Strike a pose. It’s fashion, it’s home decor, it’s weddings: the glamorous and the not-so-much. Our authors dig deeper than just their clothes to find out what drives their various sensibilities.

Strike a pose. It’s fashion, it’s home decor, it’s weddings: the glamorous and the not-so-much.

Style Narratives From Anonymous Authors

Strike a pose. It’s fashion, it’s home decor, it’s weddings: the glamorous and the not-so-much. 

Style

I think what attracted me to doing hair was vanity and glamour. 

Being a young queer kid in Texas, style and fashion and hair were just something that I was drawn to—doing my own hair and my friends’ hair and obsessing over my sister, who is obsessed with her beauty and her glamour. My mom was the same way. In high school, I was weird, I was the freak, so I just always did my own hair and had every color, every cut you could think of. I was supposed to go into journalism or graphic design, but once I accepted that I was queer—and being the queer son that's also a hairstylist—then I was like, “Okay, I'm gonna do this.” And I didn’t feel pressure doing hair. So I knew right out of high school that it was what I wanted to do. 

I'm 26 years old, and I've been doing hair since I moved to New York when I was 19. My style and philosophy are all about what's realistic. People come to me for haircuts that are very wearable, that they don't have to think about too much. New Yorkers don’t want to do their hair every day. They want to shake it and go, and they want to not worry about it. Maybe a little product. I've built a clientele that doesn't care about a blowout or about their hair being perfect or overly stylized. I've curated a style that is very wearable and realistic. It's beachy texture, it's embracing the curls, it's not convincing the hair to do something that it can't do if I'm not there. It's just using what it is and making that work.

I'm definitely an extrovert, so I think my clients truly enjoy getting their hair cut by me because I love to listen. I also love to interact and give my drama back as well. I feel like it's mostly like a hangout session when we're together. I genuinely enjoy seeing these people over and over again. They become my friends. And being a New Yorker, I see them wherever I go, whether it’s at 4 p.m. or 4 a.m.

I take private clients in my studio three to four days a week, which gives me lots of joy. I also work in fashion, and my studio clients give me the stability to enjoy it as a hobby or a passion. I can create work with my friends and just kind of pick and choose who I want to work with. I'm not selling out to fashion or selling my soul to it. 

When I was in beauty school, this man came to teach at this random salon in Austin, and I showed up to his class uninvited. I thought he was really fab, and then at the end, he was like, “You seem really cool. What are you doing here?” And then he basically offered me a job in New York. He did education, so I learned a lot of my foundation through a curriculum that I had to help him teach.

Working in fashion can be so inspiring and fulfilling and exciting. It can also be very defeating. There's no manual, nothing's promised, and when you start, you don't really know how to go about it. There are some people who can do it safely as a passion because they come from money and they have something to fall back on. For people that don't have that, fashion’s a more long, winding road. You truly have to love it to keep going. 

If a friend is working on something and think the job is right for me, they’ll loop me in and send me an email. That’s how I find a lot of my work. Or else people see my Instagram and send me an email or DM. The first step of the process is seeing if there's a budget or rate for what you do, which oftentimes there isn't. 

You kind of have to pick and choose what jobs you say yes to. If it's with my friends and if it's a low budget, then I'll be okay with that because I know it’ll be a great shoot, and I'll probably make great work that I'll be proud of. But if it's a low budget with a team I'm not too inspired by or someone I don't really vibe with as far as their aesthetics or vision, then often I'll pass it up. I’ll ask for the hair brief to see if I’m even capable of doing the hair, and if I am, then I will confirm the shoot. If I confirm it, then I have to go and figure out, do I need a wig? Do I need five? Do I need extensions? On-set is usually early call times and very, very long hours. On-set days, I usually just accept that I could be there forever and just wait it out. But most of the time, it goes by fast because I'm usually having fun. 

I’ve worked with a lot of famous people, usually as an assistant to a lead hairstylist. I’ve always felt like it put me in a weird place with celebrities. Because if you're not the main hairstylist, it often feels like you shouldn't talk or have a personality. Or sometimes it feels like you're the help, to be honest. And then there are celebrities who actually see you and are kind. And then there are celebrities who act like they see you the whole time, and then the moment you're in their shot, they'll perk up and be rude. 

I was just working with this British pop star for a long time and she was always very chill and nice to me. Then one day she was getting her makeup done by a famous makeup artist who wanted to take her photo, and the moment they tried to take it, she swatted my hand away and asked me quite rudely to move. It kind of gave me the feeling of being the help. After that, I just didn't give a fuck about her or about doing my best job, to be honest. 

One of my favorite celebrity stories was washing Yoko Ono’s hair in her bathtub, which was really crazy. She was extremely, extremely sweet. Because she's quite old too, she doesn't like to go out to get her hair done. Her assistants were just like, “We have this chair in the bathroom that she leans back in and you're just gonna have to roll your pants up and wash her hair.” And I was like, “Okay.” So I'm literally just massaging Yoko Ono's head in her bathtub with my pants rolled up. And she was probably the nicest person I've ever worked for. She was very grateful, and she tipped me like $500, which was amazing.

Like I said before, there's no way to learn how to do fashion besides just jumping in and seeing how it works. I think it takes many, many years to realize how fashion works and how to go about it. I was still a teenager when I got into it, clearly very naive, and I would do anything for a paycheck, which is as bad as it sounds. I was dealing with lots of horrible men—straight or gay cis white men—and I think it did a lot of damage to me at the beginning when I was learning. I was putting my happiness in jeopardy and even safety sometimes. 

Fashion is changing for the better now. Even just five years ago, there was no accountability the way that there is now. I had to experience things that probably shouldn't have happened: being treated poorly as an assistant, being preyed upon, being manipulated by people who were more successful than me. Along the way, I've had pretty bad experiences with working for people and trying to create space for myself. But now, I'm building my own world. I don't expect much from anyone anymore. I'm making fashion make more sense for me, rather than trying to fit myself into it.

A lot of my friends are models, photographers, stylists and makeup artists, and right now what keeps me going is being able to grow with them, to see all of us become successful together and create work together that is seamless and beautiful. Seeing your friends become successful along your side is so inspiring. Creating something from nothing and seeing it get bigger and bigger and bigger feels like enough reason to be doing that kind of work. For me, fashion is about building my community versus trying to change the industry. It starts with us just doing things the way we want to do and treating each other and our systems the way they should be and trusting that the energy is contagious.

Being a Fashion Hairstylist Isn’t All Glamorous

Sometime in the last decade, my jeans stopped fitting. In theory, I should just be able to buy a bigger pair to reflect my expanding borders and general middle-age drift. But the problem has proved, like my body, to be less defined—and more shapeless—than I had hoped. I cinch my belt, and I feel the flatulent “oof” of mortality and failure as my pants sag perpetually, and somewhat mysteriously, kneeward.

“Wait a minute,” close readers familiar with pants are no doubt saying. “You are fatter, and yet your jeans are falling down? What?”

