A week from today I will be returning to university to teach my first class of the year. My summer break has been stimulating, inspiring, colorful and full of new experiences and people. I return with new perspectives, the realization of new possibilities and diverse new friends that add sparkle to the routine and rhythm of the everyday life of a university professor. I have learned more profoundly than ever before that taking risks, reaching for and grabbing the unfamiliar, and diving headfirst into sometimes anxiety producing experiences can turn what was a fairly ordinary life, into something extraordinary.

Fashion right now is like the sunburst on my sweatshirt; boundaries are fragmenting and so much is possible. Yesterday during a photo shoot that pushed limits in every possible way, it dawned on me that I am now part of the pushing. Somehow during all of the unique transactions I had this summer with make-up, clothes, gemstones, hair products, lingerie, music, ideas, people and spaces my identity has once again transformed and I enter into this semester as me/not me.

I come away with the belief that there is no reason to live a life of regret. Regret is a state of mind and therefore fluid and can be changed. There is no standard protocol or timetable of how and when we must live our life. We do not have to be linear about this life of ours. Now I am always in motion. I am always coming away from and coming into. Here I come to you with my face to the sun, ready and eager for what today will bring.

See my Wednesday Details for the story of the people, the ideas and the process  behind the sweatshirt I am wearing in this photo.

How are you part of the “pushing” in fashion or how could you be?