Call Me Brenda

After all this time without the Internet, from yesterday I'm jumping everywhere here and there on the net...
Today I tried the celebrity look-alike on My Heritage. Actually I tried with tons of pictures...every picture of myself I have in the pc and the results are funny.
Besides several japanese girls (and some boys too!) I never saw before, there was a name that always came back...Shannen Doherty. At first I was perplexed, but suddenly I remembered last summer someone commented on one of my pictures on Flickr with "you look like Shannen Doherty in this photo, and I mean it in a positive way". I have to tell you I was really amused by "the positive way"...!


I was a teenager in early 90s and for me Shannen Doherty means Brenda Walsh.
I loved Beverly Hills 90210, even if the cast was ager than their characters and it was sort of ridicule and freaky, like Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz!. I had books, magazines and - truth be told - I even wore an hot pink t-shirt with Luke Perry and his big forehead on it. I think I throw it away, disgusted, around 1994...maybe now I could even be cool, wearing it with an highwaisted skirt and a pair of peeptoe booties *LOL*

Beverly Hills was the first teen drama of tv series history and Shannen Doherty was in until 1994. Me and my friends watched the series for the stories, for the characters but even if we were probably influenced by the outfits, we didn't look at the series for them at all. Beverly Hills 90210 was before Sex & The City and fashion wasn't a character yet! From SATC on, the glossy teen series, like OC and most of all Gossip Girl learned the lesson and now even if you don't watch the show, you certainly look at the outfits. And you know Blair Waldorf rules.

Looking at Beverly Hills 90210, according to my "today style", I'm even tempted to say the 90s were in a certain way the black fashion hole of the century! All my fashion don'ts were featured in the show and were big big hits in the street style.
Probably the thing wich scary me the most is that I actually wore at least once all of those things, from camisoles to chocker necklaces to baggy high waisted jeans (sigh!).

In a few words the first five years of the 90s are 50% hate and 50% love for me: when I think at what I wore in that period I'm shocked for awhile, but I know it was ok in that moment. I also know next year I could fall in love with at least one of my fashion don'ts (Oh God...), so I cannot completely hate the entire decade! Plus I grew up during those years, they were MY years, and besides some wrong wardrobe choices I also have a few good memories...!

When Shannen Doherty left the show, in 1994, things changed for me. I went to the Art Institute, I stopped watching Beverly Hills, the dark&artsy vibe came into my wardobe and I was pleased to meet vintage. I started growing up, slowly building my life and searching for a personal style or at least learning what I like and don't like.

After all this, when I read this post on Fops and Dandies, about a 90s themed party I thought: 1. I'm really old 2. how fun!
Yes, how fun! Cause with a party like this you can dress consciously like a Beverly Hills 90210 character, have fun for a night and come back to 2008 the morning after! Sounds like a fashion exorcism...I could free myself from all my style fears.
I still can't say if I look like Shannen Doherty but certainly I can go as Brenda Walsh for a single evening!