I, too, ask “what?” in that tone, many times a day, as I stand up and my jeans don’t follow along in the accustomed fashion. My understanding of physics and basic pants-ness is this: When you get fatter, your jeans get tighter. At some point, you reach an uncomfortable juncture where you can’t button the jeans. You are then faced with a moral choice. Do you buy bigger jeans? Or do you continue to wear the much too tight jeans for some months in the sad, vain hope that the restriction of blood to your lower half will inspire you to eat less, exercise more and lose weight? 

And yet, as if I am living in some unusually boring Kafkaesque nightmare, my jeans don’t work like that. I am, according to the scale and various unforgiving mirrors, more than I once was. But my pants have not become tighter. Instead, they keep falling down. Tightening the belt is ineffectual. When I walk the dog, traipse down supermarket aisles or just stand up in COVID isolation to grab a snack, the jeans slide down. I am constantly hitching them up.

I consulted with my wife, who is better at clothes than me. She suggested the problem was that as my belly had gotten bigger, I had started cinching my jeans lower. Bigger pants buckled higher was her prescription. So we got bigger pants, and I buckled them higher. This made me feel old, awkward, disproportionate and fat. My lower half appeared to be in the grip of some sort of pants python intent on swallowing my torso. A small price to pay for pants that didn’t fall down. 

But, unfortunately, the pants gods rejected my bargain of increased body negativity for increased butt security. The pants did not cease to scroll down. Instead, they scrolled down with even more determination. The threat of catastrophic drafts and perhaps illegal public disrobing loomed. “Look at this!” I said to my long-suffering wife, demonstrating the strategic and moral problem. She recoiled in horror and a certain amount of giggles. Also in perplexity. Obviously, bigger jeans were not the answer. So back to the old, slightly less ill-fitting jeans I went.

I more or less expected getting older to be an exercise in humiliating corporeal failures, and I haven’t been disappointed. Once I was thin and fit and could clean dog poop out of the backyard without straining my back. I could look at reflective surfaces without existential despair. 

The strain and the despair are unpleasant, no doubt, but on the other increasingly withered hand, I still have a full head of hair at 50, and I’m not going gray. Time is cruel, but it could be crueler. I didn’t expect these jeans to fit forever. I have seen old people and can extrapolate; I always knew my body would betray me at some point. 

I did hope, though, that as I got fatter, I would also get wiser. Vaguely, I dreamed that there would come a day when I would understand my own clothes.

I was an extremely unstylish child. This was certainly my parents’ fault to some degree; these days they mostly wear T-shirts with college logos and fanny packs, and incriminating photos from past decades confirm that this is consistent with their history of sartorial apocalypse. 

Pictures of me from the same era feature a lot of unwieldy collars and enormous glasses. I remember one pair in particular that I wore for a week or so before some not especially benevolent peers pointed out that they had little Superman icons on the corner screws. “So are you Clark Kent?!” the wits exclaimed. I might as well have worn Underoos to school.

I knew dimly that my clothes made me look like a fool and a target, and I tried as best I could, like the first primordial lungfish, to thrash and gasp myself into a better, less drab existence. In college, my roommate had a black biker jacket, which I thought was cool. So I bought one myself. Often, we would hang out together in matching outfits, like sad tourists who had wandered into the wrong gay bar. It will give you a sense of how good of a friend, and how lovely of a person, this was when I tell you that it was only years later that he mildly suggested that copying his outerwear was not the best choice I had ever made for either of us.

Eventually, I met my wife, and she started buying my clothes, and that was certainly a lot better for everyone. But you can’t exactly say that you’ve found a style of your own when your wife is buying your clothes. I don’t necessarily look (too) terrible, but I also still don’t know what I’m doing. Younger me thought at some point I might learn a foreign language, learn to read music and learn to dress myself. These did not seem like immoderate ambitions. But the years pass, and we all learn that there is no dream too small to end in failure.

We have since discovered that slacks and other pants that are not blue jeans don’t slide from my hips in quite so prompt and terrifying a manner. There is still some hitching, but not as much. I prefer jeans, but as we’ve established, my clothing preferences aren’t to be trusted, and anyway, the jeans don’t prefer me. 

If there are clothes that do, it seems clear at this point that I will never find them. I dreamed of better things than Superman glasses and ended up in a motorcycle jacket. It’s time to admit that I’m going to die in the wrong pants. It’s not great. But there’s some freedom in accepting you’ll never fit, like those jeans—so long constricted, yearning to let it all hang out.

I Have Been Defeated by My Pants

A line of models snakes backstage out onto the stairwell. Nobody talks. We stand rigidly, listening to bland Euro-electronic music thump, waiting for the queue to move. The director sports an extensive electronic headset. They mouth “go”—the show begins.

Model after model saunters off, like products down a factory assembly line, until it's your turn. Darkness gives way to blinding light as you step onto the runway. Your pace is hurried, a firm posture and relaxed shoulders contrasted by spacey, tired eyes with a detached look teething with understated hostility. You strut to the camera at the end of the runway, pose, turn around and walk back from whence you came. Just as you took the space of another model, you are swiftly replaced in a constant feedback loop. So on and so forth. 

I’ve taken on the view that walking the runway has its own metaphorical dimension, structurally mirroring the alienation, disembodiment and velocity of life under modern capitalism. On the runway, you are a willing participant while also utterly disposable. While you may move your body across the runway through your own agency, you are governed by a flow of movement outside your own control, directing you towards a trajectory not your own. 

There’s a nihilism to the model walk, to the facial affectation of depressed ennui tirelessly beating forward, dragged along like a link in a chain. I don’t think the resemblance between the runway strut and the stress-filled walk to work are coincidental.

In 2017, I was discovered by a model scout on Tinder. Coming from a working-class family, I was tantalized by the mere possibility of entering a world several social strata above me. It was like hearing beautiful music muffled through a door that was closed to me. Suddenly, a pair of keys was dangling in front of my eyes. I am one of six children. We grew up raised by a single mother in a two-bedroom house. Walking a runway seemed ludicrous when your day-to-day problems were about rationing food stamps to last the month. There are two periods of my young adulthood separated by a chasm—one side is a vast, ambiguous swirl of scarcity; the other is where terms like “Fashion Week” hold actual weight. I had never experienced shame toward my upbringing until I made that step to the other side. 

Glamour is the currency, both ephemeral and material, that validates the existence of high fashion. Subsisting by its own internal logic, glamour is abstracted and made unattainable, while contradictorily attached to a price tag. According to Ashley Mears, professor of sociology at Boston University, “This is precisely how glamour works: through disguise. Glamour, after all, has its roots in medieval Celtic alchemy. Glamer is a spell, a magic charm, that is cast to blur the eyes and make objects appear different from, and usually better than, their true nature.” 

High fashion exists within the continuum of modern capitalism, so the coercive nature of glamour has direct, material consequences. This relationship is exemplified in the now-infamous cerulean top scene in The Devil Wears Prada. The protagonist—a misfit hired as an assistant to the Anna Wintour-esque editor-in-chief of a prestigious fashion magazine—watches her boss painstakingly choose between two near-identical belts. Scoffing at their similarity, the protagonist assumes the popular belief that the logic and decisions of high fashion are incidental, obscure and irrelevant to those outside its aristocracy. The editor proceeds to ruthlessly admonish her naivete:

“You go to your closet and you select out, oh, I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue. It's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.”

