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A couple of years ago I ended up on a flight with Bill Kaulitz, the lead singer of the German teeny band ‘Tokio Hotel’. He is known to get thirteen-year-old girls with very bright eye shadow screaming as if there was no tomorrow. Bill Kaulitz is today what Back Street Boys’ Nick Carter used to be back in the day. The only difference: Bill looks more like Ozzy Osbourne and Marylin Manson combined than the perfect son in law, which means he needs to make up for the lack of his look with something else. At the time I was on this flight, Bill wasn’t even that big a deal: Tokio Hotel had just released their first album and girls had only started to fall like dominos. But Bill already acted as if he knew under aged femals would through their underwear at him like unpredictable maniacs some day. And although he looked painfully ridiculous with his shiny Mohawk and massive sunglasses (which I still believe were fake D&G’s), I couldn’t help being impressed by his attitude. He made people on the plane turn heads and stare at him, and I’m quite sure it wasn’t only because some wondered if he was a kindergarten kid forced to wear Tommi Lee’s wardrobe. Despite not having much respect for Bill’s music skills, he did blow my mind by showing me that no matter how ridiculously miss-dressed and weird looking you are, as long as your attitude fits, you can pull it off.
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Cleaning pools? It's all about the attitude... Ela in the Bombay Beach Romper. (photo: Timo Jarvinen)
I myself must say that I hate to be under or overdressed. I like to combine my cloth to form total trash to tomboy chic to elegant, depending on what the day might bring. Reproach me for not having my own unique style, but I just love the whole range of fashion on offer out there and hate to limit myself to a particular type of wardrobe. This quirk combined with my spontaneity has got me into fancy cocktail parties in laced leather boots, to super hip DJ gigs in worn out running shoes or to barbecues by the lake in spangled platforms. If I bump into people in town asking me spontaneously to go somewhere, I usually can’t just bail out… no matter what I’m wearing. In short: I have a tendency to end up as a visual bull in a china shop or a china doll in a bull shed. And since I don’t like feeling misplaced, I’ve had to develop my own attitude strategies over the years to cope with it. Let’s call it the Kaulitz fraud. It’s pretty simple as I basically just put on the look the situation would ask for no matter what I’m wearing… Arrogant grin in laced leather boots at the fancy cocktail party for example, or red cheek mountain girl smile in the spangled platforms at the barbecue by the lake…
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Up until now, I must say that these strategies have worked pretty well for me and since people tend to spend money on any kind of workshop these days, I recently started wondering if I could get rich by offering attitude seminars to others. A friend of mine became my first test person when she received a last minute invite to a job interview the other day. The fact that her make-up and her outfit weren’t perfectly suitable for a job interview made her terribly nervous. But she didn’t have time to get changed or re-do her make-up, which provided me with the perfect opportunity to give her a crash course in my attitude workshop and introduce her to the Kaulitz fraud…
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Whether it was my advice or not, my friend got the job, and I got a super ugly kids t-shirt saying ‘Miss Attitude’ on it in reward. The t-shirt is yellow, glittering and just so terribly hideous that it doesn’t even deserve a place in my amazingly exquisite wardrobe, but as I said, it’s not about the clothing; it’s all about the attitude… Did I mention my friend wants me to wear glittery yellow to my next five-course dinner party? The Kaulitz fraud might be facing its first serious endurance test…
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Ela
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Meet Miss Attitude!
