Textures
a vocab word about fashionable clothing, and being Most Creative.
You might not know it looking at me or talking to me, but I’ve been interested in costumes, clothing, and fashion since I was a preteen. Of course, growing up without much money (and no extra money to speak of), fashion stuff was pretty hard to keep up with, at least it was in the ‘80s before thrift store chic became cool. I’ve always, ever since I started thinking about what to wear and choosing my looks, been a rather eccentric if not unique fashion plate. My version of mod and new romantic and proto-goth was all strange and spooky and eclectic and mixed up, based on Victorian menswear, clowning accoutrements, RenFaire garb, and topped with a fresh rose cut from the bush outside the trailer where I grew up. Hair was always unusual and agender, from spraying a spill of curls around the brim of a greek fisherman’s cap, to a dyed black-and-burgundy wedge cut. (These were punk-adjacent ‘80s styles irl—Google it, kids.) Makeup was always heavy on the eyeliner, and foundation aligned with the natural pallor of my skin tone.
One central aspect of my personal brand of dressing included mixing gendered clothing or wearing genderless pieces with other kinds. That ‘90s trend of a lacy or satiny camisole just peeking out from under an oversized men’s sweater? Perfect for me. A flower patterned sundress worn over jeans and tall combat boots? Dude, I *still* do this. A men’s blazer over a miniskirt? Don’t mind if I do. An oversized henley with a short lace hem peeking out from below it, bike shorts or leggings under that? Yep. Boyfriend jeans with a tank top, over heeled sandals? Indeed. High waisted pleated slacks with suspenders and a steampunk brooch? A hat with a black veil? Well you get the idea. A mix of textures, too, along with the mix of gender. Lace, linen, leather, boxy men’s knits, satiny underwire in a Victoria’s Secret bra… And I still mix fabrics and patterns and textures and gendered pieces to this day. Not the Vicky’s Secret bras anymore, but. Point is.
The importance of looking unusual or unique began for me when I changed my look in 8th grade. It was an act of rebellion, and a way to claim my self-hood. See below for more of an explanation of this monumental life shift. But it was during this major fashion overhaul that I found the importance in my own clothing choices in the symbolism of certain icons of fashion. Later, in college and after, when I began to have a tiny bit more of my own money to spend on clothes (and Target and used stores became fashion kosher), I found that wearing my favorite Docs or tweed thrifted jacket made me feel more secure in my own particular and beautiful weirdness.
SIDE NOTE: I won’t take up too much space here for this, but I wanted to share the #savefredperry movement with you, in case you hadn’t heard. The deal is this: the Proud Boys fascist fuckers adopted a particular Fred Perry shirt as their trademark. The Fred Perry company went ballistic with outrage. The brand is about everything opposite to the nazi fuckery of the Proud Boys, and so they made it a point to issue strong statements opposing the use of their brand for hate. They even stopped selling that shirt in North America at all, to stop hateful asshats from using their fashion to represent everything that Fred Perry the man and Fred Perry the brand is vehemently against. Now, their Instagram is focused on the movement called Save Fred Perry or Fred Perry Proud—they re-post pictures of people wearing their fashions and issue a thank you for standing up against racism and taking back their brand from those that use it wrongly. It’s pretty awesome.
Anyway.
My love of costumes and cool looking fripperies is a big reason I’ve always enjoyed Halloween and RenFaire in my youth, have loved my theatrical career, and why I enjoy burlesque today. I’ve even started modeling, which is only a thing I can do in today’s much more inclusive acknowledgment of model types besides skinny women. It has done wonders for my problems with my body image, almost as much as burlesque has. It has allowed me to appreciate my mature body, as it is, this far past the skinny teenager I used to be. It’s helped me in the process of coming to terms with my size these days. I mean, there’s nothing like the raucous cheers of an audience who doesn’t know me, hooting and hollering for my body as I display it on stage. Talk about a healing process for body dysmorphia.
The main place where I learned how to model, and did so for a few years there before the project folded, was a fashion show series for local designers, called Denver Unique Week of Fashion. The thing about this organization was their central slogan: “Beauty is Everywhere.” As such, the models at DUWF were a huge array of body size, shape, gender, age, color, and anything else you can imagine. It was very cool. One year, I modeled a design created by an 11 year old! It was super cool, made for my body, and she let me keep the dress after. But each designer I’ve walked for has been so interesting and strange and lovely and of course, having modeling on my resume is also a pretty big deal for me, being bigger and not as pretty as most.
