Can Style be Earned? Victoria Beckham keeps her Fingers Crossed.

But what is to be made of the recognition of effort? Is it grounds for a “close, but no cigar”, or a dividing criterion of excellence? If “A for effort!” is a legitimate stamp in the world of Transformers and Barbies, it is an acceptable copout when the game is dominated by Manolos and Balenciaga?

At a time when the title of Fashion Critic comes with citizenship, it’s a question that begs for consensus.

Names like Jennifer Lopez and Victoria Beckham, besides sprouting anti-alabaster skin conventions wherever their feet hit ground, are enough to polarize a room of the most fashionably inclined. Beckham, infamously dubbed a “fashion liability”, is a woman whose style highpoints (a rarity, I contend) are nothing other than purely adventitious, even if her efforts aren’t. Primped, preened, nipped, and picked, she is both the ne plus ultra of the footballer’s wives and the gauche entertainment to the fashion elite, almost without exception, decked in the most expensive designer duds, and all but hopeless of earning any accolades of stylishness.

But is the final result the ultimate measure of stylishness? Can diligence, arduous attempts to become fashionable, legitimatize her penchant for rhinestone-studded denim, a sort of barter with a Chloe-wearing Chronos? I don’t know.

In a land of milk and honey, to suggest otherwise would be wholly unbecoming. Though this is not that world.

It’s a debate impossible to consider without the inclusion of the fashion monarchy, or the nouveau-hobo, depending oh who you talk to - the Hipster. Ah yes, the germane hipster, the meticulously disheveled mignon of fashion, known for hastily eschewing anything mainstream as much as owning an unyielding devotion to Hedi Slimane. More often than not, they leave me wondering if they dress to the tune of “Anything you can wear, I can wear uglier”, favouring the worst superlatives of the worst of each decade. But beyond the slashed leggings and oversized tees, there’s a sense that these are not lapses in judgment, that the leggings have been purposefully sliced by the kitchen scissors and the XL tee a result of a 3-day search for a singular fit that could create that ideal emaciation.

It would seem that such staunchness towards style, in and of itself, would be enough to warrant some recognition, particularly in comparison to those that refuse to partake in the fashion rat race entirely.

But the fashion illiterate aside - as I think they should be - I wonder, aren’t we all equally bound to the time-consuming sport of fashion? Perusing blogs, musing through fashion mags, java chats dishing about Marc and Miuccia’s latest deviations are all desideratums just to register your name. Yes, that includes you too, Mary Kate and Miss Moss. “I crawled out of bed and threw this ol’ thing on” is merely a euphemism for what was likely a 2-hour debacle, complete with a few tears and temporary moments of feigned impudence, almost convincing yourself you could work that ribbed leotard.

Call me Scrooge in this upbeat par-tay, but such efforts ultimately renounce this concept of “effortlessness” to nothing more than a pipe dream. And if all the inputs are the same, are we not left solely to nit and pick between the outputs?

It’s at such ah-has that I appreciate the dichotomy of my situation. As a writer, The Beckhams and Hurleys of the world are nothing more than fodder for thought; as a business student, they are assurance that style - relative, of course - is a very, very lucrative commodity.