Structure, Silhouette, and the Body of My Dreams

I found my dream shirt on TikTok the other day. Let’s just cut to the chase.

I don’t follow a ton of fashion accounts on TikTok—it tends to get a bit repetitive around there, all screen printed blanks and yo ID on pants? comments. That last part may be a bit hypocritical coming from me, someone who scoured the internet to find one specific shirt. I think my algorithm is screwed. 

Anyways, Carla Rockmore.

@carlarockmore: Intellectual Architect or Mall Goth?

I first encountered her on Twitter, a quote tweet of her rocking a vintage quilted dress she found in Amsterdam whose near clone eventually made its way down the Gucci runway. The quote tweet is long lost in the world of that little blue app, but it said something along the lines of, “She never misses!”

Though her closet may be drastically different from mine, I live for the eclectic. As she styled it, just a few accessories, a pair of chartreuse pumps, and a turquoise bag, she made the briefest of commentaries on how creatives absorb what’s around them—knowingly or not. I had to see more.

The shirt. In a styling video that ventured from mall goth to architect-chic, she donned the most elevated of white button-ups: classic collar and clear buttons with a side of flouncy, loosely ruffled asymmetry to the point of cape-adjacency. My thumbs ran to the comments.

I hadn’t heard of palmer//harding. The about section of the website tells me that founders Levi Palmer and Matthew Harding are two sides of the same coin, designers who find electricity in the threshold between opposites:

masculine // feminine, hard // soft, structured // fluid

I kept eyeing the way the front cut of the shirt fell right at Carla’s waist. The way the back was just a touch from brushing the ground. The way it’d move as she’d move. Have you ever worn a garment that changed you? 

Robert Geller Linen Tee in Black

My favorite piece in my closet is a Robert Geller long-sleeve tee I found at my job, second-hand. The linen knit makes it easy, breezy, and slightly sheer, and the inconspicuous raw hem detailing that lies an inch under the collar brings attention to the neck.

It’s a few sizes too big for me, the neckline exposing just the right amount of collar bone while the sleeve-length swathes my hands in a ridiculous amount of sweater-paw action. In the cool way.

It lands right above my knees in dress-like fashion, and in the right light you can see everything underneath. It’s midnight black. It’s menswear cut straight so the fabric moves and gathers on top of even a slightly curved waist.

What I mean is that it both cloaks and exposes me in all the ways I want it to. It begs questions. Are you close enough to see the details? Are you in the right light? What would you see if you got even closer?

It’s just a black tee shirt.

But detail is sensual. Silhouette is sexy. It can create a new body. 

I like my body most in that shirt, and I’ll wear it until it dies. Whichever comes first.

The exact shirt Carla donned in her video doesn’t exist on the palmer//harding site. The closest runner-up is the JOY LONG shirt, retailing at $476. I think the fact that such a similar version exists hurts more than not being able to find it at all.

palmer//harding

joy long shirt

The back of the JOY LONG shirt stops behind the knees of the model in a way that feels intentional, not something chalked up to sizing differences. The buttons are brown, not clear, and seems to stop at the soft tissue right below the sternum rather than the waist. I know these things because I’ve studied Carla’s TikTok religiously. Even if I found her version, I’d never be able to afford it. I’m sure a dupe exists elsewhere. 

Until I find one, I’ll keep imagining myself in it, the drape and sheer of the poplin in constant motion, occasionally gleaming. I’ll dream of it.

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Featured image via the palmer//harding website.

Sometimes Better is Everything

I try not to look at my phone first thing in the morning. If I’ve learned anything from internet personality Gabi Abrão of @sighswoon on Instagram, it’s how to wake up. 

First, understand you are awake. You can’t open your eyes first thing in the morning and bargain with whether you are awake or not. Awakeness and awareness are not meant to be decisions, and as I enter that state of consciousness from the warm planet that is my bed, contemplations chase each other across the space of my mind. 

Should I snooze the alarm? Am I really ready to get up, now? God, I want to go back to sleep.

No, I’m awake. Get up and go do something. The buzz words these days are grounding, spiritual, peaceful, calming, mindful. Make your morning any of those adjectives. 

