing was yesterday. I whipped a skirt from my wardrobe and slashed a good half metre off it. I wasn't even careful with exactly where the cut was. I let instinct take over and just let the scissors do their thing. Now I can wear it without walking like a Geisha (although I do love the Geisha-walk I don't like having to attempt it).

Now - joy. Empowerment. A skirt I loved for its pattern and fabric can be worn again without strait-jacketing my legs - maybe even with a cowl-thingy of the cut-off bit if I like.

Merrily go my scissors. I love deconstructed clothes. Especially the ones I deconstruct myself.

The confidence to clash patterns

Clash patterns / Smash conventions. I love when people defy 'fashion' commentators and wear whatever patterns and colors they fancy, simultaneously.

As our beautiful English doyen of being-yourself, Ms Vivienne Westwood says, wear whatever the fuck you like - no matter how many years you've had it, how ripped, faded or manky it is so long as you love it, wear it!

When I was a teenager, avant garde though I thought I was, I would never have clashed patterns. Ew! Now I take great joy from it. I mean, real joy. It utterly thrills me to wear clothes that you'd think would fight each other. In some kind of cosmic conspiracy once on a body bold individual garments make peace to create a vibrant diversity.

Just the same way as many Scottish government agencies encourage people of different ethnic backgrounds to come together as one glorious new outfit. A much more diverse and fascinating outfit than homogeneous same-old (of course they don't put it quite like that).

I'm wondering if pattern clashing, whether on your body or in your home, is a statement of rebellious confidence. I always have more attitude when I'm wearing clashing patterns. Like I'm saying, 'yeah, I AM a contrary, contradictory kinda person'.

Pattern-clashing reflects a complicated outlook, don'tchathink? Pattern-clashing is for individualists. Not forgetting forgetful, Sulphuric, academic-type men who do this effortlessly.

Perhaps the leap of wearing or creating pattern-clashes creates more confidence to be yourself. To stand out and be gloriously different. Or is it that you have to be confident to pattern-clash?

Make the world more beautiful, show yourself in what you wear and where you live.