I recently bought the most smoking-hot pair of 1970s retro bell-bottom jeans.
I am not exaggerating.
They have the whole thing: the high waist, the patch pockets in the front and back, the exposed brass buttons, the exaggerated flare. They are groovy in the best possible way. The kind of groovy that makes you smile before you even put them on.
And I cannot wait to wear them. There is something wonderful about finding a piece of clothing that gives you a little jolt of energy. Not because you need it. Not because it is practical. Not because anyone told you it was appropriate. But because the second you see it, some part of you says: yes. That is enough.
When the Past Comes Back
Style is always moving through time.
A silhouette disappears, then returns. A fabric falls out of favor, then looks fresh again. A color, a collar, a shoe, a flare — all of it moves in cycles. But when the past comes back, it never comes back exactly as it was.
This is part of what makes fashion so fascinating. A pair of bell-bottoms today is not the same thing as a pair of bell-bottoms in 1974. The shape may echo the past, but the person wearing it is living in the present. The context has changed. The attitude has changed. The meaning has changed.
While some might focus on reclaiming retired fashion as a form of nostalgia, I don’t. Nostalgia wants to go backward. Style wants to bring something forward. For me, the bell-bottom returns, but it returns to a different life.
Dressing for Delight
We sometimes become too serious about clothes.
We ask whether something is flattering, appropriate, current, practical, slimming, tasteful, or worth the money. Those questions have their place. But there’s another question I think we should ask more often:
Does it delight me?
Because delight is information, too. If something makes you stand a little taller, walk a little differently, laugh at yourself in the mirror, or feel more alive in your own skin, that matters. Clothes can do that. They can shift our energy before we have had time to explain why.
The jeans did that for me. The brass buttons, the high waist, the flare, the whole marvelous 1970s swagger of them — they gave me a feeling. And when something gives you that feeling, I think you should pay attention.
Showing Up as Yourself
Over the years, fellow brokers have said to me, "Michael, I always look forward to a showing with you because I'm interested to see how you dress. Your style is exceptional."
This always makes me smile. I dress because it gives me energy. I dress because style is one more way of expressing thatI am alive to the moment. A showing is still a professional appointment, of course, but it is also an encounter between people, personalities, homes, moods, and expectations.
Why shouldn't there be a little pleasure in that?
I think personal style becomes memorable when it feels authentic. People can tell with something is put on in the wrong way, when it is costume rather than expression. But then can also tell when someone has taken the time to show up as themselves.
That's what I hope my style communicates. A little confidence. A little imagination. A little joy. A sense that I care enough about the day, the people, and the experience to arrive with some presence.
And maybe that is why the comments mean something to me. They remind me that how we show up becomes part of what people remember.
A Little More Groove
My mantra has always been that style is in the person not in the fashion. Style is what people remember when you want to separate yourself from others or dress for success.
I don’t believe getting older means becoming quieter in how we express ourselves. If anything, it should make us freer. Freer to wear the thing that makes us happy. Freer to bring back an old idea if it suddenly feels right again. Freer to stop apologizing for delight.
In the end, the return of the bell-bottom is also about permission to let the past reappear without being trapped by it. Permission to enjoy a little drama. Permission to dress for the day ahead and for the mood you want to bring into it.
This is what style can do when it is working — it gives you a little lift. It reminds you that joy has a shape, a texture, a color, sometimes even a flare.
And if that flare happens to be exaggerated, high-waisted, brass-buttoned, and completely groovy?
Even better.
Designing my…Happily Ever Always™.