Second, third, fourth, last, whatever, the list goes on. But the step after waking up is to remember you exist, and then do something about it. Stretch, drink water, put on music, stimulate. Make your ritual morning coffee and hold the mug between your hands as you stare out the window, letting the sun hit your face. Rinse the spinach, chop the tomatoes, and whisk the eggs for your breakfast omelette like it’s your last meal. Ideally, it is all so very beautiful, letting the world unfold before you like a miracle. 

Why does it feel so unattainable? Scratch that, why do they make it feel so attainable?

I surely can’t be the only one, as an early twenty-something and a sometimes unfortunately avid consumer of social media, on what could best be described as “Routine Tiktok.” Self-care Tiktok, morning routine Tiktok, night routine Tiktok, day-in-the-life Tiktok, what-I-eat-in-a-day Tiktok.

It includes anyone from the likes of celebrities, to influencers and business owners in their high-rises, to young adults with generational wealth in their lofts, to regular teens in their homes or hanging out with friends. I get so much satisfaction out of watching others do their so-called daily tasks, from the mundane to the exciting. 

I don’t think I have to make the spiel that nothing on social media is particularly authentic, I think we all know how that dance goes already. In a sphere that is all about craft and curation, the internet is not a space to wax poetic about organic existence. 

Sure, sometimes these posts feel a little real, like when I see @lei_go_to_therapy make a quick day-in-the-life where she admits that all she really did that day was wake up, sleep, maybe watch a couple episodes of a TV show. I love those ones, I do. It’s comforting. It’s a little bit like memoir writing, isn’t it? I mean, the most convincing thing about memoir is when the author acknowledges their short-comings, is candid about how things aren’t always what they seem. 

And then there are the other types, the ones with ethereal people in ethereal houses with amazing lives and amazing jobs. Trust me, I love @sighswoon, I really do. I think she, and other accounts like hers, do amazing work to help people on their spiritual journeys. I consume her content and it’s always nice to look at, the reminders and digital resting points and bits of poetry amidst the prose. But I can’t help but see her living the life in Hawaii, in a house by seaside, posting videos of waterfalls and hikes and beaches and just not being able to relate.

I don’t have that, most of us don’t have that, and this is not to say people don’t work hard for those things, but it is safe to say that the yearning for the lives of others can harm more than heal. 

Influencers and people who make those routine videos, the spiritual guides, the day-in-the-life Tiktoks, they know that those lives are curated. We know that those lives are curated. It’s a very clear exchange between creator and consumer. Social media is a highlight reel, or however the saying goes. It’s an unsaid agreement. That’s crystal clear to most adults on the internet, but this type of content still strives to portray a sense of authenticity even if that isn’t really possible. I don’t want a life that is not my own, I never will.

Man, do they make it feel attainable, though. It gets a little sinister.

Will I still wish I could spend my mornings on a balcony overlooking the sea? Sure. Will I still feel bad when my day is spent waking up, going to Zoom class, going on my phone, and going to sleep just to wake up and do it all again, my brain hammering at me to live my life to the fullest? Absolutely, whatever that means. People say you have the power to change your own life, yeah, yeah. Trust me, I know, let me be cynical and pensive, but that’s not what this piece is about. It’s about the other things.

Why doesn’t it feel as nice as it seems in the videos when the sun hits my face in the morning? Why isn’t the process of making my morning cup of pour-over coffee peaceful and meditative like theirs? Instead my brain just feels a little empty, full of goo and sludge and whatever comes next.

Maybe I just need to meditate, or go on the spiritual journey everyone talks about. Something like that. 

For now, I’ll still try to romanticize my life, because when the moments are good, they’re good. It’s about understanding that it all doesn’t have to be that way, that loving and being loved are good enough. I don’t always need to wake up at 5 AM, or do yoga, or meditate, or go on a run, or write in a journal, or be productive like the videos say.

Sometimes your orange tasted really sweet, and you laugh about the sting of the tartness in your cheek. Your hand is cold and your friend holds it and now it’s warm again. The tea soothes your throat and you feel it in your stomach. You trace your eyes across a finger as it points to the banana moon on a clear night. Things feel good, feel better, and it’s everything. 

