Flower style

Kitsch Bytch: Style; that much coveted thing. Many seek it, some possess it. It can be found everywhere, can change lives, is in our very blood. But what exactly is it? And what does style have to do with flowers?

There are writing styles, movie styles, fashion styles, people get their hair styled; even entire careers are based on style.

For many, the world style brings to mind some effortlessly gorgeous 1940’s femme fatale with blood red lips and perfectly coifed hair. Stockings, pencil skirts, heels, all pulled off with a casual grace. Edna Woolman Chase once said fashion can be bought, but style one must possess. This is true in a sense, if you are focused on the superficial. But I’m more interested in the broader, worldlier sense of style.

A little-known fact is that a style is also part of a plant – specifically the part connecting the stigma to the ovaries. It is vital in reproduction for the plant, and whilst this little gem of knowledge is interesting, it hardly seems relevant to style in the fashion sense. Or maybe it is.

We wear clothes not just for protection but so that we look good, create a good impression and send out the right image. And primarily this image is one that we hope will snag us a cutie to go home with. To scurry back to our dens and pro-create like mad. Just like in the flower, style is something that connects the male and female; the bridge across the gender gap.

It may sound a little kooky – decades of fashion being attributed to a part of a flower – but the fashion industry and how we use it is more or less a modern survival technique to continue the species. An innate desire to look good. All animals do it – granted it’s usually the male who does most of the preening, but somehow that role got flipped during evolution in us humans. We also do it slightly to the extreme, but I’m sure that if animals could craft themselves some Jimmy Choos or a Vivienne Westwood dress, they’d be dolled up just as much as us.

The next time you’re rifling through your wardrobe frantically looking for something to wear, just think. Style, an effortless skill possessed by some, or an innate trait in us all purely there so we can survive. Puts that pretty skirt into perspective, doesn’t it?

Flower style.

Flower style.