The film portrays this consumer pyramid from a place of admiration, legitimizing high fashion while failing to consider the human and environmental consequences of these systems.

In high school, long before I was a model, I worked in the backroom at a local T.J.Maxx in the Inland Empire, outside Los Angeles. The corporation's business model centers on purchasing surplus merchandise from manufacturers and department stores that overbuy, symbolically scrapping the excess production dispelled at the bottom of the consumer pyramid.  

For hours, I sorted shipment after shipment of “tragic Casual Corner.” Day in and day out, I unboxed a constant onslaught of fast fashion, pleather Michael Kors purses and marked-down accessories—all cheaply produced and packaged in extraneous styrofoam. At the end of my shift, my final task was to fill a compactor with all the trash. During my stint at T.J.Maxx, I was constantly shocked at the number of steel dumpsters we’d fill in a single day. I was too young to have the language to understand why this was unsettling, but I remember an intrinsic sense of wrongness at these massive altars of waste.

“Glamour” is validated by its illusory power to obscure the material labor that produced it. At the same time, it’s validated only by its contrast to those outside it—those who produce it. The vast majority of items I sorted were produced by sweatshop workers in China and Southeast Asia, mostly Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Of the few items proudly advertised as “made in America,” there was a high likelihood they were created either with prison labor or by underpaid immigrant workers in downtown LA’s garment district.  

Despite the worlds of distance between Marshalls and Marni, high fashion and fast fashion are inexorably connected. I’ve been on both sides and I still find myself vulnerable to the delusion of glamour. Regardless of my origins, political ideations and lived experience, I walk when the director, sporting the extensive headpiece, mouths “go.” 

Money

I Was a Model: Putting a Price on Glamour

It was 2008 when I made the move from a friendly working-class city to the big lights of London. After studying over the summer for a short post-graduate diploma, I had secured a great entry-level job at a major fashion company in the epicenter of the capital. I was over the moon to have snagged such an opportunity, but I’d felt nervous as hell since my interview. 

The offices were something out of The Devil Wears Prada—all clinical white surfaces, monochrome decor and a reception area filled with expensive candles. The women who worked there were also unlike any I had met in real life. Many of them looked like they had stepped straight out of a magazine. The style of the moment was ultra-glam, four-inch Christian Louboutin heels, trophy handbags and sharp-shouldered jackets—a far cry from the high-street midi dress and pleather boots I was wearing. 

On my first day, I tried to look as fashionable as I could with my budget wardrobe, but I felt inadequate and out of my depth. Don’t get me wrong, I loved fashion—that’s why I was there in the first place—but it was very clear that this wasn’t a place where quirky vintage and high-street finds would be considered in vogue. Still, I wanted to make the best of it and show them I was far more than my bargain wears. 

A few weeks into my new job, I was a mess of excitement and nerves. I loved the energy of the place, the glamour and the excitement, but the pressurized day-to-day atmosphere around the office was seriously terrifying. I had an upset stomach five days a week for nearly a year. 

Class and accents are a big thing in England, but I’d never realized quite how much until this point. My previous life had only led me to meet people from a similar status to my own. This was a different story. My colleagues came from some of the best private schools in the country and their accents ranged from well-spoken to downright plummy, and, boy, did they let me know I was different. 

One colleague started to correct my sentences under her breath, while another casually referred to me as “guttural.” I also started to hear that a few of the bitchier girls were referring to me as stupid—a lazy judgment often made about those from less monied backgrounds. I chose to ignore the abuse and carry on as normal, but there were moments when it just felt ridiculous. 

“I’m going to make a coffee,” my desk buddy said. 

“Oh, would you mind making me one?” I asked, smiling up at her. 

“OK,” she huffed, rolling her eyes. “But please, please don’t ever ask me again. I don’t make other people drinks.” 

I laughed at the ridiculousness of her comment, given that making cups of tea (or coffee) for others is somewhat of an English pastime. I hoped that perhaps she was joking, but her stern stare reminded me that this was fashion: Being rude was a badge of honor, and normal codes of politeness were thrown out of the window. I longed to be back home in the pub surrounded by the comfort of my very down-to-earth friends and not these Anna Wintour wannabes. 

While intimidating and haughty, the more senior staff were much kinder, but they still had their moments. One morning I was beckoned over by the head of a department for a chat. I was wearing a blue and white, ’60s-style, polyester dress that I had recently picked up in a vintage store. I felt good.

“It’s so hot in here today,” I said nervously, trying to ease the tension as she looked over my work, pen in hand and brow furrowed. Her desk was placed at the top of a long line of desks; the closer the staff member was to her vicinity, the more important they were deemed. 

“Good job you’re dressed for summer, then,” she replied, to a rapture of titters from her deputies. It was the midst of winter and, yes, perhaps my dress was a bit summery, but I thought my wool cardigan balanced it out. How wrong I was, apparently. Suffice to say, I never wore the dress to work again. 

After a while, I started to see the funny side of their critiques and developed a much tougher skin. I stood up for myself more often and sometimes came back with quippy comments of my own. Rather than trying to change myself to fit in, I wore my accent and identity with pride. Perhaps I was a bit of a fish out of water, but I was there all the same, and I was damned if I was going to let a group of snotty women make me feel otherwise. 

My change in attitude worked in my favor. I started to earn the other girls’ respect, as well as a promotion over them—much to the horror of those whose educations had cost fortunes more than my own free state-school studies.

Over the course of the next four years, I saw and heard things I probably never will again. There was the time that a stylist was openly bullied by her boss into traveling to the U.S. with two models for a week-long shoot. She was told, in front of an open-plan office, that there was only enough budget for the three of them to share a single bed in a crappy motel. 

I also overheard staff members talk openly about their eating disorders, asking each other if they were eating today or not. Then there was the memorable personal shopper who’d forgo lunch in favor of five Diet Cokes each day. Her “dietician” had apparently told her it was fine—healthy, even. 

Another coworker once spent her entire month’s salary on a pair of designer shoes, only to regret it hours later. She broke down crying at her desk in remorse and had to eat beans and frozen vegetables for the rest of the month. Another one carved “I hate this place” into a freshly painted bathroom wall that sat off the main reception space. It took HR a week to remove it and months for staff members to stop talking about who did it. 

Then for a hellish year or so, I had a boss who remains one of the most ridiculous people I’ve ever met. She was high maintenance, mean and not very good at her job, but she covered it up—for a while, at least—with an attitude so bad that her colleagues were scared to question her capabilities. Sometimes she wouldn’t speak to me for days, withhold important information I needed to do my job and openly mock my work, framing it as constructive feedback that the whole office needed to hear.

Fashion was everything in that place, and making totally ludicrous decisions—such as bankrupting yourself to buy the latest must-have item or burning out to meet a deadline—was not just accepted but actively encouraged. None of the junior staff earned that much money, but we were reminded on an almost daily basis of what covetable positions we were in. If we wanted to complain about how much pressure we were under or how little our paychecks were, there were a hundred other girls waiting to take our places.