I’ll turn my phone off when it gets to be too much.

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Thumbnail image by Petra Collins

A Meditation on the Fall 2021 Show Season

It wasn’t too long ago when my roommate was on the phone with a family friend (one of today’s youths), after which he told me something that I was not at all ready to hear: “Hey, so apparently nobody wears jeans anymore.”

Confused (and also wearing a pair of jeans), I asked, “What do you mean nobody wears jeans anymore.”

To which he responded with “Well, they’re out of style; these days, people don’t wear them.”

The thought that what once was a staple in my wardrobe—and also the only type of pants in my closet—was suddenly deemed fashionably unacceptable among today’s youths left me feeling momentarily shocked. Especially donning the hollow title of a fashion blog’s editor-in-chief, I felt the need to pander to what was hip with the kids. While, admittedly, the pandemic led me to take a breather from keeping up with fast pace of fashion, I never thought my hibernation would last long enough for a closet stable to become obsolete. Though I tried to keep a cool face and not let my roommate’s friend (whom I’ve yet to meet) decide what covers my legs this season, I did end up putting down a cool lump of cash for a pair of red plaid “casual trousers” in a last ditch effort to remain within the range of “stylish.”

Thinking I had single-handedly kept my reputation as an inconsistent fashion enthusiast, I eagerly anticipated the arrival of my “casual trousers.” Of course, with any of these endeavors to try to keep up with today’s young-uns, I inevitably ate crow served with a side of disappointment or occasionally the sweet flavor of embarrassment.

Much to my dismay, when my eagerly awaited “casual trousers” arrived, I unwrapped that brown cardboard box to find that my red-plaid ticket back into fashion acceptance was but a mere pair of pyjamas.

What can we learn from this old EIC’s mishaps? One: read the product details before you purchase anything, and two: trends are entirely arbitrary.

Yes, its a message I’ve been preaching since my earliest incarnation of this trend report series, but something I still stand by today. Fashion should never be prescriptive: rather, it is observable, it is inspirational, it is commercial and—like its byproduct, the trend—it is an entirely arbitrary system. We’re led to believe certain looks or garments are more fashionable than others. But over time, I’ve discovered that this dated form of gatekeeping just keeps those who prefer to hold onto staple pieces outside of the echelon of some ridiculously exclusive club. The nature of much of the industry is exclusive despite the fact that within the powerhouses of today’s designers, the overwhelming message seems to be about expanding accessibility and inspiring optimism.

Working across MODA for as many years as I have has made me realize the aspects of fashion that I enjoy and those which I’m much less fond of, and as such, a lot of those more enjoyable aspects became the pillars on which I imagined rebuilding the blog. I wanted to create a space that celebrates the expansive nature of fashion, and its ability to offer up a novel vocabulary for discussion and engaging with the world. I wanted to do away with any kind of re-sorting of what’s “acceptable” and what’s “out of style,” and instead use fashion and its adjacent media as portals and dictionaries to transport my team’s varied points of view.

Bruno Sialelli brought us a 2000’s fantasy for his opulent show set to a soundtrack of Gwen Stefani and Eve

And as such, that is where our seasonal trend report has gone. If you’re reading this thinking, it’s time for me to buy a tutu because I want to be fashionable, I’m afraid you may have misread the article. Rather, I want you to see the expansiveness of how an idea or style gets circulated throughout a commercial market, perhaps as a sign of the times, but more broadly, as a jumping off point moving forwards for your own development of persona.

Between prepping for this article, I’ve been furiously crying over a thesis and aggressively piecing together my third and final collection for this year’s MODA Fashion Show, and through this holy trinity of pain masked by flowing fabrics and glitter, I’ve managed to push out some kind of a perspective that ultimately language may not be able to articulate on its own.

Jeremy Scott’s Vintage Vision for Moschino’s Fall 2021 show featured the likes of Shalom Harlow, Dita Von Teese and Maye Musk.

