Style is all about how you express yourself.  It does not mean that you can go and have the current trendy haircut, wear what is fashionable, accessorise yourself with all the fancy shoes, hand bags etc. and think you have made it, which is wrong since style is more than grooming yourself.  Lifestyle, how you live, entertain, move around society, one’s self-expression and an entire list of what is supposedly right go hand in hand with the grooming and is a requirement.

Many people are born with all of this and are naturally stylish.  However, being stylish does not mean that you have to be boorish. Being tremendously wealthy and having money to throw around and flash to the world in a vulgar fashion and to force it down everyone’s throat announcing the fact that you have made it is not acceptable. Having proper values are considered style. Looking around us, very few seem to have proper values these days. In reality, style is what you see in the outside and is merely a reflection of what is on the inside.
Many of the noveau riche who are educated get help from image or style consultants. I wonder whether we have knowledgeable style consultants who could instruct Colombo society on how to upgrade their appearance, how to behave in public, how to dress, how to entertain with acceptable table manners and everything that goes with social etiquette. Many who have travelled overseas and enrol for a stint in a school for social graces and do manage to come back and pull it off,  but there are many who are either unaware of style or do not wish to bother about style and are happy to behave in a vulgar, garish, over-the-top manner.  Such behaviour is unbearable to some but as long as there is money being thrown around people will flock around them. 

Style could be very subjective and arguable. It finally boils down to who one wishes to associate with and lead one’s life. In Colombo’s modern society it is rather each to his own to find your ‘budjar’ and be happy with them and throw style to the wind.