In hindsight, it feels like a vivid dream where my imagination exaggerated the personalities and events that I experienced during that part of my career. But no, it was all real, and I’m sure there are carbon copies of those people all over the fashion industry still making silly demands and playing caricatures of themselves in an attempt to progress in their careers. 

Now, as a freelance writer with no colleagues to entertain me, I relish my solitude and peace of mind. Occasionally someone from that period of my life will pop up on Instagram and I’ll laugh at how much they’ve changed—or how much they haven’t—and find comfort in the fact that I came out of it unscathed, with a few great anecdotes and a much better wardrobe.

The Worst People I Have Ever Known Have Worked in Fashion

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Best of 2021

Slipping into shoes other than my go-to casual sneakers has been a rare sensation as of late. Heck, seeing anyone do the same has been, too. When I watched Rihanna bounce confidently into an L.A. grocery store in March this year in towering heels, along with a designer mini fit, Versace sunnies and a neon green face mask to match, it was almost too much to take. I was glad to see the style queen return to form. Witnessing more and more moments of people enthusiastically dressing up again signified something deeper to me. It got me buzzing, especially since lockdown reared its ugly head.

This past year, the fun approach to fashion got lost in the serious concerns of the pandemic, and I’ve missed it. As restrictions ease and we find purpose in being presentable again, some have returned to showy stylings outside of the house. But while some might have favored the switch from suits to sweats in March 2020, for me, being confined to home for endless months (with no need to fix myself up to go anywhere) left me with a sense of lost identity. I fell deeper into the cycle of putting on a hoodie for the next errand run, and my mourning got heavier as I tried to remember the essence of who I was before this pandemic began. 

This past year, the enthusiasm to put on a presentable outfit was dampened by not only the removal of social engagements but job losses brought on by businesses shuttering in lockdown. Aside from work uniforms, the detachment of purpose from ensembles altogether in the earlier period of the pandemic made fashion suddenly a foreign interest and ultimately seem pointless even to me, someone who has worked in the industry as a copywriter and journalist for many years. Considering my innate love for fashion, I was concerned with my initial detachment and for the industry itself, as shows and collections stopped and design schools shut down, crushing students’ routes to career success.

It just felt like there wasn’t a place for it all in the midst of the pandemic’s chaos, and I felt guilty even directing worry toward the industry as people were, if not dying, getting seriously ill. In this general rejection of fashion that occurred, it became simplified as superficial, which made sense. Certain aspects of it are. However, I realized this was not the part of fashion I missed—it was the creativity and personalization behind it. These factors fuel the element of style, which has led me, along with countless others, to discover our identities and find true self-fulfillment. Here lies the difference between happiness and depression for some, and in more dramatic cases, life and death. 

Losing grip on self-identity can be detrimental to mental health, which I discovered battling this throughout lockdown. For many working from home, the temptation to live in sweatpants never sat well with me. My mood was tied to how I dressed, and so, having worked from home since before the pandemic as a freelancer, I made sure to dress presentably in my routine—visiting the gym, attending meetings or working in the coffee shop. With all these appointments wiped away by restrictions, I succumbed to wearing joggers like everybody else, letting a melancholy steadily arise within me as my proactiveness waned. Paired with not seeing people parade their personal styles out on the way to somewhere, I was left feeling uninspired and stagnant creatively.

There’s an energy in expressing style that people draw from, that boosts positive attitude. Through style—defined as a unique way of arranging one’s appearance—we seek references of individuality that inspires an inner confidence I’ve long been chasing. Rihanna emotes this best, taking to the streets unapologetically dressed, as she establishes looks that aren’t subservient to trends or people’s opinions of what’s “hot.” Seeing her strut into that grocery store not long ago reminded me how I’d neglected my own sense of style, associating it with an occasion or destination, when it should really be about how it makes me feel and how I identify with myself.

For some, it might not be an important part of life—irrelevant, even. I even thought I was supposed to consider it meaningless during this pandemic. It’s perhaps why I’ve felt so low at times, casting aside something of personal value to me. Fashion has led me to a sense of self-discovery, happiness and escapism in the trying moments life has thrown along the way, which has made me realize that, if it holds such importance to me or anyone else reading this, then it’s worth preserving. 

Seeing style return to the streets as more people reconnect with themselves through fashion has been a positive development. It’s also reminded me not to neglect my own self so deeply as we rediscover a life that we’ve all been so desperately deprived of this past year.

As the Pandemic Fades, Street Style Is Back: I Couldn’t Be Happier

What do you think of when I say the word “wedding”? Flowers, dancing and family, usually. What about the bride? I bet in most of our minds, she’s blushing and beaming in a floor-length, nipped-in, meringue-white gown. I bet she’s thin, slender and lean—unlike me.

When I got engaged in Iceland back in June 2017, I was euphoric. I couldn’t wait to spend my life with my best friend and soulmate of three years. But after the high of the engagement—telling my friends and family while showing off my gorgeous ring—came a crushing low. 

I was fat, and I had to find a wedding dress.

Let me tell you now that weddings aren’t made for fat girls. 

Bridal magazines are full of trim white brides no bigger around than my thigh. Bridal shop racks are full of tiny dresses made for smaller women. The thought of trying one on under the burning eyes of a petite dressmaker made me sweat profusely.

Instead, I turned my eyes toward the big bad world of online shopping, where I discovered a bridal boutique that I’d seen celebs like Fearne Cotton wearing on Instagram. I laughed in the face of ridiculous, encrusted, floor-length meringue dresses and decided to go bohemian. I found a champagne-colored gown with hand-stitched flowers, beads and sequins scattered all over a tiered skirt and zip-up back. It was beautiful, and it was me. I ordered my size and waited eagerly for it to arrive.

My weight had never gotten in the way of my life, my career or my relationship status. I’d never let it define me or let myself become a fetish. My dating life wasn’t ruled by being a bigger girl—I was in control, not my weight. I was attractive because I was confident, happy and comfortable in my skin, and it showed. I wore what I wanted and not what I thought I should wear for being bigger. When it came to friendships, I wasn’t the jovial fat girl in my friend group—although I was the biggest girl at school—but the successful, career-driven one that always craved more. 

Or at least that’s who I was until I tried on my dress. Staring at myself in the mirror, surrounded by my family (and their deafening silence), my eyes filled with tears. It didn’t fit. The back didn’t even come close to zipping up. My mum held the fabric together while I forced a smile and sent a picture to my bridesmaids. When I was finally alone, I sobbed.

I was determined to fit into that dress. I convinced myself that I just needed to lose half my body weight.

I turned to exercise. I ran aggressively and obsessively. I researched wedding diets online, of which there are an obscene amount. I even came across workout gear emblazoned with the phrase “sweating for the wedding.” I had somehow convinced myself that starving to fit into a dress I’d wear one time, for one day, was the most normal thing in the world.

Instead of helping my husband-to-be with seating plans and flower arrangements, I starved and ran and ran some more. I was losing weight, but I was also drastically unhealthy. I skipped breakfast, ate very little and refused to have fun. I was a shadow of myself.

And yet, it still wasn't enough, and I punished myself for it. I hurt myself with insults, telling myself I wasn’t good enough, that I was letting myself down. In my depression, I starved myself some more.

