Tracing the origins of my fascination with creative pragmatism

On embracing "mi yo escindido".

Imagine growing up in a place where most women dress and (honestly) look like Sofía Vergara. That’s where I start tracing the origins of my personal style story, exactly in Sofía’s birthplace: Barranquilla. Colombia.

Barranquilla is hot year-round, but no one would be caught in the grocery store without high heels, a full-face makeup, and “el blower”— except one person: my mom. Not that she didn’t care about looking good; her definition of “looking good” just differed (vastly) from other women’s definition of “looking good.” My mom’s style was straight out of a 90’s J.crew catalog. No makeup. No high heels. No blow-out. A pixie cut? That was revolutionary in the land of Sofías. But my mom wasn’t deliberately trying to be revolutionary. She simply had no time to think about outfits in the morning while she was worrying about the bills, fighting with my dad, or running the monster company she had to run. She was on the go, always stressed. Always dealing with a problem. And fashion was not going to be one of them.

My mom had no choice but to be practical and in the process, she created the most singular style for the context she was living in: the Barranquilla of the 90s, a cosmopolitan city in the Caribbean coast of Colombia that congregates immigrants from around the globe: Italians, French, Jews from all over, Arabs (we all called them Turcos despite not being from Turkey, for instance, my neighbors were Palestinians), Chinese, Japanese (also referred to as Chinese,) and more.

I was always watching my mom. And when she was gone working, I was watching my grandmother, also a working woman who did own high heels and makeup. And I was also watching the nannies who cared for me while my mom and my grandma were working, who not only owned high heels and make up but also in more exciting shades of pink and red. And when I went to the grocery store and encountered my friends’ moms, I watched them too, in their cork platforms and fresh-out-of-the-salon hair. And when a girl casually said she slept in “la toca” in fourth grade, I watched her too. And wondered what it felt to be her. And what was la toca? And who showed it to her?

During my teenage years and twenties, I sough a stable place within fashion that defined me, I place I never had to move from, just like my mom had found. Who was I? My mom or my friends’ moms? Was I Sofia or Betty La Fea? I felt the urge to eradicate all duality and tension, not realizing that this very tension was what defined me. All I wanted was to find a safe place, to locate myself within this myriad of realities: maximalist/minimalist, too much/too little, too hot/too smart. Then there were my brothers and their opinions, along with the not-so-subtle comments from my paternal grandmother, cousins, and everyone else who felt they had the right to comment on everything and anything, which was everyone. I should have a thicker skin by now, but actually, I don’t.

I sought answers in Mischa Barton’s wardrobe in The OC, in the glossy pages of Vanidades magazine, in the “sociales” section of our local newspaper “El Heraldo,” in runway reruns and Tim Blanks’ commentary on Fashion TV, in Elle’s street style website on my family modem-run, impossibly slower Dell computer. But I still wasn’t getting many answers. Only more confusion and a strong desire to experiment. But experimenting with fashion in Colombia was expensive, and I didn’t have much money either. So I recreated clothes I saw on Chloé and Michael kors’ “pasarelas” with my local seamstress, which gave me a temporary dopamine hit but no real elucidation on what my style WAS.

Fast forward I moved to NY in 2012, in my early thirties, now with an entry-level art director salary, and I start gravitating towards figures like Leandra Medine but also towards Celine’s Phoebe Philo. Still grappling with tension. And then there was Johanna Ortiz’ prints and Caribbean chicness. And DelPozo studies in adornment and volume. But there was also the eloquent silence of Lemaire. And The Row. And the normcore trend of 2013-2014.

Then came a revelation after stepping into motherhood and settling in the suburban tranquility of North Florida. In my late thirties and early forties, I discovered the art of creative pragmatism masterfully created by designer Amy Smilovic (google her.) What Creative Pragmatism gave me was the ability to blend, the freedom to integrate the disparate facets of who I am: the lawyer turned-artist, the Latina mom who can’t cook, the avid reggaeton listener, the Paul Auster reader, the politics passionate, the instagram over-sharer of both profundity and triviality.

Creative pragmatism allowed me to embrace rather than reject my complexities, showing me that I didn’t have to sacrifice any of these constitutive pillars of myself, mi yo escindido. Instead, I could learn to dial each piece of the mosaic up or down depending on the context. This journey taught me to dance with contradictions and irony, enjoying the process of mastering the lexicon of the creative pragmatist’s playbook. Finally, at 41, I felt at ease. Sometimes resembling my mother in crisp Oxford shirts and loafers, other times channeling Sofía with cork platforms, a bold red lip, and a conspicuous, unapologetic décolletage.