I Stole Your Boyfriend's Shirt (and it looks better on me)
365 Gay Sharks
Day 261, Word Count: 834
Theme: September; Camp
This post is part of the 365 Gay Sharks project. If you would like to learn more about this project, click here to read more about it. :D
I own a lot of men's dress shirts, largely because I think they're comfortable and because they're easier formalwear than dresses. I like dresses too, don't get me wrong, but it's harder to make a dress fit me versus a dress shirt. I am pecuilar in that my legs are disproportionately long, making my torso very short, and while I have have boobs, I have nothing to balance it out. Here's a picture of me from 2008 to illustrate my point:
I'm wearing my binder* in that picture, because it was taken at a speech and debate tournament wherein I was a kick-ass, tomboy-ish Juliet and my best friend was a simpering, kind wimpy Romeo. Like so:
Anyway, enough nostalgia. My point is really that I'm prone to going into our local thrift store when they have their annual "all the clothes you can shove into a brown paper bag for 3$" sale and buying their entire rack of dress shirts. And then, because it's a thrift store and these shirts rage from L to XXL, I turn those shirts into other things. I was going to make another thing too but, uh.
I am lazy and I couldn't figure out how to do what I wanted (I was going to make a clutch out of the cuffs of the blue one only I haven't figured out how) so you get these two unironed dress/tunic things.
The first one is this really odd pink/white shirt from Banana Republic. In essence, being a inherently lazy person (I swear I'm really lazy despite what my artistic output sometimes implies), I just chopped the sleeves off and took in the sides before belting it with this strip of white Jersey I'm pretty sure I stole from a friend in middle school. It's tied in a bow in the back but I didn't think to take a picture of it because I kind of tied it like that automatically.
The second one really needs to be ironed, because it's been living under my half-finished t-shirt quilt. Excuse that, it's really quite lovely when it's been ironed. Anyway it's a blue/cream/white Sean John shirt that got much the same treatment.
Except, because I'm probably about the most ill-advised and "cut it once, fix it later" person, I made a slight mistake and instead of taking it in fron the sides like you're supposed to do if something doesn't stretch, I chopped off the sides. So this happened:
Wow. It really, really needs to be ironed. I promise it looks loads better when it is.
Anyway, I'm not really doing anything new here, because women have been imitating men's clothing for a very, very long time. Shirtwaists date back to the early 19th century straight through to around 1920. There's a really long history of women picking up bits of the other gender (or perhaps manipulating it for a purpose?) and I'm no fashion expert but I like making myself little projects like this and knowing I'm stepping into a very long line of history.
The idea of playing with gender - or even the way I generally wear these kind of tunics with brightly colored leggings and lots of jewelry - is really interesting. I don't always wear them because I want to be masculine, although I like the echoes of what they used to be, but sometimes just because they fit into my style and it isn't a statement. At least not overtly. There are subtle statements in the way I wear them, usually, but sometimes it doesn't matter to me what my dress used to be, because it's a dress now and it's going to stay that way.
* I get asked a lot why I own a binder in real life (being a . . . primarily cisgendered girl) and the answer is that when when I used to play koto formally I would be done up in a kimono. Kimono are really not meant for having large chests they used to pad my stomach out with shirts only it made me over heated so my mom bought me a binder instead. You might not have wanted to know, but if you did here's the answer.
This entry originally posted here. Original entry currently has
comments. :D
Day 261, Word Count: 834
Theme: September; Camp
This post is part of the 365 Gay Sharks project. If you would like to learn more about this project, click here to read more about it. :D
I own a lot of men's dress shirts, largely because I think they're comfortable and because they're easier formalwear than dresses. I like dresses too, don't get me wrong, but it's harder to make a dress fit me versus a dress shirt. I am pecuilar in that my legs are disproportionately long, making my torso very short, and while I have have boobs, I have nothing to balance it out. Here's a picture of me from 2008 to illustrate my point:
I'm wearing my binder* in that picture, because it was taken at a speech and debate tournament wherein I was a kick-ass, tomboy-ish Juliet and my best friend was a simpering, kind wimpy Romeo. Like so:
Anyway, enough nostalgia. My point is really that I'm prone to going into our local thrift store when they have their annual "all the clothes you can shove into a brown paper bag for 3$" sale and buying their entire rack of dress shirts. And then, because it's a thrift store and these shirts rage from L to XXL, I turn those shirts into other things. I was going to make another thing too but, uh.
I am lazy and I couldn't figure out how to do what I wanted (I was going to make a clutch out of the cuffs of the blue one only I haven't figured out how) so you get these two unironed dress/tunic things.
The first one is this really odd pink/white shirt from Banana Republic. In essence, being a inherently lazy person (I swear I'm really lazy despite what my artistic output sometimes implies), I just chopped the sleeves off and took in the sides before belting it with this strip of white Jersey I'm pretty sure I stole from a friend in middle school. It's tied in a bow in the back but I didn't think to take a picture of it because I kind of tied it like that automatically.
The second one really needs to be ironed, because it's been living under my half-finished t-shirt quilt. Excuse that, it's really quite lovely when it's been ironed. Anyway it's a blue/cream/white Sean John shirt that got much the same treatment.
Except, because I'm probably about the most ill-advised and "cut it once, fix it later" person, I made a slight mistake and instead of taking it in fron the sides like you're supposed to do if something doesn't stretch, I chopped off the sides. So this happened:
Wow. It really, really needs to be ironed. I promise it looks loads better when it is.
Anyway, I'm not really doing anything new here, because women have been imitating men's clothing for a very, very long time. Shirtwaists date back to the early 19th century straight through to around 1920. There's a really long history of women picking up bits of the other gender (or perhaps manipulating it for a purpose?) and I'm no fashion expert but I like making myself little projects like this and knowing I'm stepping into a very long line of history.
The idea of playing with gender - or even the way I generally wear these kind of tunics with brightly colored leggings and lots of jewelry - is really interesting. I don't always wear them because I want to be masculine, although I like the echoes of what they used to be, but sometimes just because they fit into my style and it isn't a statement. At least not overtly. There are subtle statements in the way I wear them, usually, but sometimes it doesn't matter to me what my dress used to be, because it's a dress now and it's going to stay that way.
* I get asked a lot why I own a binder in real life (being a . . . primarily cisgendered girl) and the answer is that when when I used to play koto formally I would be done up in a kimono. Kimono are really not meant for having large chests they used to pad my stomach out with shirts only it made me over heated so my mom bought me a binder instead. You might not have wanted to know, but if you did here's the answer.
This entry originally posted here. Original entry currently has
comments. :D