How do you feel?
Rain usually calls for neutrals. But just because the weather is dreary doesn’t mean you need to be. Summer tends to coincide with primary colors, with the occasional mango orange and sherbet pink being thrown into the mix. It’s no fashion faux pas if they aren’t adorned within your wardrobe.
It all starts with attitude, and emotion is an outfit that looks different on everyone.
The way we dress is an outward reflection of ourselves. Yes, That is a given. You do need to wear clothes to go out in public, legally speaking. But the choices you make in arranging these garments can lend a stranger a peek into your personality.
With trends changing every week out of the advertising cycle, it’s harder to develop this sense of personal style in accordance with one’s natural attitude. Personal expression is one of the few visual examples of conveying perspective from association.
So, how do you reflect on your own style?
You don’t need to take my advice
In fact, I encourage you not to.
Your own style stems from outside influence, whether you like it or not.
(Looking at you, gatekeepers. We all know those jeans are from Urban Outfitters.)
Accepting that in the modern age, the word influence coincides with the verb sell. It’s a larger feat to try to add a certain je ne sais quoi to your clothing.
Pins are one of my favorite vessels of expression. Going onto eBay and finding slogan buttons of the past with phrases like “I can give it, can you take it?” and “Let’s Get Ugly” (an 80s campaign to help fight Multiple Sclerosis, a good cause with a pretty catchy slogan). They are a sure shot way of putting out a message, without saying anything. Much like graphic tees, but more compact and customizable.
Are you the serious type? Is having a loose tie going to coincide with your rock-and-roll needs? How many done-up buttons are one too many? It’s all about how you wear the simple slacks and which pin you will choose to decorate them with. These little tweaks speak a whole lot more to the world than we think.
But really, who influences you? What influences you?
Don’t count yourself out.
Not looking the part is what is most interesting about clothing. Wall Street businessmen outcrying on the trading floor, Twiggy, Dylan goes electric, Transpotting (1994). The surface-level image of these unrelated things gave me the tools to build my own wardrobe. What you wear is an opener in a certain sense. An invitation for compliments and conversation. It’s a way to make friends.
Pop culture is unavoidable for many, especially if you own a screen.
Finding a certain corner of a niche to relate to starts to jut out in the physical form when you delve in deep enough. Now, not everyone is going to know you bought a slouchy leather jacket because Adam Yauch wore a similar one on American Bandstand forty-two years ago, but hey, you will. And all that everyone else sees is an invisible reference to style.
Recently, there has been this topic of the “cool girl”. The cool girl buys ____ from ____and doesn’t care but also does and if you want to be like her you should shop ____ etc etc.
The “cool girl” is marketing propaganda.
You can’t buy personality.
You can influence it, but the item is not for sale. As for “being cool”, it’s a couple of decades too late for that. Since when was it in poor taste to be excited? If you ask me where I buy my clothes, you are going 100% get hit with the pretentious answer of eBay, thrift stores, and being an accidental textile environmentalist.
(Joke. But not really, the amount of water waste it takes to make new clothing is insane. I hate buying new clothes for their prices/quality and want to live another forty years simultaneously.)
But, in the guidelines of this essay, what I’m trying to say can be boiled down to this: You wear the clothes, the clothes don’t wear you. Wearing a new outfit isn’t going to magically solve all of your problems, but it sure will give you the boost to get through them.
“But…I don’t have my own sense of style….”
Liar.
This is a phrase I’ve heard many a time before, usually in mall dressing rooms next to a pile of disregarded outfits that don’t feel right on the model.
Let’s think: What’s in trend at the moment?
Google it, and Amazon storefronts of jeans and leather Coach bags are the first thing to pop up. Correct me if I’m wrong, but denim is unavoidable from a fashion perspective. It’s neither dressed up nor dressed down, depending on what wash you have and what cut it is. As for Coach bags, those are parallel to white socks in vogue terms.
It seems as if “trends” are becoming bleaker or more predictable each year. No shame if you follow the standard T-shirt with a nice pair of New Balance’s, classic is classic. Shame if you are wearing it in an out-of-body way.
Angelica Nocera
Angelica Nocera is a double major in Communications and Italian studies at UMass Amherst. Over the weekend, we discussed her own personal style, as well as what she observes on campus
Q: Do you feel the need to dress a certain way because of your peers–or does outside influence not matter to you?
A: I feel a need to look good in professional settings or around professors more but not so much other undergrads, maybe this says something about my age. Also I have a low bar for looking good, as in jeans and a graphic tee leans unprofessional but that’s what I’m usually in. More interested in people my age liking my outfit than looking respectable and professional
Q: Going into college, do you let style keep you from certain groups, or at the end of the day, is it just clothes?
A: I usually don’t lean towards either extreme; people in sweats don’t come off as particularly interesting, but if they came up to me and were nice, I would still be really receptive to a friendship. It just doesn’t stand out to me.
