Electrolicious

I grew up a tomboy at a boarding school… with horrid clichéd uniforms. Then my college wardrobe consisted of sweatshirts and pajama pants. Now here I am in my late twenties and I discover I have no personal style. Really honestly shamefully none. And I don’t even where to start. So my question is basically a plea for any tips/pointers for discovering and acquiring a unique personal style. Of course it would be preferable if your response was geared to someone a few steps too close to being a hopeless cause.

Thank you for giving me permission to get all crazy vapid here for a while. Evidently, I have a short novel to write in regards to my thoughts on style.

This is mildly embarrassing because I like to think I have better things to think/write about, but whatever. I like playing dress-up. I like street-wear costumes. It’s fun.

My Fashion History

First, I’m going to ramble about my fashion history because this here is my blog and why the fuck not?

I come from deeply humble fashion roots. My parents are hippies for godsake, and I grew up in a mix of dirty hand-me-downs my parents dug up, cheap stuff from Sears, and frilly dresses gifted from my grandma. I preferred the frilly dresses, and my mom had to bribe me to wear pants by telling me that they made me look tall.

Just before I started fourth grade, my folks asked me what clothes I wanted for the school year. I shrugged and replied that my favorite outfit was a lilac polyester sweat suit from Sears, and really all I wanted was several more of those. And so I spent all of fourth an fifth grade in rotating lilac sweatshirts and sweatpants. That was all I wore for two years.

It was actually fashion that made me decide to be mainstreamed at school. My mom and I had been planning to do homeschool for me in 6th grade, but the week school was to start, I talked to an friend (now a fashion designer) and she told me all about going shopping for Esprit sweatshirts and sweater vests and skirts and things and I got jealous. I wanted to go shopping for my first day of middle school, too!

Middle school fashion was almost to be the death of me. Clothes at the mall cost WAY more than my mom was willing to spend, so I got $100 worth of new clothes, which covered a pair of Reebok high tops, floral acid wash jeans, and a sweatshirt covered with a grid and shapes — I wore them all together. Anything past that $100 had to be from the Bargain Boutique, which was the local second-hand store. This was no vintage shop. This was a place run by little old ladies filled with the clothing that time forgot. I felt like a leper and was once terrified when a cool classmate asked me where I’d gotten one of my second-hand sweaters. Oh god, I panicked. This is probably her mom’s old sweater and she totally recognizes it!

By the time I got to high school I’d sorta figured things out. I was mall-preppy with pegged jeans, braided belts and embroidered vests.

You would think, Bainbridge being so close to Seattle, that I would have shopped in the city, but you’d be wrong. I shopped at the Silverdale Mall at stores like Rave and Mariposa. I had a few wacky accessories I was into — my gold brocaded ballet slippers, my rainbow socks — but for the most part I was pretty middle of the road.

College got even less interesting. For a while my roommates called me “Neutral Girl” because I only wore tan, olive, brown, cream, and jeans. I worked at MJ Feet, the birkenstock store and wore lots of natural fabric clothes purchased with my employee discount. I guess it was sort of a gentle “Northwest Granola” collegiate look. Overalls, cotton dresses, bla bla.

Then came raving and I was sooo excited about my new uniform. JNCO pants with 32″ cuffs, babydoll tees with silver threading, track jackets, brimmed hats, sketchers for dancing. “Neutral Girl” was dead and buried in an avalanche of rainbow colors and synthetic materials. I wore a lot of boys’ clothes during this era, with tons of hoodies and oversized adidas shirts and skater garb. I tried some more fitted clubber gear, but tight pants were uncomfortable and sexy tops felt slutty. I guess this means I was a tomboy raver, which I makes sense since most of my friends were gay boys.

As I phased out of candy raver fashion, things got confusing. Raving was sort of my one dalliance with a fashion uniform. It was really easy to dress for those years because I was following a clear template and knew exactly where to go and what to buy. Just follow the other ravers! Easy. Things were more difficult once I transitioned back into thinking for myself fashion-wise.

In 1999, I got the infamous dreadlocks and that made things easy for a while. My hair was so insanely bright that no-one bothered looking down below my shoulders, so it totally didn’t matter what I wore. We were living in Olympia and I spent my clothing budget on my hair and made do with Dre’s old jeans, left-over ravewear, and basics from a place called Anchor Blue. I dabbled in hippie fashion, commissioning a couple custom-made patchwork dresses. I dabbled in burning man fashion, making myself some furry legwarmers and matching hats. I remember talking a friend-of-a-friend once and bemoaning my lack of a cohesive “look” and her reassuring me that I looked like a “funkster,” whatever the fuck that meant.

After I cut the dreads off in 2001, I realized that I was going to have to start thinking for myself when it came to clothes. I wasn’t interested in going for a specific look, so I was on my own.

