Candid about Couture

By Umar Siddiqui

Fashion is universal and inborn. It is part of our daily lives and manifests itself in many ways; as such, we must be more aware of it, even making it more aware of its roles. Candid about Couture is essentially me thinking out loud and navigating life by using fashion and its subtleties. As an extension

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Jun 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890910608

Umar Siddiqui

Umar Siddiqui, a writer and poet, earned a master’s degree in mass communication from California State University, Northridge. An avid Disney fan and fashion aficionado, he enjoys reading, styling outfits, and working out. He lives in Riverside, California.

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Candid about Couture

Copyright © 2023 by UMAR SIDDIQUI

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 979-8-89091-059-2

ISBN eBook: 979-8-89091-060-8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of ReadersMagnet, LLC.

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Cover design by Ericka Obando

Interior design by Daniel Lopez

PREFACE

Let’s start with a valid question, shall we? What I want to ask is what is fashionability ? That’s right, we should always be dedicated to investigating, observantly, what is means to be fashionable? What is it all about ?

Fashionability, I wonder if it is even a word. It should be, because it is whole and meaningful. It is not synonymous and true fashionability is relatively rare. It requires balance—both physically (aesthetically and visibly) and intangibly (in ideas and concepts.) Why I made this relation is that there is that formal balance in fashion, but a disembodied balance begs to be considered. It is a meaningful and rooted balance.

Fashionability is partly about how we carry ourselves. We radiate balance—or we should. We need to be composed and collected. We need to exude this balance in all of our performative activities. Thus, balance is in our performance—our performance in everyday acts. We must not overact or eat up the scenery against which we enact the process of life. Fashionability requires us to balance out the past with the future—a teachable past (NOT a regrettable one) and a foreseen and viable future—one of potential.

This balance is evident, even in fashion. Fashion is in ambivert—that is an argument I want to make. Fashion is inward, but also socially directed and outward. It functions, not introverted or extroverted, but ambiverted. It exemplifies the self as well as connection to the outer realms of the world.

It’s always a bit nerve-wracking to start writing a book, mainly because I have to break the ice with you, the reader. The most difficult part of this is that I don’t even know who you are, but just know you are awesome! I write theoretical nonfiction books like this to enlighten masses of people, or maybe not masses, depending on who is willing to read this book, and to shed light on the current situation of humanity. Books like this are needed, but people in general do not express a need for them. Books are timeless, and I do not postulate this, it is just a musing. Books will always be in the circulation of societies, and that is why it is imperative and crucial to write them endlessly (it also takes time and effort, to extents sometimes hard to imagine.)

Writing a book is usually cathartic, which is to say it has some type or types of therapies embedded in it. It is a process and experience that yield a certain result, hopefully a successful and appealing result! I want to be 1) conversational, with this book, 2) interactive, 3) relational, as I want for my readers to see themselves in the book, even though it is not a narrative, and 4) informational, in the most engaging and fun way possible.

I want to make my passions apparent, since I cannot know your passions since I don’t specifically know who my readers are. I would love to know more about them on an individual basis, but of course that is meticulous in itself and highly romanticized. One of my chapters in this book will be romanticism, and that habit of not being totally realistic and imagining and romanticizing the world ideally, is something I am entirely guilty of. I just imagine scenarios, like what if’s and if only’s, all the time, and I mean all the time. My passions, first and foremost, to name the top two, would be Disney and fashion. My texts are also inextricably resonant with my heritage and upbringing as a Pakistani-Muslim in California and by my taste in indie/ rock music and Maroon 5.

The book is meant to be read as resounding facts and opinions—thoughts that essentially need to be heard for people to make sense of the world. It is not just the material, physical, concrete things that we need to constantly be inquisitive about, but it is also the intangible, immaterial, disembodied ideas and concepts that are in the world that we need to examine and contextualize among other activities and things.

There are ways in which one can further familiarize oneself with the terrains of fashion but also further be involved in fashion, other than dress, wearable art, physical resonances (in fine arts and architecture, and in linguistic boundaries and pedagogies like literature and in conversations). We need to be mindful of how fashion is marketed and vigilant about its journalism and communications, branding, and merchandising. We can scrupulously gain skills from think; we can practice them in everyday, differing settings and contexts. Fashion is undoubtedly a medium; it is surely ephemeral but also transient. This can be disadvantageous, but we can