Fancy by Definition, Part One

This morning I was contemplating just what it means to be fancy (and believe me, I really do think of these things while I’m making breakfast, or working on a project). To me, the word means doing things a little differently, “classing them up” for lack of a better term. However, I don’t think that being fancy is something that is difficult to achieve (it’s all in the small things, which is likely to be a post very shortly). In any case, these musings made me want to see what the word “experts” (a.k.a. the dictionary) had to say on the matter.

Dictionary.com provided the following TEN definitions of the word fancy. Bear with me here, because – yes – we are going to go through them one by one. Before you moan and groan about that, just be glad that I didn’t pick the Webster’s version – they have three SECTIONS of descriptions for the word fancy – one as a transitive verb, one as a noun and the other as an adjective (did I mention I teach English?).

Okay, okay. To be fair, we’ll break them down in to separate posts, beginning with the first definition.

imagination or fantasy, esp. as exercised in a capricious manner
Imagination is probably one of the top three words I would use when asked to list what was important to me. I have always been imaginative, often preferring a fantasy world to a real one. I love authors like J.K. Rowling and Stefenie Meyer (that’s right, this Fancy Girl reads Twilight!) or directors like M. Night Shayamalan or Baz Luhrmann. To me, these people are geniuses because they have done the near impossible. They have managed to create their own worlds, an alternate presentation of the world we live in that seems almost plausible. It’s so easy to get lost in these worlds that you tend to feel bewildered when you resurface into the real one again (at least I do!).

One day I will emulate them. In many ways I already do. Designing costumes is my way of creating my own little world. I was recently watching an episode of Project Runway (the all-stars version, when former contestants come back to compete one final time), and Mychael Knight probably put it best when he said, “Seeing my collection on the runway is a really amazing experience just because you’re working so closely with your pieces and you get kinda connected with them, but to see them move, to see them come to life, it’s really like ‘Wow, I’ve created magic.’”

I think this applies to a lot of what I do. I like to create something from virtually nothing, connect it in ways that probably only make sense to me, and to watch it all come together in the end. There’s always a method to my madness, even if it’s not clear to other people. I like that – I don’t always make a lot of sense to most people, but I always make sense to me, and that’s what matters!