Through this pandemic, many of us may have turned to creative avenues as a means of speaking our truths and telling our stories. In an endeavour to offer you another form of solace, I write what may be my last Trend Report (in my plaid pyjamas, no less). I’m hoping you may be able to take a cue from any of this season’s phygital fashion shows as an origin of inspiration for your next narrative masterpiece and I wish you all the best in the upcoming season.

And with that, here are my top trends from the Fall 2021 shows.

Back to School

It seems that designers are buckling down on a possible return to work and school, and many have embracing a wardrobe that’s less Work from Home and more Work the Hallways Like a Runway. From varsity sweater sets at Etro and Philosophy to more Gothic interpretations at Simone Rocha and Valentino, many designers seem eager to offer up a fall wardrobe that screams Back to School. To get the look, mix plaids with closet staples like button downs and trousers, layer your pieces for more put together looks, or customize garments with hardware for a more punk take on the trend. And, of course, don a pair of shoes that are classroom appropriate and conducive to lots of running between classes, because we all know we haven’t had that privilege for a while.

Blow Up

Big, Ballooning silhouettes were another major trend at this season’s runway shows with some designers reaching volumes that seem absolutely impossible to adopt today. This cocoon style, though a little bit bizarre, might prove to be the optimal strategy for embracing those chilly Chicago winters. And in the right color or print, you’d be sure to be trackable if yet another polar vortex hits. The winner for the largest balloon might go to Rei Kawakubo’s very gentlemanly collection at Comme Des Garçons this season, but more wearable looks have been seen at houses like Zimmerman and Cecilie Bahnsen. If you want to take on the balloon trend, consider picking up a puffer coat for the colder seasons, or balloon sleeved dresses and tops for the upcoming spring/summer months.

All in One

A byproduct of the pandemic seems to be an emphasis on outfits that you wear all the time, and it seems like a skin tight catsuit is one proposal to fit that bill. Whether you intend to layer dresses, coats, trousers and tops over it, or just go full Selina Kyle, the skin tight catsuit is one of this season’s most unique comebacks. Though certainly a graphic look, I must say, I wish designers and casting directors showcased the trend on a wider range of body types this season. In order for the trend to trickle down appropriately to today’s crowd, it would be great if from the top down we got solutions for how to make such a measurement-specific garment accessible to those of us whose measurements don’t fit within a double zero. Highlights go to the house of Prada, whose patterned bodysuits seemed to have been first introduced in the last menswear show, and also Laquan Smith’s hyper-sexy nearly naked versions, which I can only imagine will be big hits with some of today’s pop starlets (do it for Dua Lipa!!!).

Tutu Much

Tulle is one of my favorite fabrics to design with because of it’s great volume and movement as well as its transparency, so it was a treat to see so many designers playing with the mesh textile in their collections this season. There’s no doubt in my mind that Molly Goddard took home the prize for fluffiest tulle this year, with a number of her garments not only sparkling on the runway, but also on the red carpet at a number of this year’s award shows. The ballet-famous fabric was seen crossing the stage at Erdem’s dance inspired show, in the form of petticoats and skirts and tulle took a darker spin at Dior’s Romantic Versaille show. To take on the trend, I’d consider looking into layering transparent coats and tops with more vibrant pieces, or generally mixing softer tulle garments with harder leathers, or chunky knits. More broadly, expect tulle to be hitting shops soon, but be warned that it’s not the most washing-machine friendly textile!

Now in Technicolor

While fall shows tend to boast a glorious array of monochrome looks, I must say that even my dark heart took a shinning to the rainbow-colored palettes stomping down this season’s runways. I’ve always believed rainbows to be symbols of optimism after dark times, so I can’t help but feel like designers are expecting quite a fanfare when vaccine rollout wraps next fall. From technicolor sets at Chanel’s rock inspired show to Chopova Lowena’s mixed-textile take on the trend, the rainbow is certainly stretching around the world in eager anticipation for brighter days. To take on the trend, I recommend buying and layering vintage. Many designers mixed new and deadstock fabrics to create quite variegated collages of patterns, colors, and textures. In an industry that produces as much product as it does, it’s great to see some brands making the effort to celebrate re-using and recycling fabrics and styles.

Opulence!

What even are clothes anymore? Since we’ve been under lockdown, the lines of what we constitute as wearable may have gotten blurred. Within this season’s shows, many designers have taken to mixing prèt-à-porter with couture techniques to produce hybrids of opulence and everyday. Many big names in the trend are pre-established couture icons like Schiaparelli whose gold helmets, rings, and shoes give off intense Midas vibes with a dash of Alice in Wonderland. Others, like young New York brand Christian Cowan, play up the trend with a bit more humor, boasting coats and gloves made of recycled watches. Generally, it’s a tough trend to take on (especially on a student’s budget), but I’d suggest trying to mix dressier and casual pieces together. If WFH has taught us anything it’s that we can get away with dressing fancy on top and keeping our sweats on underneath.

Body Modifications

Some of my favorite trends are those that seem to make no sense whatsoever. We may laugh (or potentially shudder) at the body modification trend, but when it boils down to it, the trend essentially centers on the question of why we’ve adhered to arbitrary body ideals in the first place. From Raf Simon’s extendo-sleeves to Moschino’s human-animal hybrids to Junya Watanabe’s Batwing boilers, the body modification trend is all about expanding how we allow clothing to respond to our bodies. I’d say if you want to take on the trend, consider leaning into oversized garments or creatively refashioning how you wear clothes. Hang some sleeves past your arms, or wear a jacket upside down, throw on a coat three sizes too big, and maybe a pair of shorts that are shorter than you’re used to. The trend is all about offering up a novel relationship to your body through fashion. And besides, any excuse for casual Cyberpunk 2077 cosplay is worth it in my opinion!

So those are my thoughts on this season’s shows. Which trends were your favorite and which are you going to try for yourself?

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All images and gifs via Vogue Runway

Cabinet of Curiosities: Fashion Shows and the Silent Spectacle

Welcome to Cabinet of Curiosities, my new series on the blog that unpacks the distinctively Gothic imagery that permeated Avant-Garde Fashion shows at the turn of the new millennium! From sanitariums to sanctums, from highwaymen to vampires to ghosts, the worlds and figures of this fashion moment seem like something straight out of a novel, and yet through the space of the fashion show, the novel takes an entirely new form. This series aims to unpack this 21st century Gothic revival as a symptom of something larger beyond the stage of the catwalk, and more broadly, prod at why fashion, in particular, became a major vehicle of this revival. This is the Cabinet of Curiosities, a tour of our world told through the haunted remains of collected objects.

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Okay, welcome back; i know it’s been a while, but I promise I’m back on my odd blog-thesis hybrid project. I’m glad that at least I have the blog and our very special audience to validate my correlation between fashion and a novel kind of literature, but I do feel like for the less textually daring readers out there, I do need to defend my central argument a bit.

I might not be able to read too many texts at once, but I can definitely read all of these clothes! Labelling, popularized today by Off-White’s Virgil Abloh and Dolce and Gabbana back in the day, is one way in which fashion on the runway tries to make explicit the semiotic relationship between a garment and it’s function, connotation or intention.

This project centers on a very prominent question of narrative medium.  To see the speechless form of fashion shows as a kind of reinvention of literary tropes from 19th century novels challenges the convention that narrative is rooted in a system of written or oral language. That isn’t to say that fashion shows are entirely devoid of linguistic assistance, as many shows often offer their audiences some kind of written statement to contextualize the spectacle, but it is evident that the fashion show is largely presented visually and without the guiding presence of language that seems to epitomize narrative, and so fashion’s role as a storytelling object may seem dubious.

HOWEVER, despite fashion’s limited speech, show season is perpetually surrounded by a discourse of literary vocabulary, describing the distinct narratives, settings and characters of each show.  As an example, in describing her role in the Dior 1999 Haute Couture show, model Marisa Berenson exclaimed: “well I was the mother of the bride, and it was a rather unhappy family.  Very grand, very aristocratic, very embittered by life.”  More contemporarily, and bringing in yet another Drag Race reference, who could forget Kennedy Davenport’s crystallized “death-becomes-her” runway narrative???

