Like any typical girl, I love clothes.

I love reading fashion magazines and looking at the newest styles of the season. I love pairing trendy pieces with classic pieces to create the perfect outfit in the morning. There’s a strange pride in leaving the house feeling like you look put together. As superficial as it is, wearing nice outfits and doing my hair and makeup is one of my favorite things to do.

But then again, maybe it’s not so superficial.

British journalist Linda Grant, in her book “The Thoughtful Dresser,” explains how fashion can give a woman a sense of identity. The most insightful example she gives on the issue is a moment from April 15, 1945, the day Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated by British troops in Germany.

On this day, a day when 60,000 sick and starving prisoners needed water, food and medicine, someone (it’s not documented who) asked for lipstick. Of all the things they needed, who thought ill and dying women in the camp needed lipstick?

It doesn’t seem sensible. But Grant quotes Lt. Col. Mervin Willett Gonin, one of the first British soldiers in the camp, as saying, “It was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick…At last someone had done something to make them individuals again.”

Similar to the women survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, modern women find identity in their ability to express themselves by the way they dress. Though we as a nation are so far away from living in the inexpressibly inhumane and horrible conditions of Bergen-Belsen, the power that something as insignificant as lipstick has over us women can mean the difference between feeling like just another number and feeling like yourself.

This individuality, despite what most people believe, drives fashion. Most people believe that fashion is the clone’s playground; that twenty-something modelesque girls in trendy clothes are the only people on earth who can get away with being fashionable.

But fashion doesn’t necessarily mean youth or modelesque stature. What it does mean is that the wearer of a certain piece of clothing knows enough about themselves to know that a particular garment is an accurate reflection of who they are. On any given day a woman can put on an outfit that conveys how she feels: sporty, bland, smart, dowdy, artistic or sexy; there is an item of clothing for every emotion and state of mind.

Although very few people think about the philosophy behind fashion, there is indeed a comprehensive one behind every woman’s take on the way she presents herself to society. Whether she knows fashion or not, each woman dresses the way she thinks of herself. “You are what you wear” is a true statement.

I don’t know how my perception of myself or my clothes are going to change over time, but because I am what I wear, for the time being I will continue to dress like a typical girl who loves clothes.