Since then, I’ve been cobbling together my wardrobe with a combination of basics (shirts from American Apparel, jeans from the Gap), hippie raver accessories and accent pieces (mostly purchased online or at festivals), and a dogged focus on COMFORT (hence my ubiquitous Lululemon Athetica and Dankso shoes). Living in the northwest, my fashion default leans toward layers — dresses over jeans, skirts over pants, dresses over skirts, shrugs over sweaters over tees, etc etc.

Let me now transition into the advice section here …

Ariel’s Fashion Bible

Comfort is king.
If you’re not comfortable, nothing else matters. Uncomfortable usually equals unflattering. Pants that dig into your lovehandles and make a muffin-top? Uncomfortable and ugly. Tight shirts that ride up and expose your lower back and belly? Cold and unflattering. Your clothing needs to be comfortable both physically and emotionally. You should feel good in your clothes. Confused sometimes (”Did I really put a skirt on as a poncho?”), but good.

Style isn’t about clothing — it’s about confidence
You can wear absolutely anything if you sell it hard enough. My brain sometimes boggles when I see fashionistas wearing the most patently unflattering, heinously ugly clothes — but they walk with confidence bordering on arrogance and somehow manage to make it work. I might think they look ugly, but I can’t deny that it’s fashionably ugly. Moral of the story: wear what makes you feel confident, and you’ll look stylish.

Avoid uniforms
I don’t like being easily identifiable by my clothing. When I used to wear my patchwork dresses in Olympia, everyone would assume I was a hippie student at Evergreen. It gave me great pleasure to say “Actually, I’m the editor of a rave magazine in Los Angeles. But thank you for asking.” Since discarding the raver template, I’ve developed an aversion to being pigeonholed by my clothing. Keep ‘em guessing. Create your own template.

Look to the fringes for inspiration
I wear a lot of basics, and probably the only reason anyone thinks I have any sense of personal style is because a lot of my accent pieces are inspired by my favorite subcultures. A little hippie/raver festival gear goes a long way, as do a few pieces of reconstructed San Francisco flava. The internet is awesome for this sort of thing — more on that later.

Custom-made clothes and indie designers are the best
If I had unlimited amounts of money, I would not spend it on designer clothing. I would spend it on having a personal seamstress/designer who would make me all my clothes. Clothes made to your measurements fit like nothing else. And buying from indie designers is a great way to support artisans while wearing unique awesome stuff. Forget international desiner labels: go custom and indie.

Remix what you’ve got
Fashion can all-too-quickly become consumerism, but it doesn’t need to be that way. Your closet has more fun outfits than you know — don’t be afraid to mix things in unexpected ways. Buying your clothes by pre-set outfits will be the death of a creative wardrobe.

Play with your clothes
Try to maintain a sense of curiosity and play with your closet. That skirt — could you layer it as a strapless dress over a t-shirt? Could you wear that belt as a tie? You will doubtless leave the house looking ridiculous sometimes (God knows I do) but fashion isn’t for taking seriously. As long as you’re laughing and comfortable, no one else matters. Which brings me to my next point:

Dress to impress yourself.
Make your peace with this now: no matter what you wear, someone is going to think you look stupid. Seriously. Everyone’s a member of the fashion Gestapo, and no matter how carefully you follow trends or how hard you buck trends, someone is going to think you look bad. So stop caring and just dress in a way that makes you happy and comfortable. Even if I think you look ridiculous in those pants, it doesn’t matter if you love them and find them comfortable.

Beg borrow or steal your fashion from others
Inspiration is everywhere. Look for people with your same body type who look good in their clothes. Feel free to ask them where they got particular articles of clothing. Feel free to steal their look — it’s ok as long as you give ‘em credit. And on that note…

Inspiration

Ooh, it’s everywhere, especially in the Interwebs. I get lots of inspiration at festivals like Shambhala, but I also trawl the web …

Street fashion sites:
The joy of street fashion blogs is that you can break out of your regional ruts. Also, I find designer/celeb fashion really boring and overpriced, and street fashion is way more accessible.

Wardrobe Remix (international)
NY Mag’s Look Book
Hel Looks (Finland)
Pike/Pine (Seattle)
The Commodified (Vancouver, BC)
iCiNG’s Daily Outfit (Australian)
Meet Cute (Shanghai)
SF Street fashion (Haight district)

Stores & Designers
Here are a few of the places I shop online (or wish I could), and some of the indie designers I adore. Side note: I wish more indie designers would sell their stuff online. There’s money to be made, bitches! GET ON IT! Etsy makes it easy. No excuses!

Lululemon (try ebay)
Etsy seller Treehouse28
3 Free NYC (useless website)
Paper Bullets (useless website)
Technodolly
Modkid (I wish they made these in grown-up sizes!)
Senjo
John Fleuvog Shoes (try ebay)
Bad Unkl Sista

Books
FRUiTS (hugely influential for me — who knew an inflatable ukelele could be an accessory!?)
New York Look Book: A Gallery Of Street Fashion (I have a mutual hate/hate relationship with NY fashion, but this book and 3 Free NYC are the exceptions)

And now…

I open the comments to other fashion advice, links to amazing indie designers and rad places online to buy unexpected clothing, etc.