About
About Hair You Are. Our Mission. Our Style. Our Wishes for the World, and You.
(And it’s not just to make you look great. Still, our imaginary legal team insists we disclose that looking, feeling and acting fabulous may be a not-entirely-unintended side effect of this admittedly therapeutic site. Because OF COURSE style is good medicine.)
(Caution: In addition to functioning as our “About” page, this piece is quite possibly definitely our manifesto. Fight-the-power fist-bumps may be inspired. Read responsibly. Act passionately. High-five enthusiastically and often.)
Hunker down and hold on to the furniture. We’re about to say earth-shaking, expectation-shattering stuff about style.
The way “we” (as in, Our Culture, Mainstream Media and Other Official Arbitrers of Style) talk about style is only PART of the story, or not the story, and especially not The Moral of the Story, AT ALL.
Often, when we (that’s a social “we”, meaning “all of us” rather than a royal “we” wherein the authors of this piece sniff hautily and suggest we are not amused by the fashion mis-steps and erroneous antics of our style-impoverished serfs) talk about “style” we do so in a very thin way.
Literally. But this is not a treatise on the tyranny of skinny.
(Yet.)
(That piece is probably pending.)
(Possibly we’re digressing.)
Instead, what we mean by “thin” is that when we talk about style we only talk about the gloss and the surface of style.
We talk about trends and “must-haves” and what Beyonce is wearing (or not wearing).
We talk about style as a luxury to be attained and a way to signal your prosperity to the world.
We talk about – and mock – Paris Hilton, as though style is the vapid and vacant province of heiresses and indulged housewives in Orange County, Atlanta and New York.
We talk about style as though it is the laughable little dog in the lap of a princess. As though style is a pair of Manolos. As though style can be bought.
So we – and we’re still speaking in The Voice of Society, here - talk about the surface of style and when we do that we keep the discussion superficial AND we contribute to the manifestly false assumption that style is superficial, frivolous and doesn’t matter.
And that people interested in style are superficial, frivolous and don’t matter.
And that’s what this website is (not) all about.
Ze Hair You Are Manifesto (Fists in the Air Truly Madly Deeply Required. FYI.)
Hair You Are is about challenging – or, possibly, complementing and thickening – the dominant and disturbingly thin discussion of style.
Because that discussion – the thin, dominant, mainstream one - constructs style as frivolous, materialistic and inconsequential.
And that’s not what style is. Style isn’t about appearances. Style isn’t simply “fashion”. Style is consequential. Style matters.
Style is about who you are; knowing, accepting and embracing who you are; and about how you express who you are in the way you walk in the world.
Style is an ethic. It’s how you treat people (including yourself), your community and the world. It’s what you find beautiful and the beauty you create with your gestures, garments and goofy grin. It’s the messages you telegraph with your appearance, your manners, your decisions, your compassion, your actions, your contribution. It’s how you protest and ameliorate the wrongs and celebrate the rights of the world. Style is the way you walk in the world.
That’s what style is.
This is what style is NOT:
1. Style is NOT about how you look.
2. Style is NOT about what other people think of you.
3. Style is NOT about what celebrities wear, where they get their hair done, or designer labels.
4. Style is NOT frivolous or irrelevant.
5. Style is NOT about how you look.
It is worth repeating, so let’s say it one more time: Style is not about how you look. It’s not about surfaces, masks, prestige or posturing. Style is only appearance-oriented in the sense that style is the external representation of your internal reality. Style is where your ideals meet action. Style is an ethic. Style is a road (and, often, the road less travelled) and how you walk, swagger, strut or sashay it.
( We’re pro-swagger and big fans of the sashay. Ditto the shimmy.)
Style is also how you leave the road:
Ideally, better than you found it.
About Hair You Are
So that’s what Hair You Are is all about. Hair You Are is a paradigm-shifting discussion – hopefully in the key of many voices, which is why we’ve styled it as a group endeavour and online magazine rather than a solo-thang – of the ethic of style.
Hair You Are is thick style.
(We like hair, and pretty much everything else, thick. Ahem.)
(Possibly we’re digressing.)
( Again.)
Hair You Are is about the ethic of style. According to us .
But who are “we” exactly and what do we know about style?
We are Hair You Are. We Are…
Francis Rostant
Kelly Diels
Errol Martin
And Our Hair You Are Style Is…
- an ethic.
- radically, organically faithful to who you are.
- whole, wholesome, and soul-full.
So that’s us. That’s Hair You Are. That’s the conversation we want to shift here at Hair You Are and hopefully in the world.
That’s our style…and that’s a long answer to the wrong question.
Although we started with good questions - What is Hair You Are All About? What’s our style? – they aren’t really the right questions.
Because the right question, the one that generates the provocative answers (and action!) we’re seeking, is this:
