I once read somewhere that having a large budget or abundant access to the latest fashion counterintuitively leads to a decline in taste or sense of style. Apparently, the very act of having to do more with less, devise a “look” or make-do with last year’s staples requires an out-of-the-box thinking and level of creativity that leads to an interminable sense of style. Very reassuring stuff, if you ask me. As someone who can’t easily afford designer clothes, let alone be willing to partake in consumer-driven fast fashion trends, I patted myself on the back for having a great sense of fashion out of necessity, not mandate. Did you catch that, dear reader? I was being a bit sarcastic there, but only just a tad. I mean, really. Who declares oneself stylish? Who but a madman or madwoman insists they are a tastemaker? Isn’t the proof of the pudding, in is its eating? Don’t people have to compliment your presentation or even emulate it before you can announce your arrival as an influencer? Not to brag, but I did have a certified imitator at work once. She would literally go out and buy the same top I wore from H&M albeit in a different color. Black, if memory serves me correctly. I bet she would’ve worn the same color I wore, white, if the store still had it, so shameless she was about copying me. My then-husband bought me as a gift, a grey suede kitten heel from my favorite shop in London, a one-off designer who makes her shoes by hand. Not to worry, not only did she find a similar shoe on the web no doubt, but proceeded to parade it around the office as if I might have been the one copying her! So obscure a fashion note that was, it was obvious to anyone who cared to look what she was doing. No one said or did anything about her pathology. I began to suspect she had a crush on my boss, a handsome but firmly married man with children. She kept asking me questions about him as if I was his harem’s keeper. For some bizarre reason she must have thought her way to his heart was through my style. I started calling her “single Indian female” in my head, only because she was a first-generation American, with parents from the country of India. Which is sad because we started off being friends, I even ate her mom’s homemade samosas, and played a game of tennis on her home grounds. In the end, I had to keep my distance after she began her campaign of terror, trying to supplant me through my clothes. Instead I fell ill and lost my job, almost my life. Scary stuff. There is diminishing returns to “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. Anyways, let’s move on to lighter fare, shall we. I meant to share a bit of gossip to go along with that story. When Selma Hayek married the owner of the French luxury brand LVMH, she, all of a sudden, had access to a dizzying array of wardrobe receptacles such that she became a fixture on the worst-dressed lists in the fashion magazines. Can you believe that? A woman who can actually pull off a potato sack if she wanted to, is all of a sudden advertised as the epitome of what not to wear. And yet, it was true. The fashion press was ruthless; maybe they were jealous. I don’t know, I can’t say. I still think Selma can wear just about anything, ma’sh’allah, as we say in Arabic. It translates as “as God willed it to be”. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to her on my account. Besides, she, like me, is a dog lover. She told the funniest story on the Graham Norton show, on how she admitted to her husband that she had an affair with her hot co-star on a movie set, all made up, of course. She was hoping to distract him from the fact that she had brought home more strays after promising him not to. He was not phased at all and cooly responded the new dogs need to go after her theatrical admission. Now, that’s what I call style. The French do have it. My ex-husband did as well. Fear not, dear reader. I am not advocating for designer clothes courtesy of Coco Chanel to capture that sense of “je ne sais quoi”. In fact, the opposite is true. Those of us with money or even over-the-top beauty have it the hardest when it comes to style. It can easily breach the domain of the obscene, if you are not too careful. Wearing the latest must-haves and donning the most desirable items of the season is a sucker’s game. All it says about you is how captured you are, or how much you are willing to pay a premium to signal to the world, or the fairer sex, you are sexy. So not sexy. What you should do instead is know thyself, as Socrates advocates. The path to true sex appeal is inward and endogenous, not outward or exogenous. Who are you? The Cheshire cat asked Alice when she found herself in the Wonderland. What moves you? What topics do you want to explore? What turns you on? For me, it is Bitcoin. In a way, it has always been Bitcoin before it was discovered. I wanted to know when the future is exactly. Do tell, I asked my Dad at the ripe old age of 5, when he flippantly dismissed me with the typical Arabic response, “in the future”, after asking for something I wanted, most likely a toy? I count that as my very first existential crisis. What do you mean there’s something called the future and I have to wait for it to materialize? I had a very high time preference as a child. Then I wanted to know how things actually worked so I took apart our VCR and put it back together, minus a few screws which I couldn’t quite remember where they went. The VCR still worked. Phew, my parents won’t kill me; at least not today. When it comes to the screws in my head, I can’t be quite so sure. Just like style, you will have to show me. My most vexing question was also to my Dad who worked in the field of international development, when I asked him with a straight face when development? Why hasn’t Africa industrialized yet so we can finally go home? I didn’t get a satisfying answer, and my Dad died in 1997. His heart gave out on the streets of Nairobi, just hours shy of Valentine’s Day. I would like to believe that his heart was in the right place, even if his profession might not have been. Inevitably, I will ask the uncomfortable question, make the obvious gaffe, say the wrong thing. Was it something I said? I find myself asking that question more often than not but thankfully not all the time. Did I do that? Most likely I did, Urkel, and family does matter. I am missing the iconicly over-hiked up suspenders though, just not the suspense. Just in case a normie is reading this, I most definitely do like fashion, fashion magazines, beauty editors and fashion insiders. I have a timechain composed of not Bitcoin, otherwise I could have become a nauseating imbecile already, dressed head-to-toe in Gucci driving an Audi R8. Just kidding, Tom Ford is no longer head designer and I lost that sexy feeling. Rather, I have glossies from most of the countries I have lived in or visited, spanning many years, documenting my life’s journey. I almost lost it all during my move from my previous apartment when I was a married woman, to my current abode, a half-way house where I subsist as a divorcee. Other priceless items of my life were permanently lost, including memorabilia from my childhood, mostly of my late father’s. One thing is for sure, I do like a distinct, ever-playful, arty-farty even child-like type of style. That’s the kind of person I am. Can you tell? That I am my father’s daughter. Buyer beware.