This implication that mute garments somehow articulate some kind of persona may seem unusual, and yet, the notion that clothing communicates something worldly or expressive is evidently the foundation of much of fashion publishing from the past century and beyond.

An early theorist on fashion’s capacity to communicate ideas was semiologist Roland Barthes, who probed at fashion’s system of communication in many of his works. In an essay for the Revue Françise de Sociologie, titled ‘Blue is in Fashion this Year’, Barthes writes: “When I read in a fashion magazine that the accessory makes spring time, that this women’s suit has a young and slinky look, or that blue is in fashion this year, I cannot but see a semantic structure in these suggestions (...) I see imposed upon me a link of equivalence between a concept (spring, youth, fashion this year) and a form (the accessory, this suit, the colour blue), between a signified and a signifier”.  This semantic structure went on to be the focus of Barthes’ seminal work on the topic, The Fashion System, which tracks the written tendency to use fashionable clothing as objects onto which immaterial characteristics are imposed. Throughout The Fashion System, Barthes elucidates how clothing is rarely the speaker, or generator of meaning, but rather a mouthpiece through which fashion authorities (editors, designers, etc) articulate their particular ideals, often in an attempt to imbue these garments with special meaning to make them more desirable commodities.  And while he conducted this study in the mid 20th century, much of the same discourse purveys well into the 21st and onwards, though through a shift in the constitution of fashion authority.

The man, the myth, the legend himself, Roland Barthes and his ever-present cigarette.

The digital age brought about a novel system of writing about fashion beyond the scope of magazines (of which there were many).  From personal fashion blogs to YouTube channels dedicated to fashion analysis, to entire programs of study dedicated to the reading of fashion as texts, the discourse on fashionable garments expanded to no end, and yes that includes our favorite fashion blog, MODA Blog ;)

“The goal of the literary work (of literature as work) is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text”

Evidently, much of this writing still falls within Barthes’ initial system of fashion semiology, conflating garments to worldly signifieds beyond the realm of clothing.  Furthermore, this widespread fascination with interpreting fashion goes on to epitomize Barthes’ initial constitution of writerly texts, which he unpacks in his analysis of Balzac’s Sarrasine, titled S/Z. In S/Z Barthes posits that the value of a text comes from its plurality, such that  “the goal of the literary work (of literature as work) is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text”. He goes on to affirm that “To interpret a text is not to give it a [...] meaning, but on the contrary to appreciate what plural constitutes it”.  When applied to fashion, it is apparent that the wide system of interpretation suggests that fashion objects are constituted by a kind of plurality, but at the same time, these interpretations are the sum of individual and unique readings of these objects, and so in order for fashion to fall within Barthes’ definition, this system of fashion interpretation must be seen as not an imposition of meaning onto garments, but rather an acknowledgement that within a fashion object, there is a multitude of potential meanings, that the meanings imposed onto fashion are infinite and unfixed.  

In case you wondering how fashion continues to match clothes and anything but clothes. Highlights include “I found myself thinking about Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia, and what she might wear as a debutante, especially if she was going to Disneyland.”

To bring in the earlier discussion on narrative, an evolution on Barthes’ system is to complicate the semiotic system by directly conflating garments with narrative elements.  Rather than just drawing a line between a garment signifier (black dress) and an immaterial quality (flirtiness), several lines are drawn between the pieces of an ensemble to form one larger signified character or storyline.  We can understand Kennedy Davenport’s earlier interpretation of her garment as a case study for this, in which she conflates her show ensemble to a distinctive persona, milieu and history, embodied in the elements of the garment. Around the late 21st century, a handful of narrative-focused fashion designers such as Alexander McQueen and John Galliano would make use of this technique to describe their shows, and much of their brand identities became rooted in a hybrid of fashionable garments, spectacular presentation, and embedded narrative, which may have been brought to the audience through invitations, or press.

