Hello fellow Fashionistas and Fashionistas!
I am absolutely elated to be back writing for CollegeFashionista after taking last semester off during my study abroad in Alicante, Spain. This past semester was the best one yet for me in many ways and I learned so much about myself, the world around me and what life in other cultures is like. Aside from tapas, eating dinner at 10:00 p.m. and taking siestas, another aspect of Spanish living that stood out to me was the importance of fashion. As the months of living in Spain went by, I watched as some of my tastes in fashion changed drastically and I found myself wearing things that I never thought I would wear in a million years.
Since this past semester was my first taste of Europe, I experienced an absolute plethora of different fashions in every city that I explored. The street styles awed me and I loved the subtle differences in fashions in all the cities I traveled to such as Copenhagen, Barcelona, Milan and Dublin. I was elated to realize that my biggest pet peeve about my university in the U.S. didn’t exist here! No one (and I mean NO ONE) would ever imagine wearing a baggy T-shirt and Nike shorts to class.
Eagerly, I learned from my Spanish friends some tips and tricks of styling an outfit.
First, if there’s a cold, winter day when you don’t feel like dressing up, that’s okay. You can never go out on the street looking frumpy but by purchasing a very fancy coat you can throw it over any outfit and others will be none the wiser even if you are wearing your pajamas underneath.
Second, Europeans dress for the seasons. For example, here in Spain the winters are very mild and often we would have 70 degree days in February. You wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something other than winter clothes, however.
Simply walking down the street in Spain where I spent the past five months, I saw a new world of fashion unfolding right before my eyes. It has definitely been interesting to see how the trends work, since some of them are just as popular back in the United States, while others definitely are not.
So cheers to last semester’s eye-opening world of fashion and here’s to a summer full of dressing with my newfound European fashion sense in mind. Bring on the Superstars, culottes, black leather jackets and more. This summer is going to be a summer of stepping up my fashion game while living in the U.S. and really standing out from the crowd.