On the other side, people who are always really overdressed in something trendy also don’t stand out to me. I assume we won’t click because I think they have the capacity to be really egotistical. Same point stands though if they came up to me and were kind, I’d still love to be friends
Overall, it’s just clothes, but they usually say something about a person.
Q: Does your schedule reflect your style? With a hectic class schedule, has your personal style become somewhat deconstructed?
A: With more time to get ready in the morning than I used to have, I am able to spend more time putting myself together and looking good, still nothing crazy like jeans and a nice shirt. I haven’t worn sweatpants to class but I definitely have going to breakfast or to the dining hall, if I’m only around people my age in a non-professional setting I’ll wear pajamas
Have no fear
Thinking back to middle school and the classic phone call to a friend asking the age-old question:
“If I wear a skirt tomorrow, will you wear one too?”
“If I do braids on Wednesday, would you do them with me?”
And any other consideration of not wanting to be alone in looks. Maybe I get a saturated version of this experience from wearing a uniform for twelve years, but the point still stands. Has it become so scary to stand out that blending in is the only choice? Even down to these already normal standards of aesthetics.
Go to any clothing store, and there is a plethora of pre-planned outfits for one to choose from. Parent companies such as URBN own hugely influential brands such as Urban Outfitters, Free People, Anthropology, and many more aesthetically driven stores. These offer ease for those who don’t want to worry about collecting matching pieces and accessories for their wardrobe. But the question of buying a new closet each season raises the question of sustainability. Is it worth it to keep up with trends if it means an ever-growing stockpile of past seasons’ garments in your closet? You could exit this article and be persuaded to shop sustainably from hundreds of other outlets by way of the harm it is doing to the environment, so let me try a different route….
You’re wasting your money!
We’re all guilty of it. Owning five pairs of the same black T-shirt, all of them slightly different from necklines to hems. But at the end of the day, it’s the same black T-shirt that we’ve wanted from that first purchase.
Meera Singh
Meera is a 23-year-old sales associate at Kinto in New York. Graduating from Emerson College with a degree in Business of Creative Enterprises, fashion has become a main component of her personality.
Q: What’s one item of clothing you refuse to wear?
A: There are so many things I refuse to wear because I am so picky about what I like to wear … mostly for sensory and comfort reasons. At this point, I refuse to wear a high-waisted skinny jean (ironically, those with a Brandy Melville tee were basically my uniform in 2015). I don’t do well with tight clothing– it makes me feel restricted, which then makes me uncomfortable.
Q: Is there a common trend in fashion where certain personalities tend to “look” the same? Or are you surprised by certain people’s demeanors in contrast with their clothing?
Absolutely. There was that Mina Le video where she said you can tell a person’s screen time by their outfit. Most of the time, it’s because of someone’s Pinterest or TikTok algorithm. I have met some extremely boring people with very interesting outfits, but there’s no thought or care behind the outfit besides buzzwords and looking cool for pictures. On the other hand, I have also met interesting people in interesting outfits, and interesting people who don’t care to dress a certain way.
Q: Could you feel one way and dress to change it, or is your natural emotion always shown through?
If I’m wearing an outfit that I don’t like and don’t have time to change before leaving the house, that discomfort will probably show through. However at this point I think I like pretty much everything in my wardrobe. I also don’t know if my natural emotion necessarily shows through my clothing… I usually wear dark colors, which I feel like are usually associated with sadness of some sort, but I consider myself a pretty happy person! So that being said, I do think it’s possible to change your emotion based on what you’re wearing, but it’s more about comfort level than color scheme and such.
Get out of your head
Standing out is scary
A cliche term, but cliché because it’s true.
My favorite outfits have simple silhouettes. Straight line pants with fitted button-up shirts. I don’t think I’ve worn sneakers by choice since grade school, with the footwear of office workers being more appealing to my eye.
My friends tend to do the opposite.
Baggy jeans and flannels, a Seattle grunge take on women’s wear. A different band shirt for every day of the week, the same pair of Nike Airs with every outfit. And after getting to know them, these decisions start to make sense. Everyone’s outward attitude (in certain ways) coincides with their personal style.
It’s fun to experiment. To wear all leather one day and cashmere the next. Finding an outfit that makes you confident in yourself has its charm. Feeling more comfortable in your skin.
The pressure of trends may be silly, but it affects many. Over Halloween, I would have friends wanting to find a costume with “A balance of niche enough to be interesting, but not so much popular in case it’s too basic.”
The word basic, I don’t know how it’s lost its meaning in recent years.
There is this fear of being too similar. On the other half of that argument is the fear of not being similar enough. With all the time it takes to go over these two outlooks, the meaning of individuality is lost.
Why waste your time with conformity if that is the one box you can’t let yourself out of?
Personal style gives back the control of attitude. Internal personaliies can bleed out of an individual through their clothing, it is up to them to decide how much they wanna show.