About three months before the big day, I tried my dress on once more. The zip still wouldn’t budge. The dress claimed to be my size, but in reality, it was at least two or three sizes smaller than I was. I’d need to cut off a limb or completely rearrange my entire bone structure for the ridiculous thing to fit.

And then it hit me: My weight had never defined me, so why was I letting it ruin my life and my chance at a perfect wedding day? In reality, it wasn’t me that had the problem. I was the average dress size for a woman in the U.K. I was healthy, active and—most importantly—loved. I’d loved myself until I tried on a dress that was made for an idealized woman by an industry that has a skewed, toxic idea of what the picture-perfect bride should look like: slim, slender and serene.

That wasn’t me, so I decided to be myself instead and take back the dress and the body that I loved.

“Cut it up,” I told the seamstress that I’d been recommended by a family member. I smiled as I watched her blades glide through the exquisite fabric. At first, when I walked in, I had no idea what I wanted her to do to my dress. But I wanted the control. I didn’t want the dress to rule me and my thoughts any longer. I instructed her to cut the back clean out of it and stitch in a gold satin ribbon that wrapped around my waist and flowed down my back. I wanted to proudly show off my body, back rolls and all. 

On my big day, my dress shimmered across my body as I walked down the aisle. I walked with my head held high and my bare back on display. I didn’t wear a bra either or worry about what my big breasts looked like in swathes of fabric without support. I was the perfect image of a confident, blushing bride. I grinned as I saw my husband’s eyes well up at the sight of me.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered through his tears.

By discarding that piece of fabric that once clung to my back, I felt like I’d shed years of prejudice about my weight, years of misjudgment from other people—mainly women—that I was too fat or too wobbly. I’d shed hatred for myself and gained love, pride and respect—from myself, first and foremost.

When I look back at my wedding photos now, I don’t see the back rolls on display. I see a woman who is completely and utterly happy. She is serene and smiling, and she is herself. She is loved.

Why I Cut Up My Wedding Dress

This birthday met me with a highly unoriginal dose of trepidation and terror because I am a sack of watery carbon in the shape of a female. Having grown up on Earth, I have been socialized to believe that it’s important that I’m attractive. We are taught about what is attractive and what isn’t through films, advertisements and social media. 

In the 1950s, women were encouraged to look as much like Marilyn Monroe as they could, to embrace the soft feminine aesthetic with curled hair, red lips and rosy cheeks. Lovely. In the 1990s, women were encouraged to look like they were in the final moments of inoperable stage four cancer, complete with hollow eyes and a doleful, faraway sadness. In the 2020s, women are encouraged to look as much like Kim Kardashian as they can. An ethnically ambiguous, urban aesthetic with aggressively contoured faces and a generously upholstered bottom. 

In and amongst the vicissitudes of women's attractiveness, there is a common strand that links these caricatures of successful femininity: You must always be young.

I looked in the mirror on the morning of my 30th birthday and studied my face with effortless derision. Below is a list of unacceptable things I found there:

Pores—some visible, some more akin to manholes—that can be partially remedied with meat-colored plaster that comes in expensive little vials and is applied with a brush. Like tarring a roof. 

Thread veins. Who the fuck knows what they are? But I read about them in a women's magazine once, and the only purpose of women's magazines is to keep us up to date with things we should loathe about ourselves, so I added them to the list. 

Front and center, right there on my forehead (really a fivehead), the deep crevices that bespeak a lifetime of worry and inadequate moisturizing. 

Yes, I can raise my eyebrows and scowl in consternation, but at what cost? Botox, I thought. 

Botox is the injection of botulinum toxin into the soft tissues of the body. Botulinum toxin is a neurotoxic protein that is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, and it works by stopping the release of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. This causes flaccid paralysis. Botulism killed a lot of people in the 1800s by paralyzing their lungs and suffocating them to death. Now we pay an aesthetician £200 to inject it into our foreheads so we don’t look old. Or surprised. 

Botox used to be available only to Hollywood celebrities and the like, but over the last 10 years, it has been cleverly presented as part of a modern woman's feminist/empowered self-care routine. It’s working. The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reports that there has been a 22 percent increase in the number of millennials getting Botox between 2013 and 2018.

For example, social media describes Baby Botox for those 25 and under as a preventative measure that will mean you need fewer treatments in the future. Preventative medicine is defined as any medical treatment that aims to avoid disease and illness. Do we now consider lines on our foreheads to be a disease? 

More to the point, had I missed my chance to prevent my forehead disease? I was well over the hill of 25 and was already using the creases in my head to store spare change and lip balm. I decided to set out in search of some older female role models who might be able to help me make a decision on what to do about my face.

Let’s look to the movies for some help since Hollywood-ness represents an enduring type of celebrity for the common folk to revere and emulate. Since the beginning of the Academy Awards in 1929, 13 women aged 50 or over have received an Oscar for Best Actress. Over the same period of time, 22 men aged 50 or over have been awarded an Oscar for Best Actor. Overall, female Oscar winners were nearly 10 years younger than their male colleagues. Unless you are Jane Fonda, then women in Hollywood over the age of 50 just sort of disappear.

Let’s get really real with ourselves and each other:

We know that when we shave our legs and say it just makes us feel cleaner/nicer/more presentable, it’s because we have been taught that our body hair is disgusting. 

We know that when we put on makeup to feel good about ourselves, it’s because we have been taught that we are inherently flawed and need to spend time, energy and money on fixing this. 

When we put Botox in our heads, it is because we have been taught that it is unacceptable for us to show signs of having aged past (now, apparently) 22.

Refusing to engage in the above activities makes us feel shame. Shame is the fear that if people know X about us, they will not like us anymore. This is famously a highly effective technique for controlling people's behavior. 

The expectation that we should be beautiful and young creates an ambient level of anxiety in our lives about the day where we will inevitably fail at this task and will be cast out of society like a deformed newborn of Sparta. Or a 51-year-old Hollywood actress. It is more difficult to agitate for social change, start a business or leave the house at short notice when we are constantly distracted by how young and pretty we are managing to be at any given moment. 

I have a theory that we do not see saggy, wrinkly, old women in Hollywood for the same reasons we do not see hairy, ugly, makeup-less women in Hollywood. Nobody can make money from saggy, wrinkly, hairy, makeup-less women. We don’t need any products or services to become wrinkly and hairy—we can do it for free, all on our own, as the morning of my 30th birthday proved.

I shave my legs, wear makeup and engage in all manner of other forms of dark sorcery in order to comply with the myth of womanhood that I have inherited and that I despise. I am not better or wiser than you. But when the wool is being so effectively pulled over my eyes by The Corporations, or The Patriarchy, or Big Pharma, or whatever other snowflake boogeyman of the hour, I am at least not also pulling the wool over my own eyes.

The rhetorical sleight of hand that positions Botox as something that we will all inevitably need, rather than as a gendered and unnecessary surgical procedure with attendant risks, is patronizing and annoying. Getting Botox is another way to adhere to tedious and limiting patriarchal visions of femininity, where, in order to be rewarded with status, women must be conventionally attractive—thin, white, infantilized and, most importantly, young. 

We insult our own intelligence by pretending that getting Botox “'just makes us feel better” without critically analyzing why it makes us feel better because we are rewarded when we conform. 

