F*shion Outcasts: For the geek chics and nerdy fashionistas in you

September 23, 2013

It’s okay to have smudgy eye liner paired with black leather boots and a Harry Potter t-shirt and still care for fashion and the latest hypes; you just earn extra points for making a trend your own: And F*shion Outcasts is here to tell you just that.

So if you’ve always dreaded the Keratine-haired, sky-high heels and designer bags styles and found no space in Egypt to express your fashion creativity, this is just the thing for you.

F*shion Outcasts is the latest addition to the online fashion world; it’s a platform for fashion outcasts, geek chics and nerdy fashionistas to let their voices be heard, read fashion advice from a fellow nerd and browse through dozens of pictures from runways, designer sketches and street fashion that share your sense of style sending your own pictures to be featured.

The fashion blog was launched by investigative journalist and Tweep @PakinamAmer who found herself left out of the mainstream fashion world and decided to take matters into her own hands.

It’s refreshing, geeky, chic, fashionable, quirky, witty and definitely speaks its own mind.

Fashion Outcast founder Pakinam Amer

What inspired you to launch F*shion Outcasts?

The fact that I always felt outnumbered in my fashion tastes. I’m not saying I’m alone. I know countless others who go off the beaten path, even if only a little, fashion-wise. But in the Egyptian markets, we’re either underrepresented or slightly misunderstood.

It’s not about being different per se, but genuine. Besides, I never liked looking around to see copycat

styles among friends or strangers in my small circle, it’s like by desperately trying to get it ‘right,’ that they lose a bit of themselves there, the edge that makes them special. They smudge it. And it’s not cool, man.

Who are you targeting? The mainstream fashionistas or strictly outcasts?

I think I can both attract the converted, and create a new readership base. That’s confidence for ya!

But in all seriousness, I think this is a market hungry for change, of any kind, be it political or social. People are pricking up their ears hoping to hear a different, refreshing tune; I, for one, am, and I know loads of others who are in pursuit of things that are new and different.

Where can people follow you and F*shion Outcasts?

Everything that’s posted on the blog goes automatically to my Twitter @PakinamAmer. And I do have a F*shion Outcasts pinboard on Pinterest too to feature said posts.

So can anyone send you their pictures to be featured on F*shion Outcasts?

Yup, anyone can get featured, including commercial-type entities, like online stores, market websites and of course people and robots; I don’t care as long as he, she, it gets the look right.

So if you’ve always had a quirky sense of style and took the latest lace trend to pair it with your thick-rimmed glasses and a goth necklace, browse through F*shion Outcasts, share the love and send a picture to pakinamamer@yahoo.com to be featured and shared with your fellow geek fashionistas. Keep them high-res, people.

Personally, who inspires your fashion style?

Lady Gaga, Dean Winchester from Supernatural and Oliver Sabel from the German series Verbotene Liebe.

What are your favorite sci-fi and fantasy books?

My favorite authors are Antoine de Saint Exupery, Neil Gaiman and of course Tolkein.

My favorite sci-fi book is Twenty Thousands Leagues under the Sea by Jules Vernes.

My favorite fantasy is, of course, The Lord of the Rings.

The last slightly bewitched books I read are Gaiman’s Anansi Boys and The Ocean at the End of teh Lane. Both cuckoo like my blog but brilliantly so.

Pakinam amer is a geek at heart, a social media wiz and an investigative journalist who worked for several publications, including Al Masry Al Youm and Egypt Today magazine. She has an MA from the City University in London in investigative journalism and spend a year in China at Shaolin Temple learning martial arts.