The Evolution of Style
...or of my style, anyway. I was thinking about it earlier today -- fashion has been very formative for me, and man have things changed. This will be boring for many of you, but I have never really looked back on it before now..
Up until the age of about 13, I dressed like an East Coast suburban housewife. I blame my mother for this. When I grew out of Gap Kids, she took me shopping at Ann Taylor. I owned three twin sets by the age of twelve, and I wore pearls. A lot.
I transferred schools in grade 7. My previous school and my new one had uniforms, but the first day for new students was non-uniform to make us all feel welcome. I dressed up in my best style: a turquoise three-quarter-sleeve Gap sweater, charcoal grey slacks, and a black freshwater pearl necklace.* Everyone else looked was wearing t-shirts and jeans. My welcome-new-students buddy was a very slim and very pretty girl with platinum blonde hair wearing a red tee-shirt and the kind of fine-milled denim overalls that said "I'm ironic and stylish, not kiddie." I had acne and dressed like I was forty. This had to go.
Thank God for Care and Allison. After a few weeks at school people started asking me if I had a sister. It turned out this girl's name was Allison, she was a year ahead of me, and we didn't actually look much alike. This didn't stop me from latching on to her and her group of friends like a limpet. Allison was getting interested in Goth, and Care always had fashion sense -- delighted to break out of my cashmere prison, I followed suit. Ripped fishnets and huge chunky boots ensued. I was way too timid to dress like that on a regular basis, but we would all troop down Queen Street of a Saturday and poke around at Sirens, the local Goth boutique, and stop off at the Silver Cross where I got my first leather collar. We pored over all the catalogued-on-the-internet varieties of Goth, and I decided to be Glitter Goth. Clothes were suddenly awesome.
I started buying a lot of black. Obviously this was the natural choice for a wannabe Goth girl, but I also realised it was the colour I felt most comfortable in. Black is very sensible. Black goes with everything, and especially with more black. Pastel blue had fallen by the wayside.This was also the time I started seriously reading Vogue, and began dimly to realise that what was in stores wasn't the be-all and end-all of design. I picked up the Holt Renfrew catalogue one year, and squeaked -- their lingerie department stocked a beautiful black brocade bustier with lace edging. My mother, who was sporadically inclined to indulge my fancies, got it for me -- I was 13 (I still don't know what she was on that day, but thank God). I wore it with my mother's huge lace-and-tulle opera skirt to the Father Daughter dance. I was the best-dressed girl there, no competition.
Wistfully idolising the Goths also rekindled my long-standing interest in corsets, which I had always loved but which, I assumed, nobody made anymore. Boy was I wrong. Corsets were in in the early 2000s, and during one fruitful visit to Siren I found the name of the person who made the corsets they stocked. Her name is Andrea Johnson, and she is amazing. After much pleading and begging and saving up, my mother reluctantly agreed to go halfsies with me on a black satin 21-inch custom corset. I was 14.
Father-Daughter Dance became my annual opportunity to assert myself as the fashion queen of my high school. I went to five father-daughter dances, and I was the best-dressed there for three of them (I was a contender when I was 14, but definitely not in the top 3).** When I was 15, I showed up in a black mesh flapper dress I bought in Greece, black patent heels, pothole fishnets, and red opera gloves. When I was 16, in my last year, Mom and I found a beautiful leopard-print silk evening gown, cut quite simply in contrast with the print, at a second-hand store; I wore it with gold sequined high heels. After that, I transferred my annual contest to Mom's annual Christmas party.
My out-of-school uniform was pretty simple: lots of black, low-rise jeans (preferably in a greenish wash) and my three-inch chunky heel calf-high black leather boots, out of which I had yanked the black laces and replaced them with pink ribbon, worn everywhere, no matter what the season. Then, when I was 16 and in my final year of high school, I met the girls in the grade below me. They were awesome, they were adventurous, and they were ravers. They took me to my first party -- a Hullabaloo party, in Toronto -- and I was hooked. Oh my God. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. And there were these kandi kids, and they were wearing unabashedly cute clothes, and they looked like little kids and were totally happy about it. Although I'd worn perfect uniform for years, it was my last year of high school and I had gotten into Harvard and this all fell by the wayside. I clomped around school in my beloved boots and a baby blue knit hoodie with multicoloured sleeves and a purple heart on the front. I also wore my hair in pigtails and started taking energy pills a lot.***I was really happy all the time. I liked bright colours again (though not as much as I liked black). I discovered makeup, and started to get good at it. I didn't look good, but I definitely looked more interesting.
Nowadays I've still got a pretty unstable aesthetic, but it's settled down a bit. I like black and white and muted tones, and emerald green and pale pink. I like my clothes quite fitted. I wear sullen all-black outfits with harsh makeup, or else floofy skirts and cute little sweaters like a modern Stepford wife. I like huge ridiculous accessories, not wimply little pretty floral jewellery -- in fact, I'm not big on anything insipid. Basically I haven't figured out quite what works for me, but I've got a better idea -- one that will always, I think, involve a lot of black. I've gotten around to wearing pearls again, but I definitely prefer my pretty little silver scalpel pendant, which I never remove. I Know Fashion -- not just what I like but what designers are doing and who is doing interesting stuff. And I don't have any pale-yellow cashmere twinsets in my closet.
____
*At this age, I could discern on sight between freshwater, salt-water, real baroque, garden-variety fake, and Swarovski crystal pearls. My parents should have seen it coming.
**not by any formal ranking. by the number of admiring comments I got, and minute observation of everyone else's outfits. I'm very competitive, even when there's no actual competition.
