| Sometimes seeing someone copying your look can be taken as a compliment. But on the flip side, it can also get pretty nasty |
Looking different and having your own "style" is hugely important to a lot of young people. But is there really any such thing as exclusivity in fashion?
It was last summer and I was shopping on Oxford Street, the heart of London's shopping world. I went into my favourite store, H&M, to look at tops and found a really cute pink polka-dot strap top. I hadn't seen anything else like it anywhere.
The colour was perfect; the shape was perfect and best of all, my Mum liked it too. Perfect!
Even though I was desperate to wear it straight away I waited for the last day of term. I felt proud and unique when I wore it to school. That's when the most depressing thing ever happened to me…a girl in the year above me was wearing the same top!
Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, my best friend revealed that she'd also been to H&M in another part of London and guess what? She'd bought it too. Over the next couple of months I saw about a million people wearing MY top.
I coped with this tragedy by telling myself that "I had it first" - so I hadn't copied anyone. It got me thinking though about originality and I couldn't help but wonder whatever happened to the London of days gone by, the London we all still read about in fashion magazines?
During the Sixties, American journalist Mark Crosby described London as being more "swinging" than New York. London was full of young designers bursting with new and exciting ideas. It seems unbelievable now but back then the fashion world took its lead from London.
For a lot of young women today, New York is the style capital of the world and it's all thanks to television shows like the brilliant Sex and the City and of course the star of programme, Carrie Bradshaw.
The show is now defunct but magazines still teach us how to dress like Carrie - "get the look", "steal the style", as if young women all over London can buy a cheap version of her lifestyle.
But as much as we love her, is there really any point in Carrie being our style icon? People like her because she dresses uniquely. If everyone is trying to get her look, then surely we are all just going to be wearing the same thing and that's not unique. And it's definitely not something Carrie would have put up with.
There's no way we can be different when all the shops sell the same stuff. If you go to Top Shop you'll find imitations of the latest catwalk fashions. When every high street store assumes this is what young people want, it can get a little frustrating.
Ossie Clark, the fashion designer who introduced bright colours and maxi skirts to the Sixties, once said: "Everything that is done has been done before. We've got to find a new permutation, a new erogenous zone."
Who knows what Ossie would make of the state of fashion now!
It was easier to be an individual in the Sixties because shops couldn't reproduce the latest fashions seen in Vogue in less than two weeks. They didn't have the technology.
What a lot of young shoppers today don't realise is that part of the reason we all look the same is down to the efforts of Marks and Spencer.
M&S was the first to set up fabric labs in the Sixties and to develop the types of fabrics, which make clothes easy to mass-produce, thus making them affordable. It might not have ever been the hippest place to shop but the technology they introduced means we can now get catwalk styles for £15 in Miss Selfridge in Guildford one week after Naomi Campbell wears Vivienne Westwood in Rome.
So it seems London has lost its once famous ability to be individual. Walking down the street you are likely to see young people wearing Parkas, Nike Air force Ones and NY caps or denim, Burberry, miniskirts and Pixie Shoes. Maybe if you were to walk around with pink hair, you'd get looked at but even that doesn't really turn heads in the same way it used to.
To be individual in the way you dress is almost unattainable. And for those who do manage it, they're understandably desperate to protect their originality, which raises a whole new issue - bullying and bitching!
Sometimes seeing someone copying your look or buying the same clothes as you can be taken as a compliment. But on the flip side, it can also get pretty nasty.
At many schools nowadays you'll find towners, grungers, skaters, rude gals and rude boys. Everyone in these groups has their own dress code and it's almost impossible to be a part of the group if you don't. If you dare to look different you don't fit in. If you dare to copy the look you could be picked on and labelled a "try hard".
You can't win! It's almost impossible not to end up looking like someone else.
Marks and Spencer's slogan is 'Exclusively for Everyone'. Think about it. Perhaps if teenagers had any say in it, it'd be "Give us back our individuality!"
About the team
This story was produced by Carmen Kalnars, 15 and Katherine Fewings, 15. It was published by Reach for the Sky Website.