The last DUWF show (in early 2023) showcased a fun series of themes, and the designer I walked for had a theme of angels and devils. When the pictures came out, my initial reaction was repulsion at how fat I thought I looked. But then I sat with it for a while, and wrote this caption on the pictures I displayed on an insta post about the event, just before my 50th birthday:
“So seeing these pics from the glorious finale of DUWF made me knee-jerk react by thinking I looked too fat for my own personal aesthetic tastes. But then it struck me that that attitude is antithetic to everything the DUWF was about. And that the designer made this with my big body in mind. I looked at them again and saw the beauty. It’s never going to be easy for me, but I do know how much happier I am in this bigger body; how much more stage time I get to display its wonders. So. Here’s this big beautiful devil here to tempt you in the wilderness. Just in time for Lent.”
My next modeling gig? I get to wear a pink and black vintage lingerie ensemble to show a local lingerie boutique, at the next Blue Dime Cabaret show. I got my big, big, measurements taken for it the other day and I’m very much looking forward to it. I’ll share a pic if they’re tasteful enough, later.
Check out this description of an outfit I was wearing, from a diary blog back in 2018:
Today I’m wearing this pencil skirt that’s a sort of gray tweedy pattern but much, much softer and stretchier than tweed. My favorite gray cardigan with overlong sleeves is warm over a black T-shirt that has buttons down the back and flecks of white woven throughout, making it look like a Bob-Ross-created night sky. My doc marten boots are very well worn, old, and tall. The stockings I picked today for warmth: they go up to my thighs under the skirt, barely fending off the cold outdoors. They’re black, with patterned holes throughout, which show up as white with my pale skin. My coat is a man’s tweed coat, gray heathered tweed, and long. My scarf is an infinity scarf with stripes of gray, burgundy, and a thin line of gold, all soft warm wool. Bracelets of leather, and silver, and fluorite.
Mixing patterns and textures is supposed to be a cool thing in fashion, isn’t it? I wouldn’t know—since 8th grade, I’ve dressed quite beyond the trends.
Why 8th grade? Well when I was going to school, we did elementary (grade) school from kindergarten through 6th grade. Junior high was grades 7-9, and then high school was 10-12. All through grade school I was painfully nerdy (as well as poor), so my appearance and my freakish intellect combined to make me the victim of all bullies and cool kids and Mean Girls. I was abused by these kids daily, until graduation to junior high, the first year of which I became interested in fashion and looking cool (prolly something to do with puberty). Being poor, however, threw a big wrench in that machine, and I was bullied, hazed, and abused so badly that it became difficult to lift my head in the halls. The talented and gifted program and (especially!) getting involved in theatre kept me from falling through the existential cracks.
What happens when a human is treated with cruelty and for long enough? That’s right—if they survive, they rebel.
It was 8th grade, just before picture day, that I remember consciously stopping, looking inward, and making a change in my fashion. If I’m to be a freak anyway, I thought, I’m gonna be the scariest, most fabulously gothy freak my oppressors could imagine and flee in fear of. In the mid-to-late ‘80s, after all, brand names were paramount in being “cool” with fashion and there was no way I could possibly keep up with that, with my budget. We didn’t have thrift store hip back then. But we did have punks. And we had the infancy of Goth.
I wouldn’t get the balls to dye my hair black till high school, but the mods and the New Romantics I could do. Tailored men’s shirts with soft scarves as ties? Check. Oversized metallic rayon button-downs with short boots? Check. Spraying a short haircut around a Greek fisherman’s cap? Just hand over the Aqua Net. In the silver can, please; I’m not fucking around here. Men’s blazers with either Bermuda shorts or very short skirts with ruffles? I’m way ahead of you. Shoulder pads? Please.
Suddenly, as I was no longer being held to the fashion plates of the popular-girl panoply, the bullying dropped off by a huge margin (by high school it would have quieted completely). That day in 8th grade, I quit attempting to be one of them, and fully became one of *myself * instead.
In 9th grade, when the school-wide-voted yearbook awards were announced over the intercom, my name was on the list. What award did the whole school (read: mostly the rich popular kids) vote to give me? Not Most Popular, not Hottest, not Most Likely To Succeed, nope. Know what they crowned me?
Most Creative.
…
Fuck.
That announcement blew my mind. I wish I hadn’t lost my yearbooks in a basement flood years ago, because I’d love to open it up to that page with a picture of me sporting my Tom Hulce haircut with its pile of curls on top, and see what singular quotes they put there from me in the awards section. I remember hearing this award announced, and I remember which picture they used of me, but I don’t remember what they quoted. Anyway. Whatever I do, is worth remembering.
It’s a good thing, too—I’m gasping for air right now, in middle age (not middle school, ha), after drowning through my young adulthood and a marriage to a narcissist in my 30s. In order to be me again, to hit the ground running after a lifetime of bullying, even this many years later (let alone surfacing after the pandemic), I have to be sharp, I have to be resilient. I have to vote myself:
Most Creative.
Hm. Wonder what that might entail, today.
