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What I wear does more than cover me. A delicate Buddha necklace and a fringed 1970s-style purse found while thrifting with my best friend each carry a story, turning my wardrobe into a record of the people, places and experiences that shaped me.
The preppy green skirt from my first day of high school remains part of that record, as does the pink bandana top I chose for my first Billy Joel concert. Linen sundresses and flowing maxi skirts take me back to childhood summers in Sonoma Valley.
I admit that I keep some clothes long after they stop fitting. But pieces such as my one-of-a-kind taupe cowgirl boots deserve another life. I am saving them for my younger girl cousins, confident that they will appreciate them someday.
My mother has always connected clothing with memory, and I inherited that instinct. A cinnamon-colored wool funnel-neck sweater on a high shelf reminds her of enduring bitterly cold college days with lifelong friends. The pointed kitten heels I clomped around in at age 7 recall the first major purchase she made after starting her first professional job in Midtown Manhattan.
My fascination with fashion may have begun before I was born. My great-grandmother loved to sew and passed that enthusiasm to my mother, who made many of her own clothes. Her creations included an imitation Laura Ashley dress for her high school graduation.
I found my own passion for making things during a weeklong bout of flu in third grade. Sitting at my desk with my feet swinging, I worked intently at a childproof sewing machine that used neither needle nor thread. I fashioned headbands and other accessories for my family.
That early experiment grew into a hand-drawn fashion magazine, which I sent quarterly to relatives and friends over the next several years.
In fourth grade, a summer camp counselor taught me the basics of crochet. By the end of middle school, I had turned dozens of skeins of yarn into a personal clothing collection. Several drawers in my closet are now filled with my handmade halter tops, miniskirts, beanies and bucket hats.
Social media continually promotes new aesthetics and “cores,” each offering another neatly packaged identity. My experience has taught me that personal style develops through experimentation: trying different looks and noticing which ones make you feel most at ease.
I cannot place my style into a tidy category. It simply feels like me, cliché though that may sound. My clothes shift with my creative and emotional moods. Sometimes the clearest signal of how I feel is the cut of my jeans, from bootcut to straight leg.
Style Across Generations
Fashion has also deepened my connection with the women in my family. I have spent hours studying grainy photographs of my grandmother, whom I call Ba, from the years she lived in Paris. Her elegance seems impossible to teach and possible only to inherit.
In several pictures, Ba and her sisters pose on the French Riviera in oversized sunglasses, relaxed mustard-yellow halter tops and bell-bottom jeans. Their outfits capture the 1970s while somehow rising above the decade’s trends.
A photograph from the 1980s shows Ba beside my grandfather on a piano bench. She is wearing black-and-white slingback stilettos and a blue-and-green patterned dress reminiscent of Diane von Furstenberg.
I still enjoy paging through Ba’s French editions of Elle and Marie Claire. We talk about designers, from the vivid identity of Missoni to the distinctly American elegance of Ralph Lauren.
Fashion is an everyday conversation with my mother, too. We shop together and constantly exchange clothes. Ba, my mother, my aunt and I share both an obsession with fashion and remarkably similar taste. We buy things for one another, and our closets sometimes contain identical pieces.
My aunt’s wardrobe is another source of discovery. I search through it for striking relics of the Y2K era and half-jokingly ask to borrow them, even though I know those clothes hold memories she is not ready to surrender.
In a world where so much lies beyond my control, fashion gives me a way to define and express myself. Some people dismiss it as frivolous, but to me it is essential.
When I leave home wearing bootcut jeans and a belt I crocheted myself, I am carrying more than an outfit. I am stepping out wrapped in my identity, creativity and confidence.