Fashion Icon | Remembering Prince

Any fashion critic will tell you this: style can't be bought.  You're either born with an inherent "something-something" or you're not.  Style has nothing to do with runways or the windows of Barney's and it can't be found between the pages of a fat March issue of Vogue.  Style isn't necessarily current or copyable and it may only be cool on the person who owns it but damn, if we don't all wish we possessed that deep, all-knowing sense of self necessary to harness it.  I mean, you've gotta be dialed-in to some elite frequency to not only make ass-less pants look really good but to make people say, "Huh...maybe I should try that."

Prince loved sequins and lace.  He loved feather boas, velvet, and richly textured brocades.  His guitar straps were leopard and to quote Robin Givhan of The Washington Post, "He wore heels. High heels. And yes, they boosted his diminutive stature, but he also seemed aware that heels change the wearer’s posture. They make the tush more prominent..."

Prince embraced all colors but he owned Purple (with a capital P) like Ralph and Tommy own Red, White, and Blue.  If only Prince had a chance to come to Scarsdale, NY and see the house in which I grew-up; resplendent in all it's deeply hued glory with its purple shutters and purple front door.  With its leopard linoleum tiled kitchen and leopard upholstered chairs. The mystique of Purple "rained" supreme at the house shadowed by lavender wisteria trees from the paint on the walls to the carpets on the floor to the veins that ran through the marble in the bathroom.  Prince and my mother, the master behind this kooky homage to the color of royalty, were unlikely compatriots on many levels perhaps, but shared an inexplicable, other-wordly fascination for the color Purple.  If only he had known.

When I was young I used to wish we had a house with black shutters like everyone else.  At times I would ask to be dropped off at the top of the street so people wouldn't see it.  But "The Purple House" was a legend, known to all far and wide, enjoying a life of infamy beyond the family who inhabited it.  My childhood home was one-of-kind; impossible for someone else to recreate because it was so personally composed.  And while not for everyone, it had style.  It was authentic...just like Prince.  And ultimately, authenticity is the prism through which true style is filtered.

R.I.P Prince.  We will miss you!

Oh...and as a side note: my father is color blind.  He thought most things in the house were just shades of blue!

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Prince...he was just like us.  Courtside at a b-ball game decked out in head-to-toe purple.

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