Dressing up to make a statement

Are you a cardboard cutout? Then why dress like one? If there is one thing that I know for sure about women, regardless of what many a man might believe, it would be that we are all different.
Yet there have been countless occasions when it has felt like we are interchangeable. We shop at the same exhibition stalls where they bring clothes in bulk from Dubai, Turkey and China. We pair them the same way too.
The vest goes with skinny jeans and ballet flats. The hair is a weave or a bunch of braids. The make-up is a green or blue eye shadow, the eye pencil is a dark streak across the lower forehead, both bought off the street vendor.
Our gloss is the same too. Shiny for about a minute after it has been applied, or for those who find that too something, a balm it is.
Lipstick is a foreign word in an unusual shade. As for our skirt suits and trousers suits, we might as well all call that one supplier to drop it off on our doorstep.
Bumping into women is fast becoming an act of sensory deprivation. What happened to the fine art of individuality?
A couple of years back, as a business journalist, one of my editors came to the desk on a Friday and asked a girlfriend and I what our plans for the evening were. It was a casual Friday and we were both in jeans.
A brief conversation took place at which point he wondered why it was that when he wants to go out with a woman, she just shows up exactly as she left the house in the morning.
"In my day, women enjoyed being taken out. They would wear pretty dresses and high heels and you could stare at her all night. You would feel like you could not be able to touch her and she would look very sophisticated and classy," he lamented.
We graciously pointed out that it was no longer his day, there was no need to dress up to go to a pub that has no dance floor, is so dingy no one will notice the soft glow on your face and it so humid you hair will frizz because a lot of young men simply did not take us to places worth dressing up for.
But he had a point. That night, we blended in easily with everyone else who was also in jeans and a girlie top, the height of dress up for the urban sophisticate.
Yet every once in a while in the company of multitudes, it is impossible to miss the two or six women you know paid attention to their look.
There is a polish to them, an ease that exists not because their skirt is so short they know everyone is staring, but is a consequence of their style.
They have a look, and what it says that may not be put into words when you see them, is a mentality that says, "because I am worth it".
You must know what this means. Each time you show up looking good friends, colleagues and sometimes even family ask what's the big occasion?
Life by itself apparently is never reason enough to dress up. Years later, I believe this is what my editor meant; that a woman is appreciated when she is a study of elegant simplicity.
After all, fashion can be bought but true style is innate. I grow weary of hearing how Ugandan women prepare for a night out and Kenyan women have no sense of the feminine.
Honestly speaking, our dress sense lacks that element of seduction. It does not enhance, tease, flatter, celebrate and even more alarming, dignify. It seems designed to obscure.
Spanish opera Several months back, I attended a fashion show and saw all these women who were real life versions of Spanish opera characters.
They had a distinct flavour about them and you could tell their heritage based on what they wore.