This series expands on this methodology to close-read a handful of fashion shows revealing lines between vestimentary elements and immaterial, narrative signifieds.  Specifically, I hope to bring the avant garde material garments of these fashion shows directly into conversation with immaterial concepts spawning from 19th century fiction and discourse.  This may involve drawing a line between certain fabrications, textiles or silhouettes and imagery, language or themes from 19th century novels, ultimately to unpack how these show elements mediate uncertainties around cultural shifts centering on the relationship between consumer and commodity.  These close-readings are informed and supported by discourse surrounding both the late 20th and early 21st century fashion scene, but also discourse around 19th century art and literature with the aim to illustrate how this thematic likeness between the discourse of these two eras reveals a succession between the two eras’ narrative media, and introducing fashion into the literary realm, and vice versa.

thanks to anyone who stuck around to this part, y’all are real ones.

featured image via

Dressing Room Dilemmas

For as long as I can remember, I have been captured by the sight of beautiful things, directly correlating to my daily wardrobe. This has led me to be pretty well-versed in the experience of ~the dressing room~ and the anxieties that it can entail. However, it never fully dawned on me how problematic a dressing room, or just the shopping experience as a whole, can be. That is until my roommates compared my room to a dressing room— a cave-like, beautiful wonder. This description was paired with how overwhelming it can be at times. Nevertheless, it made me really wonder why dressing rooms are the root of such an ostracizing experience.

Image Via

The shopping experience, itself, is highly designed to not only play into your visual and social perception of the world and specifically into your insecurities. From thin mannequins, to the body and race selective ads, to the store’s environment just being unfriendly (usually to dissuade certain types of customers), the act of shopping is harsh, confusing, and at times degrading to one’s well being. It brings a lot more to the table to worry about than just finding clothing that you personally enjoy.

This has led the shopping experience to be tumultuous, and it has made some people hate shopping or fashion in general. The jarring nature of staring at your body— especially with our current fixation on appearance greater than ever before due social media— can make anyone anxious, stressed, and overall uncomfortable just from entering the store, let alone the dressing room. It turns fashion, a form of art and expression, into a trigger or stressor. How is someone expected to see and appreciate the beauty of a garment when it is being forcibly entangled with our perception of self?

Entering a dressing room— I can’t help but feel pressure to make the clothes work for me as if returning to the salesperson is a sign of defeat, but it’s as I struggle to live up to this image I’ve doctored for myself that I start to hate the clothing, itself. However, entering it, I also feel an intense excitement at the possibility of a new addition to my wardrobe, but this excitement only exists because of my “love” of clothes and deep-rooted capitalism. I am not sure when exactly one of my favorite activities, shopping (or at least mainly online shopping), became riddled with pressures and stressors relating to my own insecurities. It only makes me wonder what pushes people, who don’t care about fashion, to even step into a clothing store.

Imagine Via

In recent years, I have started to hate the experience of shopping in person. There’s so much pressure to find clothes that are interesting, different, and look appealing on you. I remember there were times when I started working in a boutique during high school— the first two shifts, I would start stress sweating. There was always so much stress around the store, from how to act with the customers to just how to carry myself. The relationship between our clothes and bodies has seemed to have created this ever-present tension in the air.

People are so drastically affected by the size on the tag of their clothes. Something that is known to vary from company to company. These constant expectations about being a certain size and its intense link to our self-worth allows the idea of finding your style to be daunting and, at times, impossible. This overwhelming sense of trying to be perfect leads the whole shopping experience for customers and employees to be much more uninviting.

Through working in that boutique, I saw first-hand how employees can affect your shopping experience. It became apparent that the half-assed comments I dished out during my shift to customers of “wow that’s so your color”, “oh wow you look amazing!”, etc. made them feel more comfortable in the clothing pieces and shopping at the store. It just shows how brands and their brick and mortar stores can directly influence the entire act of shopping. Decor, ads, and even the employees they hire all equate to the stress that shopping is now associated with.

Image Via

In reality, there just seems to be unmeetable expectations at this point. The customers are so pressured to be perfect or to look just like the model on the ad through society’s expectations (mainly rooted in the rise of social media) that they get upset when any issues arises or when there isn’t a specific size. They hold on to the notion that the missing size would have been the perfect one. We give these fashion conglomerates too much credit for the most part, mainly in caring for their clientele. Most of these fast fashion cemeteries (i.e. F21 lol) or even “boutiques”— that put on the facade of being a better alternative or more original when they really just buy from wholesale— just want the profit at the end of the day. It is all about the money.

