This is about a pink dress I came up with the name of while writing this.

The process of imagining a piece of clothing is an emotional and creative rollercoaster ride where joy takes over, calls for its friends along and I have fun. Slash work. Pretty close to a definition of life, it seems, no? Here we go. I wore this pink dress to a punk theme fashion awards show and named it Candy Perfume Girl, after all. Pun not intended, but very much celebrated.

The fabric was, instantly, literally, music to my eyes when I, inadvertently, saw it while looking for totally different kinds of fabrics. My mind was set on the project I’ve been looking the fabrics for, yet my …something started to drum for this pink thing I kinda knew from the start I was not going to leave the warehouse without. I asked the manager to keep it for me a couple of days. However, I came back the same day and got it together with the fabrics I had been looking for in the first place.

You see, in music, we take something that we love and we build on it is something I heard Mark Ronson saying and thought Oh yeah!. First, I thought about transforming it into in fashion, we take something that we love and we build on it, but then I thought why not just let it be and smile whenever it pops up in my head? 

Once alone in the car, the fabric and I, with no plans whatsoever, knew we were in for a ride. I say no plans, but you see, a collateral ride started the moment I saw the fabric and, on a high, I just let it slide. Let it be. By the time the car stopped, I had the dress in my mind. And I slide.

That same day, the invitation for the Style Awards of 2019 had arrived. The dress code? Punk. a. Yay, a couple of friends are into punk, too, so it’s very likely that they’ll join. b. I’m going to take the pink dress I’d imagined into the world. We are riding, ooh wee!

Vivienne Westwood, the queen of punk, flashed before my eyes the instant I read punk.

That same night, before going to bed, I did some research and was excited to find out that the first shop Vivienne Westwood opened in London, in the ’70s, had the exact same pink – drumroll – I got – drumroll – all over the window that said SEX.

Punk is about rebels. Rooted in 1960s garage rock, punk rock bands rejected perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. Punk emerged in the mid ’70s in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Music and fashion are so connected, it almost seems inconceivable to talk about one without mentioning the other, and yet one more rollercoaster ride draws itself, beautifully, into the whole process of designing the pink dress.

I looked and looked, and am looking at this photograph all over again and am, still, in awe of it, of the genuineness of it and of them together, of each and every one of them, individually. Of their mood, expression and style. They belong to punk, but they belong to themselves first. So, punk, for me, is a celebration of personality rather than just forgetting about it and becoming something else instead. Keeping the outlines of the genre, both in music and fashion, was the challenge I completely hopped on. A new rollercoaster ride had started.

You might think only punk is here to funk, but check this out.

The pink dress becomes part of my third fashion collection. A couple of trouser suits are already here to welcome her.

The Peter Pan collar I’ve always adored is now in a dress that links to the previous Sex (or to the future sex, now that I think about it). And, it is amplified by the Marni collar. Alright. 

The fishnet stockings (popular in the punk era) I wore, for the first time in my life, got immediately under my skin.

The punk inspired boots I got on the spot. I’d noticed them while queuing at h&m. They happened to be on sale, so, right next to the counter, and, without any precise reason at the time, I liked and got them.

I knew Debbie Harry was going to be my hairstyle inspiration from the moment I imagined the dress while in the standstill traffic. Blondie’s Maria had popped up on the radio, just a couple of days before, and had been on my mind, for the couple of days in a row. You see, there’s music sampling and there’s style sampling. You hear or see something that makes …something drum inside of you and you, instantly, want to inject yourself into the narrative, add elements of the nowadays, of your imagination and make it feel fresh, alive.

I’m going to name the dress Candy Perfume Girl. The article, too. It’s a song from the Ray Of Light album that I loved and love so much! I am now a part of it and am out into the world, riding. Isn’t in music, we take something that we love and build on it one of the most romantic things you’ve heard lately? 

I fell asleep with Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing, on my mind, though. What? Yup, welcome to my world.

Who needs a definition for life when we’ve got rollercoaster rides? We do have, however, cute definitions for imagination on Wikipedia:

Imagination is the ability to produce and simulate novel objects, peoples and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses. It is also described as the forming of experiences in the mind, which can be re-creations of past experiences such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or they can be completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes. Imagination helps make knowledge applicable in solving problems and is fundamental to integrating experience and the learning process. A basic training for imagination is listening to storytelling (narrative), in which the exactness of the chosen words is the fundamental factor to “evoke worlds”.

Imagination is a cognitive process used in mental functioning and sometimes used in conjunction with psychological imagery. It is considered as such because it involves thinking about possibilities.

Imagination, however, is not considered to be exclusively a cognitive activity because it is also linked to the body and place, particularly; it also involves setting up relationships with materials and people, precluding the sense that imagination is locked away in the head.

Imagination can also be expressed through stories such as fairytales or fantasies. Children often use such narratives and pretend play in order to exercise their imaginations. When children develop fantasy, they play at two levels: first, they use role playing to act out what they have developed with their imagination, and, at the second level, they play again with their make-believe situation by acting as if what they have developed is an actual reality.