Baubles, Rouge & Tulle: Fashion – Is Simplicity the Key to Brilliance?

Today’s Baubles, Rouge & Tulle post comes from contributing writer Brittany Chaffee.

By Brittany

Actor Bruce Lee once said, “Simplicity is the key to brilliance.”

Let it sink in. Chew on it. Ponder it. Let your mind puncture it.

What do you think? Are simple acts the ultimate pass to brilliant and amazing ideas and actions?  Is simplicity the secret recipe to fashionable success and utmost flawlessness? Is that all it takes? A simple remedy to conquer what we all hope to achieve in personal expression?

Lady Gaga doesn’t think so.

Let’s think about simplicity and fashion. Fashion is not simplistic.  It is brilliant.

During Fashion Week, the runway is housed with glitzy, freaky, and brilliant work. As consumers, we eventually simplify the outrageous outfits to become comfortable with wearing them.  If models were walking down the catwalk in a button-up white tee and shorts, where would we find inspiration? Where would we see art? How would we create our own brilliance? We want complexity in fashion. We want difficulty and most importantly, we want to transform the vagueness into something clear for us. We want to interpret it. If everything was simplistic, there would be no room for interpretation, evolving and understanding.

Alexander McQueen did not embrace simplicity, dullness, monotonous, bald and dry work. He embraced the opposite of simplicity, because he affected people. In fashion, simplicity remains unaffected. Brilliant fashion is luxurious and elaborate.

Within one luxury, another luxury is exposed; we can tone down brilliance. That is what makes “brilliant fashion” simple. We pull things from runways, we get ideas from Vogue magazines and we turn brilliance into a form of simplicity. We water it down, interpret it for ourselves and reform ideas like clay in our hands. This element of fashion is one of my very favorites; it’s a fashion evolution.  And without brilliance, we wouldn’t be able to discover our own.

Look at celebrities: Lady Gaga did not exceed simplicity and she has gone farther in brilliance than many others.  The same goes for Elvis, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears. You can’t remain tucked in a simple, dark corner to be known and to voice out.  You will be plain. You will go unnoticed. I think we should get credit as individuals to embrace ourselves.  Every one of us is different, and in difference we seek something beyond simplicity. Simplicity is safe and homely. Brilliance is beyond our comfort zone.  Look where stepping out of simplicity took Rosa Parks, the 1980 Olympian hockey team, Martin Luther King … the road against simplicity took them to a place they could believe in.

We want people to remember us.  Remembering one fashion statement in a world of millions is something beyond simplicity alone can attain.

All in all, it seems there should be a modest mix of both simplicity and complexity. But I know for a fact, simplicity isn’t the only one-day-pass to brilliance. Have ambition, be different, embrace your simplistic attributes but don’t look back when you lose a little innocence. Bask in the experience of a non-simplistic life.

Like legendary hockey coach Herb Brooks once said, “You can’t be common, the common man goes nowhere; you have to be uncommon.”

Your turn readers: What do you think? In fashion, is simplicity the key to brilliance, or is brilliance the key to simplicity? Leave some love in the comments or write to us at [email protected].