The way the majority of customers and brands think has been so skewed by the supposed expectations of society that the view of fashion and shopping has made the dressing room, and sometimes the shopping experience as a whole, a place once of beauty and art but now one riddled with self-judgement. The world we live in focuses too much on the appearance of things and making profit. It makes total sense, with the obsession with image, that dressing rooms, a place where we are forced to examine our bodies, have become associated with negative emotions and experiences.

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Cover Image Via

How Wearing a Uniform Impacted The Way I Dress

This would not have flown at my school. Image via

For most of my academic career prior to starting college, I had to wear a uniform for school. Not only did I have to wear a uniform, there was also a long list of boundaries that dictated the rest of our dress code, from our hair, to our nails, to what kind of accessories or jewelry we could wear. Now, I don’t consider myself anti-uniform, since I can see the benefits of wearing one so children aren’t taught to try and keep up with the Joneses at a young age with what they wear to school, but I’m certainly not pro-uniform, at least in the way my schools had approached them.

For me, their approach, as dramatic and angsty teenager as this may sound, aimed to strip away all individuality from its students and forced them to conform to a set ideal. Even though there were choices of a white shirt or a blue shirt, or pants or a skirt, you were still strictly relegated to a certain norm. Jewelry could not be any colors that were deemed “too distracting", whatever that was supposed to mean, hair could only be styled a certain way that was “natural” and also “not crazy”, once again, whatever that was supposed to mean, and nails from middle school below could not be painted of course, since that would be “too distracting”; the students eventually got to paint our nails but only if it was a plain French manicure, since that was not distracting or too creative, I guess.

I was a bit of a rebel, though in a quiet way. Of course I would wear nail polish, but only light sheer pinks and nudes so I wouldn’t get caught, but I’d know that I was breaking the rules that I found to be, quite frankly, ridiculous. I would see how “crazy” I could get away with doing my hair for school, especially when I was going through a Star Wars phase and did my hair like Padmé or Princess Leia every day, but once again, this was more of an act of quiet rebellion. I saw it as I had beat the system- I didn’t get caught and I had the satisfaction of bending the rules the way I wanted.

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So, as you can imagine, I had big plans of going ham when I finally didn’t have to wear a uniform for school anymore and could dress however I wanted. In high school, when I could finally wear nail polish, I always had my nails long, with bold colors and designs and different shapes, since I refused to be put back into that box of conformity again. When I got to college, I imagined myself wearing whatever I wanted, and I would feel great, and everyone else would be doing the same and it would just be some sort of nonconformist fashion utopia.

This was not really the case for me, however. I had gotten so used to just wearing what everyone else was wearing, never thinking about what I wanted to wear, and the looks you would get from everyone when you broke the dress code, that I found myself in a bit of a situation. I wore only muted colors, or neutrals, or black and gray, not wanting to draw too much attention to myself, and I tried to follow what other people were wearing - I would wear another kind of uniform , just self-imposed this time. I found myself torn between things I wanted to wear. One one hand, I saw cute dresses and matching skirt sets and bold coats, and on the other, I was looking at what I was already wearing, a plain sweater with jeans and sneakers and a plain jacket. That is not to say I didn’t like what I was wearing - anyone who knows me knows I still love wearing black and neutral colors - but it wasn’t really what I was dying to wear or I suppose the outfits I fantasized about wearing.

It wasn’t until recently that I started to fully settle into what I really wanted to wear; this is thanks to the people I’ve met who wear what they want and don’t care if they stand out, or if they aren’t wearing what the trends are. And you know what? Other people didn’t really care either; the looks these people would get weren’t those of “oh look at them, they broke the dress code”, but that of “wow those sparkly boots are super cool”. I still have days where I slip back into the comfort of what’s trendy and what everyone else is wearing, since I’m only human, but I’m no longer as afraid to branch out and wear those dresses that were just hanging in my closet, unworn. Who knows, maybe I’ll even bring back the Star Wars hair one day.

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