Beth Sprouts: Beth Sprouts; Find me Flamboyancy!

Where are all our eccentrics?

We have entered a global, international, digital age of, well, blandness.

Last thing I can think of which was reasonably creative and expressive was our love for Harajuku kids.

Then we stopped reading books, and starting looking at blogs/social media sites/online retailers, and our individualism has drained away slowly down the plug hole.

It feels as if we cannot separate ourselves and sit in our own heads for a while anymore. We are thoroughly overexposed and overstimulated, and appear to be in constant demand of this. Is there too much choice? Growing up in small town North Wales I was thoroughly underexposed to exciting looks and styles. I reveled in 'The Clothes Show' and magazines. But the choice of mags were limited too, as it was small town Wales. You could develop your own style from snippets of things you have seen, and things you could afford, and generally things you could find.

I wonder if this caused more outlandish eccentric fashions and subcultures to develop. They could brew in their own good time. Now we would all be well aware of these, they may be documented and visible to all and many worldwide.

Now it is possible to trawl through mountains of images and select what you like, so we don't have to make many truly new and innovative decisions ourselves. And if someone has made this decision, we can all have a go.

Is it thus hard for new designers to break boundary's? Can they do this?

Where are we going? Ach, to go live in a log cabin with a few magazines subscriptions...

A selection of flamboyants for you. A lot of these developed their styles in the late 70s and 80s, was it important to be subversive in the time of Thatcherism. We are leaving a recession now, could this be a time of development for new eccentrics?