If my dad asks me why I’m wearing all black one more time I’m gonna loose it: My personal style

I am a very recognizable person. I can’t get away with anything. I can’t run away and blend in a crowd. There are no other green haired black enbies dressed in all black on my campus. I attract a lot of attention; usually positive as the negative ones don’t like or care enough to say it to me. My current sense of style, and by extension my design style and professional aesthetic, comes from a lot of places. A totality of all my life experiences. It’s a set of scenarios so boring in its basicness among my “like minded peers”, but very odd in comparison to my classmates.

As mentioned briefly in a previous post, my mom loves clothes. A lot. Like a lot, a lot. Like I wouldn’t have as much student debt if my mom didn’t shop so much a lot. So of course, once she had a baby to dress up it was to the races.

She dressed me in all the nicest clothes. And of course, I hated it because I was 6, but over time it continued. I hated the clothes she picked for me. I never got to choose not really; I never got to pick what made me feel good. Of course, that’s what you have to do with kids to a certain point, but for me that lasted a bit longer than my friends. What my mom thought was my aesthetic was so off base it was laughable. So, in classic teenage fashion, I moped and got angry over how much she “just doesn’t understand.”

I was born in 2000. Which is to say while I was not an iPad baby, I did have the internet from a very young age.  And what do you find when you are a kid on the internet in the 00s, besides fail compilations and some questionable deviant art pieces? Subcultures. All over the place. The internet was where they went to thrive. There were emos, there were scene queens, there were trad goth, mall goths, and pastel goths all hanging out. I was amazed. Nothing they wore was anything like what I could even find in a store LET ALONE what my mom bought for me. It was so different than anything I had seen before, and everyone looked so confident an happy in their clothes. They were standing out like a sore thumb, but they went out there anyway. I didn’t know you could feel that confident in what you were wearing. I want to give you some deep meaningful reason I aesthetically liked it, and if I sat here long enough I probably could, but I don’t think I have one. I thought it looked cool, and I feel like that should be enough.

And as we all know, when you get into substyles you will inevitably hit the holy grail: Japanese Substyles. Nobody does alt. fashion like Japan, let me tell you. I got super into Lolita fashion(No, it has nothing to do with the book it’s a coincidence, it just wearing you fancy dresses and being cute), which lead me into the Visual Kei scene, which led me back around to Decora Kei, then Menhera, then Mori Kei, and I looked into Gyaru for a little while and I know for a fact you probably have no clue what I’m talking about. Which is fine, I don’t mind. There is no need to be embarrassed. In the circles I’m in, I forget that this stuff isn’t basic information to people.

The main point is that I had started looking at some really weird styles. Like wearing every color of the rainbow with at least 50 hairclips in you bangs weird. Unironic clown makeup weird. Dressing like little Victorian boy weird. And I loved all of it. There were so many ways you could do any one of these styles, no matter what it would be unique. Most importantly, everyone just looked so happy. I wanted that.

Of course, my mom was not chomping at the bit to by me my first Lolita dress, so I couldn’t do much. I did what we all did: I weaseled my way into Hot Topic and grabbed what I could. A plaid button up here, and supernatural tshirt there, anime themed skirt here, and a pair of black kneehighs there. I started wearing what I could convince my mom to get me, and I slowly slipping it into my style.

I was making it work as best I could until something amazing happened: My dad got old.

Which is to say that because my dad was as old as he is, and I was under eighteen I got some of his social security money every month to live off of. Which is to say for the first time in my life, I had my own money. I could just buy what I wanted myself, no mom required. However, the thing stopping me was, I was still self-conscious. I was not as brave as some of the alt kids in high school now are, I was not coming to school in Demonia boots trust me. I didn’t want to look too weird; I didn’t want people to make comments.  So, things stayed the way they were. Black jeans, black jacket, maybe a band tshirt and a flannel. I looked alt., but I still looked relatively normal.

And then, I dyed my hair. It was the first big step towards looking… odd. Once I reached the point of “Well there is no way I’m ever going to not look weird, I have green hair for crying out loud” it was a lot easier do more as I went to college.

Turns out when you don’t have you parents in the house to ask you “Are you really wearing all black again?” you get more confident about it. I went crazy with it big wide brim hates, dramatic spiky make up looks, chains everywhere, and ALL BLACK. I felt so confident once I started. People weren’t laughing at my like I feared they would. They were yelling across the street to complement me. They thought I looked cool, and most importantly I did too. My weird clothes, my floor length skirts, my coresets, chockers, and platform shoes. My fishnets and eyeliner spikes all became my armor. I felt strong, and confident. Dressing like a Victorian vampire on their way to a rave helped me not care what other people thought of me. Looking like Polly Pocket’s goth cousin make me less scared of being perceived by the outside world. It gives me a sense of control. I get to say what I look like. I get to express how I want to be viewed and you ARE going to look at me.

I think that’s what draws a lot of people in, the expression and control. You do really feel how you look sometimes. I can’t control a lot of things in my life. Hell, I can’t even fully control my own mind if we’re being honest, but I can control what I look like, how you see me, and what that tells you. My body is a temple and I can’t adorn it in whatever I want. I’m not scared if people think I look weird, I know I look weird, I’m wearing clown spikes on my eyes trust me I noticed. I’m in control, I set the rules, and I look great doing it.

I worked at Journeyz Kidz over the summer. It was full of sales goals and things I didn’t care about, but there was one thing that would bring me so much joy. Some 10-14 year old would walk into the store, they would have the classic beanie and plaid shirt, they would tell me they were looking for a pair of checkered Vans. I would smile because they reminded me of myself when I was 13, I would ask them “You want checkered Vans? The definitive emo shoes? Those checkered vans?” They would smile and say “Yes!” and it would make my day. It filled me with such joy because I knew I was giving this kid one of the first pieces to having fun and loving themselves.

That’s why I always make these edgy over the top designs and collections. I want to make clothes that make other people feel as good as my clothes make me feel. I want to give people that kind of confidence that dressing like a rejected Rock Band character has given me. Let them express themselves and shape their own identity. I want to give people the power to make themselves, no matter how weird that ends up being.