***from the drugstore. The herbal kind you get in the vitamins section. Not drugs. calm down.
Up until the age of about 13, I dressed like an East Coast suburban housewife. I blame my mother for this. When I grew out of Gap Kids, she took me shopping at Ann Taylor. I owned three twin sets by the age of twelve, and I wore pearls. A lot.
I transferred schools in grade 7. My previous school and my new one had uniforms, but the first day for new students was non-uniform to make us all feel welcome. I dressed up in my best style: a turquoise three-quarter-sleeve Gap sweater, charcoal grey slacks, and a black freshwater pearl necklace.* Everyone else looked was wearing t-shirts and jeans. My welcome-new-students buddy was a very slim and very pretty girl with platinum blonde hair wearing a red tee-shirt and the kind of fine-milled denim overalls that said "I'm ironic and stylish, not kiddie." I had acne and dressed like I was forty. This had to go.
Thank God for Care and Allison. After a few weeks at school people started asking me if I had a sister. It turned out this girl's name was Allison, she was a year ahead of me, and we didn't actually look much alike. This didn't stop me from latching on to her and her group of friends like a limpet. Allison was getting interested in Goth, and Care always had fashion sense -- delighted to break out of my cashmere prison, I followed suit. Ripped fishnets and huge chunky boots ensued. I was way too timid to dress like that on a regular basis, but we would all troop down Queen Street of a Saturday and poke around at Sirens, the local Goth boutique, and stop off at the Silver Cross where I got my first leather collar. We pored over all the catalogued-on-the-internet varieties of Goth, and I decided to be Glitter Goth. Clothes were suddenly awesome.
I started buying a lot of black. Obviously this was the natural choice for a wannabe Goth girl, but I also realised it was the colour I felt most comfortable in. Black is very sensible. Black goes with everything, and especially with more black. Pastel blue had fallen by the wayside.This was also the time I started seriously reading Vogue, and began dimly to realise that what was in stores wasn't the be-all and end-all of design. I picked up the Holt Renfrew catalogue one year, and squeaked -- their lingerie department stocked a beautiful black brocade bustier with lace edging. My mother, who was sporadically inclined to indulge my fancies, got it for me -- I was 13 (I still don't know what she was on that day, but thank God). I wore it with my mother's huge lace-and-tulle opera skirt to the Father Daughter dance. I was the best-dressed girl there, no competition.
Wistfully idolising the Goths also rekindled my long-standing interest in corsets, which I had always loved but which, I assumed, nobody made anymore. Boy was I wrong. Corsets were in in the early 2000s, and during one fruitful visit to Siren I found the name of the person who made the corsets they stocked. Her name is Andrea Johnson, and she is amazing. After much pleading and begging and saving up, my mother reluctantly agreed to go halfsies with me on a black satin 21-inch custom corset. I was 14.
Father-Daughter Dance became my annual opportunity to assert myself as the fashion queen of my high school. I went to five father-daughter dances, and I was the best-dressed there for three of them (I was a contender when I was 14, but definitely not in the top 3).** When I was 15, I showed up in a black mesh flapper dress I bought in Greece, black patent heels, pothole fishnets, and red opera gloves. When I was 16, in my last year, Mom and I found a beautiful leopard-print silk evening gown, cut quite simply in contrast with the print, at a second-hand store; I wore it with gold sequined high heels. After that, I transferred my annual contest to Mom's annual Christmas party.
My out-of-school uniform was pretty simple: lots of black, low-rise jeans (preferably in a greenish wash) and my three-inch chunky heel calf-high black leather boots, out of which I had yanked the black laces and replaced them with pink ribbon, worn everywhere, no matter what the season. Then, when I was 16 and in my final year of high school, I met the girls in the grade below me. They were awesome, they were adventurous, and they were ravers. They took me to my first party -- a Hullabaloo party, in Toronto -- and I was hooked. Oh my God. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. And there were these kandi kids, and they were wearing unabashedly cute clothes, and they looked like little kids and were totally happy about it. Although I'd worn perfect uniform for years, it was my last year of high school and I had gotten into Harvard and this all fell by the wayside. I clomped around school in my beloved boots and a baby blue knit hoodie with multicoloured sleeves and a purple heart on the front. I also wore my hair in pigtails and started taking energy pills a lot.***I was really happy all the time. I liked bright colours again (though not as much as I liked black). I discovered makeup, and started to get good at it. I didn't look good, but I definitely looked more interesting.
Nowadays I've still got a pretty unstable aesthetic, but it's settled down a bit. I like black and white and muted tones, and emerald green and pale pink. I like my clothes quite fitted. I wear sullen all-black outfits with harsh makeup, or else floofy skirts and cute little sweaters like a modern Stepford wife. I like huge ridiculous accessories, not wimply little pretty floral jewellery -- in fact, I'm not big on anything insipid. Basically I haven't figured out quite what works for me, but I've got a better idea -- one that will always, I think, involve a lot of black. I've gotten around to wearing pearls again, but I definitely prefer my pretty little silver scalpel pendant, which I never remove. I Know Fashion -- not just what I like but what designers are doing and who is doing interesting stuff. And I don't have any pale-yellow cashmere twinsets in my closet.
____
*At this age, I could discern on sight between freshwater, salt-water, real baroque, garden-variety fake, and Swarovski crystal pearls. My parents should have seen it coming.
**not by any formal ranking. by the number of admiring comments I got, and minute observation of everyone else's outfits. I'm very competitive, even when there's no actual competition.
***from the drugstore. The herbal kind you get in the vitamins section. Not drugs. calm down.