Tarnished Copper in a World of Shining Gold

Necklace: Rabbit Locket, Victorias Jewelry Box
Sweater: Handmade, My Original Post Here
Skirt: Copper Pleated Skirt by Sparkle and Fade, Urban Outfitters (no longer available)
Shoes: Sensual Pump in Blush by Stuart Weitzman (no longer available)

I feel that it is safe to say that when I am not found to be updating my blog that things are not going well. Alas it has been almost 6 months since my last update–not including posting about my Lazulum Shell last week–and writing, creating, these are things that I love doing.

I feel like the world of fashion is so commonly portrayed as glossy endeavors seeking a lacquered perfection. Fashion bloggers seem to have sunlight and starbursts radiating from their very beings, glitter exploding from their perfectly crafted stilettos. Smokey eyes, and smouldering grey wools in magazine pages seem to be as dark as dark gets. Yet, any woman who has attempted walking a mile, or even 20 feet in these amazing shoes knows that this world is a whole lot darker and more painful than batting eyelashes would suggest. Like the beautiful copper tea kettle after first use, what was once a glorious, warm metal is tarnished throughout and beyond repair in an instant: it cannot, and never will be, new again. 

So how do these bloggers and magazines do it? Or maybe the question isn’t how, but why?

I have come to believe that I am going through an identity crisis.
I don’t know what I want to be doing, but whatever it is, it isn’t this. I am not this. I lost my blonde hair when I was pregnant and I think that has been one of my biggest current downfalls as it was the first step in loosing myself in this new journey called motherhood and I certainly am no where close to finding myself. I feel that I am still in free-fall down the rabbit hole in a dark and desperate attempted at grabbing roots, trying to make sense of myself in a world I don’t understand.

Depression is a hard and dehabilitating thing. Indescribable in its reaches throughout the soul, I am lost down here, and I can’t seem to get out. I miss creating new things, but every moment that I can work on these things I am overcome by guilt that I *should* be doing something else, something for the family, playing with my child. I am constantly overcome by this sense of complete and absolute failure.

I love my child. I love my family. In the throws of depression all I can see is how I let them down, how I make mistakes.

The tarnish on the teakettle worsens. You boil the damn thing in vinegar for hours until the piercing smell overtakes you and the condensation on your windows gathers and falls in streaks like rain. None the more beautiful you give up, but since it cost you such a pretty penny—even this coppery irony isn’t uplifting—you keep on using it. Day after day, cup after cup. Then one day, you notice that the teakettle has somehow become beautiful again. Of course it will never again resemble anything close to the one you pulled out of the shiny wrapped box on Christmas day, but it is unlike any other teakettle out there. It couldn’t be the way it is without fulfilling its destiny, which, ultimately, is to warm and delight the user.

It takes me a long, long time to come up with names for things that I really like. I have to feel, throughout my entire being, that the name is the only name that could be used for this idea, this thing. I’ve always like the name for my blog, Project Hallway, though I knew it wasn’t exactly perfect. It served a purpose and did it well, but upon pondering this post, and thinking forward about what I want to do with my blog, I think that Tarnished Copper is a much more meaningful name and metaphor for what I am doing, where I am, and where I am going.

We aren’t perfect, but I want to be the best version of myself that I can be on any given day. On some days that will mean sweatpants and shabby, frizzy hair, and on others it will mean stilettos and perfectly lined lips. Every morning I get up, take a shower, and ask myself, “Who do I want to be today?” I think it isn’t possible for anyone to achieve style and grace to the level what we gaze upon glossy magazine pages each day, and being comfortable is who we are, too. So, moving forward Tarnished Copper, my blog, with it’s shiny new name, will continue to be a way for me to catalog my knitting and sewing, provide a place for philosophising, an outlet for my creativity within the fashion world, and ideas that I have on beauty and style.

Today is the beginning, a fresh start and with a road travelled behind me. No one is perfect, and I don’t believe that fashion should be perfection. To me fashion is ever changing, maliable, inspired, and inspiring. Once perfect, idealistic, now to be interpreted, an interpretation, fashion is both glossy pages and stillettos, scuffed toes, jeans, and running out of mascara. Fashion is who we are; who we are today, yesterday, and tomorrow. Fashion carries our perspectives, our scars, and our ideas.