Enter misfits of the world

The beautiful power of being a dissident, and the falls associated with it.

Oscar Wilde and Miguel Adrover exchanging thoughts on irreverence and style.

Link a la versión en español

Welcome to Diary of A Fashion Misfit! A newsletter about the highs and lows of life in fashion, all the things and people I love [both in fashion and outside of it], some fashion commentary and the advice I wish I had when I was starting out.

The misfit thing comes from my early tendencies to go against the norm, not willingly, more by accident: My dad used to tell me (very impractically for his own interests) that I should always question what I was told, including his own ideas; my mum definitely didn't like his concept so much and still tells the stories of seven year old me trying to drink water from a glass with my hand upside down They both laugh when they remember my teacher complaining bitterly that my five-year-old self insisted on offering alternatives to the exercises set for a class of pre-school children.

Today I am a fashion editor and stylist, an on-and-off podcast host, a lecturer in fashion communication and, yes, a misfit. Since the beginning of my career, I've been drawn to people who do things because they want to, because it's important, and because it makes them feel seen or appreciated. I want to celebrate them. I look at fashion today and think, "Is the sole purpose of this industry to sell us more and more clothes because we feel overwhelmed and anxious and in need of validation?" Sadly it is. 

For me, fashion is so much more: Self-expression, creativity, irreverence, joy or mischief are words that come to mind and I think explain why people are drawn to fashion much more accurately. So will I be analysing trends? I might, but only if they are fun, interesting or silly enough. Will I recommend brands? I will, but only if what they do is done with care and values. Inspiration? Definitely. Will I suggest looks? Well, I am a stylist, aren't I? Will I just talk about fashion? Of course not!

One important detail is that Diary of a Fashion Misfit is a bilingual publication, which means that each newsletter will have a link at the top that will direct you to the Spanish version. As you may have guessed by now, I'm Spanish but I write in English. In my everyday life, I tend to mix the two, depending on which says more accurately what I'm thinking. For the sake of clarity, I'll split it into two versions here. Why do I usually do my writing in English? Because for some random reason, this is the language I express most of my thoughts and emotions better in. So please bear with me if my style has its quirks. 

The thread binding the stories together will be a single word that I'll explore each week. Every Saturday morning, through this word, a kind of dictionary turned diary, I'll talk about the things that make up my life. 

My goal is to create a newsletter that feels like a shared space so I'd love to read your feedback, ideas, questions, love and (I seriously hope not) hate, Substack isn't Twitter. This newsletter is also about the process of living and learning, not only mine, but yours too. I do have opinions (too many), but I really want to hear yours so that growth can happen for both of us.

This week’s word couldn’t be anything other than Misfit. A few days ago, Vogue Business released the results of a survey of more than 600 fashion professionals called “Debunking the Dream”, where they sought to answer two questions: “What does it take to reach a certain level of success in fashion, and what does it take to stay happy at that level?” I’ll go further into it in future posts, but the results are disheartening and ring so true. Life in fashion is no walk in the park, as much as people seem to think it is, this industry can be ruthless, but more so because we, the creatives and professionals giving it our all, have often not been able to keep safe boundaries between self and work. Fashion feeds on outsiders, on people who can dream up crazy ideas and stories, but who are just as likely to be easily picked and as discarded or simply not given the opportunity.

I leave you with two favourite fashion misfits of mine:

Miguel Adrover, the Spanish designer who once famously turned Anna Wintour down and shared a flat in New York with Lee McQueen, is today an artist whose self portaits hold a gorgeously punk beauty and irreverence. I just love the man.

To finish it off, some very relevant thoughts on fashion by one of the first dandies, a.k.a. fashion misfits, the great Oscar Wilde, in his 1885 essay for the New York Tribune, The Philosophy of Dress:

“They think that Beauty is a matter of frills and furbelows. I care nothing at all for frills, and I don’t know what furbelows are, but I care a great deal for the wonder and grace of the human Form, and I hold that the very first canon of art is that Beauty is always organic, and comes from within, and not from without, comes from the perfection of its own being and not from any added prettiness. And that consequently the beauty of a dress depends entirely and absolutely on the loveliness it shields and on the freedom and motion that it does not impede.”

The Philosophy of Dress, Oscar Wilde 1885