Naked Fashion

The word fashion brings to mind glorious images of dresses, catwalks and to die for outfits, but fashion starts with your naked self, as scary as that may be! Fashion means many things to many people, but if you search for fashion online, or flick through a magazine, fashion usually tends to translate directly to the clothes you put on every day.

But fashion extends far beyond this, and starts at a much more grass roots level. Naked Fashion is fashion that isn’t just about your outer layer. It encompasses the physical you, and what you do to yourself in the name of fashion and beauty. I’m talking about piercings, tattoos, botox, the list goes on, and on, and on.

If I had to do a word association test, the word fashion makes me want to shout about a hundred things at once, like ‘Models, Paris, and Designer’.  None of these words relate instantly to me, which is interesting when fashion is such a personal thing. Eventually my ideas of what fashion is has to end up having something to do with me somehow, unless I spend the rest of my days in a nudist colony, which is highly unlikely. That said, AskBronny is delving into the world of naked fashion, but trust me, there’ll be no saggy bums and third nipples featuring here. History demonstrates that in all cultures, there is a fascination with beauty, and we have suffered through the years to be considered beautiful.

Fashion has stemmed from our desire to be attractive, and trying to alter our physical appearance in the name of fashion and beauty demonstrates the idea of naked fashion. Even at the very basic level of trying to be as healthy as possible, drinking a litre of water a day to help achieve great skin, and washing our hair are all examples of naked fashion. We all know that the better we look and feel in ourselves, the better the external fashion we don is going to look.

Think of the naked fashion of many moons ago, the ancient art of foot binding, practiced in China for almost one thousand years. Although this bizarre and horrendous custom reflected the role of women in China during the time, it was also treated as a fashion trend. Most of us are also familiar with the tradition of neck rings, a tradition which started in Burma and can still be seen on some women today. Although the longer the neck of a woman, the more beautiful she was considered, the number of rings also correlated to the wealth of the family, which just goes to show that even many years ago money was considered an attractive quality!

And think of England during Charlotte Bronte’s era. Corsets were used to assist the common goal of a tiny waist, considered beautiful and fashionable at the time. This trend resulted in damage to internal organs, fainting and broken ribs, so not one that we hope makes a comeback any time soon. In direct contrast, the trend of the Renaissance period was to be a much curvier lady such as those immortalised by the likes of Botticelli. Body piercing is another example of naked fashion, and has been around for thousands of years.

Think about your first piercing. For most of us, it was the ears as little girls, often our first attempt at being fashionable. Ear piercing can probably be attributed as man’s first experimentation with piercing, and the world’s oldest mummified body found frozen in Austria was discovered to have pierced ears. Nose piercings also have historical origins, dating back to the Middle East approximately 4000 years ago and is even mentioned in the bible – throw that at your parents if they have issues with this “new” trend! Today the fashion continues, and has moved far beyond the boring old ear lobes. Bellybutton piercing is a modern fashion that can’t be traced back to primitive times, despite speculation that the Egyptian royal family had pierced navels, probably because there was much more likelihood of your bellybutton snaring on a shrub as you ran from a woolly mammoth back then.

Piercing body parts other than ears hit the mainstream when Christy Turlington came out wearing a bellybutton ring at a London fashion show in 1994, which sparked an instant reaction from Naomi Campbell who scrambled to also be pierced and showed one off the next day. Celebrities such as Madonna, Janet Jackson and Cher followed suit, but today the bellybutton piercing has taken on a relatively trailer park trash fashion status, thanks to the likes of Britney Spears. Piercing has extended to pretty much every body part you can think of – eyebrows, genitals, lip/labret, I even saw a girl with a pierced cheek recently in New York.

Body piercing has not only become a fashion statement, but also a form of artistry for those who are obsessed, and for those who practice. But for the faint hearted amongst us, there is no denying that even the less risqué pierced ears donning fabulously fashionable earrings is an easy way to dress up an outfit, and can alter your whole look without touching the “traditional” forms of fashion you have on. That’s naked fashion at work.

Tattoos are a pretty permanent form of naked fashion, so you better be happy with the design you choose! I know a girl who drunkenly got a tattoo one night, and now has a Rolling Stones tongue completely covering her left butt cheek - a not so attractive example of naked fashion. Tattoos also have the less glamorous beginnings of most likely being an accident. It is thought that someone, somewhere, far away, and a long time ago, probably rubbed some coloured dirt into a wound by accident, and when the wound healed, the colour stayed. Thank the fashion god that we’ve stopped starting trends this way. I for one don’t fancy anyone rubbing dirt on me and hoping it will take off internationally.