I’ll see you down at the clinic, and when you tell me I am a sanctimonious hypocrite, I won't look surprised.

I Want Preventative Botox Because I'm Insecure, Not Empowered

Just out of high school, my mother had a brief stint as a runway model in Namibia. She was tall, slender and could rock a fur coat with the grace of a gazelle, even in eight-inch heels. Whenever I look at pictures of her at one specific show, I ask about the heels. “How’d you walk in them?” I’d ask, to which she’d almost always answer: “Carefully.” 

From there, she went on to be an airline stewardess. How she picked two of the most objectifiable jobs in history, I don’t know, but she loved both. She didn’t mind how much her feet killed her as she did every eight-hour shift in heels; she didn’t mind that she was forced to wear a full face of makeup or do up her hair in a prescribed way. She took the lustful gazes of men as compliments as they “admired” her uniformed body with catcalls, and when her mediocre pay came in, she was probably just happy that she had enough to put food on the table. 

It didn’t make her a bad woman. It made her someone who grew up as a “nice girl” in a Namibian, Afrikaans household in the ’60s and ’70s and found herself having to navigate an oppressive, sexist society in the ’80s without any knowledge of it even being oppressive or sexist to begin with. Not much has changed in 50 years. Girls are still being raised to be “nice” instead of calling out shitty behavior, but that might be a conversation for a different time because right now, I’m more focused on the one thing that’s trying so desperately to be a tool for empowerment but remains shackled to the male gaze: fashion.

I own two shirts that were purchased three years ago when the feminist in me truly awoke. One says “Feminist,” the other “Equality,” and although both are wonderful sentiments and great conversation starters, I know better than to think that one piece of fashion will go very far in bringing about real societal change. Not for a lack of trying. Women across the world have revolutionized not wearing a bra or tried to take the power of the stiletto back. In some cases—think Blac Chyna and Amber Rose’s at the 2015 VMAs—fashion has served a purpose in making an impact or raising awareness, but regardless of its power as a political tool, its tendency to demean is still far greater. Not because of fashion itself but how a misogynistic point of view has poisoned the narrative surrounding female style. 

Throughout my life, wearing something revealing was labeled slutty, but wearing the opposite would make me a prude. If I wore something too tight, I’d be easy, but the opposite was too boyish. If I wore something pink and floral or overly feminine, I was most likely dumb, but the opposite was never girly enough. And then, of course, there’s the worst one yet: Questioning whether I’d be “asking for it” with whatever outfit I’ve picked out, when wearing the opposite would still be “asking for it” because women somehow always are, despite history repeatedly showing us that covering up doesn’t exactly render you invisible from predatory eyes. 

If that were true, I wouldn’t have had some stranger’s hands roaming across my breasts and vagina when he was supposedly patting me down in a mugging when I was 12. I had done everything right; I’d worn bell-bottomed jeans with a light, long-sleeve shirt. I had no skin showing and was on the arm of my boyfriend at the time, but none of that mattered at all. It made me sick. And society is seemingly brainwashed into believing women are to blame for being dragged into an alley, for being pinned down, for being beaten into submission, for being raped because of what they were wearing, when I get catcalled wearing sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt.

Is it really so difficult, then, to believe that women would dress not how we want but what would get us by without a catcall? That I’d switch out a summer dress or denim shorts for a floor-length skirt or completely formulate my style based on what would keep me safe instead of what would bring me the most joy? There’s no real freedom in fashion. Not when female soldiers in Ukraine are being forced to march in heels. Not when the Norwegian beach handball team was fined for not wearing bikini bottoms when male counterparts got to play in shorts and tank tops. Not when heels are still associated with sex instead of power or ambition. Not when a skirt invites men twice your age to gawk at you. Not when every outfit you wear is seen as an invitation for someone to comment on your body. And especially not when sexism, oppression and misogyny continues to masquerade as style. 

Fashion is meant to be an extension of my self-expression, a way to give the world a little snapshot of myself, but as much as I’d like to showcase the alternative side of me—the one who wears fishnet stockings and pleated skirts, sheer blouses and lace crop tops (because I have it all in the back of my closet somewhere)—self-expression and non-judgment just don’t seem to walk hand in hand out here in the real world. I’d know because the last time I tried venturing out in a mini denim skirt with stockings, I had to grit my teeth through two “hello, babies,” a couple of wolf whistles and a man literally turning around to watch me walk down the street. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much more of an unbearable experience that would’ve been without the stockings. 

Right now, fashion still looks more like a tool to police or blame than something that provides freedom. But my pursuit to turn it into something empowering doesn’t end here. Who knows? Maybe there’s a lesson in my mother’s discomfort after all. Maybe breaking the strangling hold that systemic sexism has on me personally is about pushing past the boundaries and wearing the labels like badges of honor instead of shying away from them. Maybe being a slut, being easy, being dumb or boyish is also the key to being free.

There Is No Freedom in Women's Fashion

Desi weddings have never been understated events. Just a look at the bride’s wedding dress, which is usually nothing short of an art piece, and the events themselves are no less elaborate. In Pakistan, where my family is from, they traditionally start with the mayun (before which brides and grooms were discouraged from seeing each other) before spilling across multiple days and nights, bursting with extravagant decorations, heavily embroidered clothes and more food than you can imagine. Weddings are a time where friends and family from all over the world make the effort to come together, which means large guest lists for every event and lots of singing and dancing. 

What used to be just a celebration of the happy couple has now turned into a performance hell-bent on being the next Big Fat Desi Wedding. Each wedding needs to one-up the previous one in terms of event planners, photographers, choreographers and exclusive dress designers, who join hands to put together an elaborately choreographed effort—figuratively and often literally—to blow away not only the guests in attendance but an unseen audience on social media. The last few weddings I’ve attended can be summed up as, “Lights! Camera! Dance!”

The most elaborate event—yes, there are multiple—of the ceremony is the Mehndi night. Traditionally, it’s an event celebrating the tradition of applying henna to the bride. A traditional Mehndi often includes a celebration of the couple where they are fed sweets, given gifts and anointed with henna as a tradition while friends and family dance and sing. Now it’s become nothing short of a Bollywood-inspired performance night, where both the bride’s and groom’s sides compete for who has the best and most well-prepared dance routines that keep the celebrations going well into the early hours of the morning.

I’m getting married in a few months, and as I get deeper and deeper into the planning, there’s one thing I know for sure: I want the exact opposite of the next Big Fat Desi Wedding. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that everyone around me sees no other option but a vast, elaborate, overly exorbitant affair. I’m beginning to wonder, if I do things differently, will my family and friends accept me? 

I’ve been to multiple weddings over the last few years that have left the bride, groom and their close families exhausted and sometimes even physically ill from the effort of pulling off such stressful events. I remember the days when I was younger when dance practices meant all sorts of cousins and aunts and uncles getting together to mess around, make some jokes and come up with goofy dances. Now it's defined more by both the choreographer and bride yelling in an effort to make sure everyone is absolutely perfect. 

