Photos of me from a young age reveal that clothing has been a long-standing part of how I express myself. While my creative inclinations are there, and demand an outlet, my attention span is short. So, deciding what I’m going to wear typically relieves my need to be somewhat creative on a daily basis within the aforementioned parameters.
Truthfully, I’m not 100% sure why fabric has been my preferred tool for self-expression. Nonetheless, it has been for a very long time. An essay for another day.
Let’s begin this story in Middle School—a time when clothes start have some social significance and all of a sudden dressing matters.
I didn’t participate in the Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister phase, opting for a different but equally questionable look of cardigans and Junk Food graphic t-shirts. Like my peers I didn't dare wear anything other than skinny jeans. This denim silhouette didn't do much for my then square, pre-pubescent frame but I couldn't even imagine myself in anything other than mid-wash, leg-casing denim. At this time I began dreaming of pants that weren't skinny but, again, it was Middle School and we all knew better than to stick out when things were already pretty fraught.
Early in 2011, at the impressionable age of 13, I began reading Man Repeller (now Repeller) by Leandra Medine (Cohen). I found somebody who cared about clothes without relinquishing her entire identity to fashion, and whose style aligned with my own. From her I learned to trust my sartorial intuition and wear my ideas without apology or qualifications. She was the role model I needed at the time and planted seeds in my mind about the importance of dressing for oneself.
It wasn’t until August of 2013, after two years of craving a new silhouette, that I bought my first pair of black culottes from Anthropologie. As serendipity would have it, they were $20 and the remaining pair was in my size. These culottes marked an unimportant but important moment of becoming for me. Throughout high school I would end each year feeling depleted, emotionally more so than academically. Yet, the end of each summer brought a replenished sense of hope— maybe things could be different the following year. These pants almost assured me that this year would be different.
I remember trying on the pants and feeling an overwhelming sense of ease settle in. I felt very much myself at a time when I felt very insecure being myself. When I came out of the dressing room to show my mom I remember how excited I was, breathlessly explaining to her how I'd style the piece, as I do even now when I find something that really resonates.
While the rest of high school was pretty blah (I eventually found out most of my peers and many people I’ve met thereafter felt similarly) the culottes marked a different turning point for me. I became more conscious of clothes as they related to me. The next pant I found intriguing was a boyfriend jean, with legs so long that I decided big mono-cuffs were the optimal way to fold the bottoms. Eventually came a midi-length grey knit skirt, also from Anthropologie’s bountiful sale section, which I wore until it pilled beyond wearability.
The more I found items of clothing that felt wonderful to wear, the less I saw clothes as armor.
The more I experimented with different silhouettes and textures, the more I enjoyed exploring my style.
The more I started to feel like myself, the more I wanted to be myself.
From that point I made a commitment to myself—I would dress towards my truth, whatever that meant at a given time.
The previous sentence is saccharinely cliché. Trust me, I’m aware. But I nonetheless, very sincerely, stand by it.
Some days I look like I’m inspired by your 12-year old brother, your dad and your grandpa all at once. Some days I dress like an architecture school dropout who fell into museum curatorship with a mentor who is fascinated by the Abstract Expressionists. On other days I look like an extra from The Devil Wears Prada and sometimes I look like Inspector Clouseau.
I see my style not as a static rubric but rather self-directed choices that are reconsidered everyday (but also sometimes two or three times a day). Through clothes I’ve found space and freedom to explore the different facets of my identity and the different references I've collected from art, movies, books, music, and general observation over the years in a low-stakes but personally rewarding way.
And from the choices I’ve made about what I wear I’ve practiced, and normalized, lessons that have unexpectedly affected how I approach life. I’ve learned that everything is a work in progress and an ongoing inner dialogue that requires above all a commitment to honoring one’s own ideas. Perhaps the most significant of all the lessons being that there’s room for all of us to be exactly as we are, however we are, at any moment.
Ultimately, clothes have provided me with a medium to feel comfortable being me in every sense of that fascinating word.
The change I’ve described in this essay didn’t happen over night and it required a lot of fake it till you make it energy. There were times, especially in high school, that I would have to be my own overly peppy cheerleader the night before or morning of, sometimes even en route, to wear what I had picked out. I recall moments my personal sartorial pendulum swung too far one way or the other and I felt uncomfortable, even performative, in what i was wearing. There have been times that I relied too much on dressing for the sake of looking different and felt disassociated from myself. But as with everything, practice makes perfect. The more I get dressed, and even shop, the more I improve my ability to trust my instincts and filter out ideas that don’t resonate with me.
As this year becomes the next one and a new decade begins (although I’m just as tired as you are of clickbaity decade reviews) I’ve spent some time reflecting on how much I’ve evolved over the last ten years and the ways in which my style reflects that.
Ten years ago I wouldn't have been able to even picture myself as a writer let alone one covering an industry in which I didn’t expect to actually find a place. Ten years ago I couldn't have imaged a reality in which I would wear half the things I do now, because I didn't know what it would feel like to feel happy to be me. When I think back to times I thought fashion "saved" me, either creatively or personally, it becomes increasingly clear that it was never the items of clothing themselves but rather how the clothes made me feel about myself.
Now, I can see that clothes helped me develop a foundation for my sense of self not because of the aesthetics, but in spite of them.
Fashion, for all of its faults and delights (and there are so many that I felt the need to create my own digital forum to cover as many of them as I could— enter hypeadjacent!) has made space in this hodgepodge of a world for people to be themselves. Though, I admit, the sense of self has been taken advantage of by fashion in the face of accelerated capitalism. Nonetheless, if you put the bullshit aside, and look just a bit past the industry of the whole thing, it really is for all of us.
May this next year, this next decade, bring more fun outfits and being our full selves with our whole entire chest—Happy New Year!