Tattoos as a form of fancy wear are thought to have started around 5000 years ago, and would you believe it, by the same guy found in the ice with the earrings. He was either way ahead of his time, or his fellow tribesman froze him to death for a reason. Angelina Jolie is probably considered one of the most beautiful people to sport a tattoo and made it sexy (sort of) and there is always the fake henna variety for those of us that want the look, but not until we’re 70.

Even the fun but daggy press on diamonties and bindis are a form of naked fashion, which can even be spotted on fashion savvy six year olds, and who amongst us can honestly refute ever venturing down the questionable path of either of these? (Think of the hen’s nights ladies!).

Another celebrity endorsed naked fashion trend is surgery. And the most fashionable cosmetic surgery of late to hit the scene is botox. Already many a woman’s best friend, the jury is still out on whether this procedure is a good idea or not. First used medically to treat lazy eyes, and now with evidence suggesting that Botox may be able to treat numerous medical conditions such as migraines, excessive sweating, cerebral palsy, and overactive bladders, botox seems to be a good thing.

But the fact that the injections contain a poison that causes fatal food poisoning is probably one of the biggest reasons some people have issues with the drug as a beauty treatment, and the beauty effects of the treatment were actually discovered by accident. Regardless of personal opinion, there is no denying that botox is trendy. Just like boob jobs had their day, botox is a must have accessory in the world of naked fashion.

For those of us wanting to alter our physical appearances, and that’s most of us, naked fashion doesn’t have to involve the expense of a cosmetic surgeon. You just have to take a little stroll around your local chemist to see the array of products designed to make us beautiful whilst naked. Cellulite creams, miracle cures for stretch marks, wrinkle eliminating moisturisers, it is hard to know where to start. But rest assured, regardless of your body issue, there is something available on the market to fix it.

My favourite examples of naked fashion I have left for last. Firstly, we have waxing. Hair seems to be the bane…okay one of the many banes…of a female’s existence. Hair is a big thing in fashion, but the hair on your head is almost universally acceptable. The hair on the rest of you is not. Hairy armpits may be okay in some parts of France, but hairy anywhere the sun don’t get to shine that much is generally no longer trendy.

The Brazilian took off in a big way in the late 90s, and our most delicate of areas hasn’t really recovered since! Being pretty much back to how nature brought you into the world is still the fashionable thing to do, and many of us pay big dollars, and endure sometimes excruciating pain in order to continue the trend. Team that with armpits, eyebrows (which we are now allowed to grow again thanks to the returning trend of the glamazon), legs, for the unfortunate amongst us, arms too, and it becomes apparent that naked fashion is just as important as our not so naked fashion.

Then, there is my other great love – fake tan. We may have all laughed ourselves silly as Ross became a crispy looking version of himself in Friends during an unfortunate spraying booth incident, but this was completely misleading because those booths rock! Yes, you may smell a little funny for a while, you have to wear the equivalent of a tent upon leaving so you don’t ruin your soon to appear tan, and lord only knows what chemicals can make you gradually brown over the following six hours, but its heaven when that tan hits.

Some of my friends swear by the personalised touch of a consultant airbrushing you, but my one experience of being naked with a hairdryer turned on my ass to finish me off has swayed me without return to a little booth that is all my own. Either way, there are no tan lines if you don’t want them, you can wear a white dress without resembling a corpse in just over half a day’s notice, and you don’t risk the nasty Australian sun side effects. The same goes for the home tanning job, but I learnt the hard way that this opens up a lot more room for error when I woke up with stripy legs the day before a major dress-wearing event. And we all have a misguided orange friend. But with practice and patience (which is possibly what I was missing), the home tanning can be an inexpensive and ideal way to be golden regardless of the weather.

This is naked fashion at its best. We all know that the hearsay that a tan is no longer cool is rubbish. People look great when they are brown, and most of us prefer a bronzed look to showing off translucent skin during summer. Ideally, we should be comfortable enough with ourselves to accept our naked selves as we are, but I am a realist. And just as there are fashion trends with clothing, there are undeniable naked fashion trends.

As such, I believe that if you can get yourself into a happy place with your elements of naked fashion, whether that be through sporting a tattoo, a nose ring, or getting monthly botox fixes, this will no doubt complement your non naked fashion.