Desi weddings now seem to cater to the desires of everyone but the bride and groom. There’s an interaction I overheard recently at a wedding that I can’t get out of my head. Two women were talking about the clothes they were wearing. One of them, referring to a third woman who wasn’t there at the time, said, “Her outfit is for 10 lakh rupees, and mine is for only 2 lakh. How can I compete?” It’s a conversation that has continued to make me uncomfortable no matter how many times I’ve replayed it in my head. The obsession with showing off who’s wearing the most amount of money is an unfortunately common occurrence, and I believe a lot of it stems from how interlinked these performative wedding celebrations have become with social media. From the dress the bride wears to her makeup artist and the photographer that covers the event, everything needs to be splashed out on social media pages. 

Of course, the obsession with displaying your life on social media isn’t limited to Desi weddings. With social media and its influencers dominating many of our experiences and how we see them, Instagram weddings aren’t limited to a particular culture. But this somehow becomes more concentrated in Desi communities because of the importance weddings hold, particularly for women because of the importance society awards their marital status.

There’s a new pressure now to make your wedding bigger, better and shinier than the one before (because everyone’s already seen the previous one a million times over), which is why I want to keep my wedding low-key and make it an event I can enjoy without the effort of looking Instagram perfect. But when I tell my friends and family that I don’t want multiple elaborate events, that I want to keep the guest list intimate or that I’m very particular about posts on social media not being shared on any public pages, I get weird looks. At one point, my sister said she wanted to have a bigger function and hire a famous singer. When I said I want a smaller, cozier affair, she gave me a disgusted look and said quite rudely, "You’re so boring.  

In the grand scheme of things, these dialogues hardly matter. I’ve become quite used to living with drastically different opinions than the people around me. But in this context, they serve as a reminder that most people simply cannot fathom the idea that my wedding should be for me, not them. I’ve been told by family members on multiple occasions that I’m being selfish for not succumbing to their demands for how my wedding should look. 

Sometimes when I’m getting all these comments from the people closest to me, it’s difficult to see how I can turn what I want into a reality because it seems like nobody gets it. My saving grace has been my mother, who has made it clear that my wants should be prioritized. But in a tidal wave of social media posts, videos and comments about who looked the best at what wedding, it seems voices that are different are quickly drowned out

I don’t plan on succumbing to any of these demands. I want the focus of my wedding to be sharing this experience with the people I love, the ones who are genuinely happy for me, and nothing else. But it’s proving to be a difficult battle, as each decision is met with weird glances and comments. Truth is, even I wonder what people will say at the wedding itself—but I’ve decided to stop caring. I’m going to stop worrying about society’s acceptance and enjoy my big day for myself.

Why I Don't Want a Big Fat Desi Ceremony: The Problem With Modern Pakistani Wedding Culture

“Why do you care so much about your clothes? Fashion is so vain and vapid! There are better things to invest your time and energy on, you should know that—you went to fashion school.” 

The number of times I’ve heard this is insane. Yes, I went to fashion school, and yes, the fashion industry as a whole can be incredibly controversial, but at the end of the day, we need it. Fashion and the clothes that aid us in developing a personal style are a basic human need; they allow us to express ourselves and connect to others in a way that spoken language could never let us

Now, most people think I’m crazy when I first say we need fashion to the point of it being a basic human need. Why would we need an industry that’s so widely problematic and known for its pollution and human rights controversies? Sure, a lot of the negative things that are said and written about it are true, but there’s good and bad sides to pretty much everything in life, and the fashion industry is no exception. 

At its core, fashion is about self-expression, and we need it because it gives us tools to express ourselves that we would otherwise not have. Our personal style and the way we choose to dress every day are a direct reflection of who we are as individuals. It is connected to our very essence as human beings, and it has been this way since the first humans roamed the Earth. Throughout history, clothes have played a monumental role in the development of societies (why else would there be entire museum exhibitions dedicated to the clothes of ancient China or India or the Maya?). Every culture has had its own codes and interpretations of clothing and the way they’re worn, but the general consensus is that clothes have meaning. 

Once I was allowed to pick my own clothes growing up, I knew I wanted to look different than my classmates, something that my parents weren’t entirely fond of. I clearly remember begging my mother to let me wear a long-sleeved, purple, camo top and bell-bottom jeans under a denim miniskirt for school picture day. I also remember her saying no and me sneaking the clothes out in my backpack and wearing them anyway. What can I say? Even as a child I was obstinate and had a bit too much chutzpah. This constant need to express myself through my wardrobe has stuck with me throughout my life; my style choices have evolved and grown with me. 

Now, as a woman in her late 20s, I continue to use fashion as a way of self-expression and self-discovery. I’m that fat woman who is not afraid of bold prints and crop tops and being looked at (maybe even envied a little?) for having the guts to wear whatever I feel like without carrying the weight of what others might think is “appropriate” for my body type, gender or age over me. 

My love for clothes led me to pursue a career in fashion design. I spent four years of my life falling deeper in love with fashion and learning how to translate my personal feelings and ideas into pieces that would resonate with other people and allow them to see a piece of themselves reflected in that item. I was taught to connect with every collection I designed. Every single piece of clothing I have ever made carries a piece of my soul, made tangible with the help of a little fabric, a lot of thread and a sewing machine. When someone else likes it—and wants to wear it—it means that there is some sort of unspoken understanding between us; we have somehow connected, even if briefly. And while sure, the interpretation of the piece might be different, the connection we made is still there; we both felt the need to express whatever it was we were feeling with this same item. Fashion allows this to happen; it allows us to communicate with others without even having to speak. 

After graduation, my life took a series of twists and turns that eventually pushed me away from the design room and into personal styling territory. As a personal stylist, I’ve only confirmed my belief that fashion makes the world go ’round. There is a special link between a stylist and the person who is being styled, whether it’s a client who wants to revamp her whole wardrobe after a significant weight loss or a friend who needs help finding their wedding suit a few weeks before the ceremony. Helping someone refine their wardrobe or pick an outfit for a special occasion allows me to peek inside that person's soul: their insecurities, their opinions of themselves, their hopes, their daily lives. It’s not just “this fabric is itchy” or “this color makes me look washed out”; it’s “this print reminds me of my grandfather’s favorite vacation hat” and “this olive, tweed suit makes me feel like I belong in a vintage photograph and feels a lot more like me than the blue suit did.” Personal style is about thoughts and feelings; it’s not just pretty clothes put together in an aesthetically pleasing way (although yes, there is some of that). 

That’s the beauty of clothes and fashion. Whether we care to admit it or not, clothes have meaning—they are more than just artfully put together pieces of fabric. They allow us to find our kindred spirits; they are a language that doesn't need to be spoken because, in one way or another, we all understand it. Our wardrobes are carefully curated physical and visual manifestations of our moods and thoughts. What we choose to wear is an extension of our personalities.

We add emotional value to clothes that are tied to moments or feelings that meant something to us, and wearing them again helps us relive those moments. That’s why so many of us have a favorite piece of clothing that we love and keep coming back to. Maybe it’s a parent’s ring that you wear after they passed, the sweater you wore on your first date with your now-spouse, a vintage baseball jacket with your favorite team’s colors, or a very fancy, silk, emerald green dress with a deep V-neck that you wore when you went out for “casual” drinks on your birthday (yep, that’s mine; I’ve never known how to do “casual”). 

There is no such thing as grabbing the first thing we see in our closet and wearing that without a second thought. We subconsciously gravitate toward the clothes, colors, textures, fabrics and prints that make us feel something—or that make us feel part of something. As a student, I dressed exclusively in baggy sweatpants, oversized T-shirts and fuzzy Elmo slippers (ironically, fashion students are the least fashionable people; we don’t have the time or energy to get dressed when our finals week is actually a finals month and a half). After graduation, I felt like I had to live up to this idea that designers are überstylish people who are always put together, so I filled my closet with trendy pieces that I was bored with six months later. Slowly, I started developing my own personal style. Looking back, I realize my closet has been a reflection of my emotional and mental health; there've been times when it’s all black, and there've been times where it’s filled with green and red (both colors that are generally associated with positivity and energy, according to color psychology). Currently, it’s a mix of this and a mix of that. A little color, a little black and a lot of denim. 

In one way or another, we all care about what other people think of us and of the clothes we wear. We care how we’re perceived, which is why we ask for opinions when we go shopping, why we follow fashion bloggers on social media or why it’s so common for brides to take their friends and family wedding dress shopping. 

Personally, I’m not a fan of shopping with a crowd. I feel like it clouds my judgment, but I have definitely been known to text my best friend or my partner photos of whatever it is I’m buying if I’m on the fence about a specific item. We want to be accepted as members of society while still retaining some sort of individuality. It’s human nature, and the clothes we pick for ourselves are a reflection of that.  

Even those who are famous for “not caring” about what they wear or are known to wear the “same thing” every day have meticulously curated a capsule wardrobe for themselves—think of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Hillary Clinton. All of them have carefully selected the clothes they wear to give a message and portray a certain image of themselves. While I personally felt a bit lost when I briefly attempted a minimalist capsule wardrobe, it was thanks to people like Jobs and Clinton that I learned to analyze my outfits more thoroughly. I’ve become more critical of my style choices. Do I really need that tan leather jacket, or am I buying it because it’s trendy? What does it say about me? Through this process, I’ve gotten to know myself better, and I am thankful for it. 

The bottom line is, fashion isn’t frivolous or vain. Clothes, and how each individual adapts them to their personal style, have always been and will forever be a reflection of the times we live in. They are a universal language and storyteller. This is why I care about fashion: It’s a silent historian ready to tell us everything we need to know about a person or a specific time in history. Clothes are not just a collection of threads, they tell a story—our story.

What I’ve Learned About Myself—and Society—Through Developing My Personal Style

A good ring is something everyone should have on their hands. A ring that represents you, that tells something about you, that defines you. People instinctively pay attention to your hands, so wearing the right rings for the right occasion is important. Rings can introduce you to everyone you meet and introduce you to others without ever having to speak. 

Rings can also reveal the brightest and the darkest parts of our past. Those with a metal circle around their finger will sometimes communicate more than they want to. The rings will not give details but will leave hints and clues about what the person wearing them is trying to explain or hide. That is why it’s so important to choose the right ring—it will present you to the world.

I really love rings. Every time I find one that I like and fits my style, I buy it and put it into rotation with my others. The rings I use depend a lot on the occasion—the outfit I’ll be wearing, the place and mood of the situation and the people who are going to be surrounding me. One does not simply wear a ring of a skull with demon horns to a wedding in a Catholic church.

Of course, it’s important not to sacrifice all your style just to fit into the group. If you are like me and use more than three rings (I use eight; four on each hand), I recommend you take only the ones that best represent you when going to fancy and elegant settings. At these kinds of events, like weddings or funerals, I wear only three of my eight habitual rings: the left ring finger and both middle fingers. Some represent the past, some represent the future and all have meaning for me. 

One ring symbolizes couple love, which, in my case, references the fact that I’ve always had trouble finding the right one. I’ve tried so much and put effort into it, but I realized I would never find her. Another—the one I wear on my left middle finger—has the shape of a Nordic wolf’s head, with small and fine carvings that make the animal look calm and humble and not hostile as often presented. A third, on the right middle finger, symbolizes family bonds and, in my case, those who gifted it to me.

The story behind the wolf ring is a bit dark, and I hope nobody can identify with it by having suffered the same. Years ago, I was part of a group of people, similar to a small gang. We never did illegal stuff. Instead of being the typical junkies, we were teens who helped others without asking for anything in return. People in our hood called us "Wolves" because we always moved in groups and we helped each other out like a real pack.

Yes, we did smoke cigarettes and drink sodas while chatting in our free time, but there was almost always something we could do to help—big or small. We helped the local market stores get rid of criminals and helped out people (mostly our same age) if they were being picked on or harassed by bullies. We helped people in the market unload their merchandise off trucks. Sometimes we even helped with night patrol of the neighborhood. We tried to make the world a better place with small acts.

One day, I tried to commit suicide. I was immersed in a massive depression and emotionally and physically worn out. I was going through a lot at the time. I didn’t tell anybody about it, but somehow, my best friend, Romo, who was also a Wolf, found out and arrived in time at my house to stop me. He ripped the knife out of my hand and beat me up until I couldn’t stand up.

I still remember what he said when I was on the ground, laying against the wall, looking at him. The tears in his eyes held a mix of anger, sadness and desperation. His words were like a slap to the face mixed with a bucket of freezing cold water: “Don’t be stupid! There are people out there that depend on you, that need you. If you die, who is going to look after them? They need you to guide them, to help them, so you better be the one they need you to be, or I’ll be here again to prevent you from killing yourself, brother. Never forget they need you. I need you. I love you, brother. I love you so much, and I will always be by your side, want it or not, so you better get used to it.”

After that, he apologized for hurting me, and we both went to my favorite restaurant for dinner. Two weeks after that event, I received the terrible news. Romo had killed himself. He hung himself from a handrail. I was devastated. I felt broken. Without me telling him, he found out about me and saved me, but I wasn’t able to do the same for him. I crumbled into pieces.

The Wolves were worried for me, so one day they showed up at my house and gave me a small but beautiful gift: a ring in the shape of a Nordic wolf’s head. They told me that if I ever needed them, they would be there by my side, and that that ring would be proof of it.

Time passed by, and after almost a month, another tragedy occurred. Three armed robbers tried to rob a store at night. Obviously, my friends, who were on night patrol, went to help and stop the robbery, but those criminals fired their guns and ran away. The next morning, I found out what had happened: The three robbers shot my friends, the ones who I had the honor and luck of calling my brothers, as well as the store clerk. They took the money and fled the scene.

I was destroyed. There is no existing word to describe the pain I felt and the suffering I went through in that moment. Those who I considered my family, my brothers, were now dead. I felt completely bleak and alone, broken and with no hope. Two days after my friends died, impacted by the depression, the sadness and the emptiness in my heart, I decided to try to take my life again. 

But then I looked at my left hand and saw the silver wolf on my finger. I remembered Romo and what he had said to me the night he stopped me from killing myself. I moved the knife away from my throat, dropped it and then dropped myself onto the floor, bursting in tears because I had no one left in this world. That ring helped save my life.

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