For members of Gen Z, such as myself, claiming an aesthetic that aligns with your personality is almost a rite of passage.
It takes time to curate what elements of life speak to you, laid out in methodically planned Pinterest boards, especially with so many labels to choose from: “coquette”, “whimsigoth”, and “clean girl” are often thrown around, describing how someone dresses, decorates their bedrooms, or even practises hobbies.
As a lover of all things artistic and beautiful, I am no stranger to the concept and haven’t been for a long time. I’ve had a wavering relationship with aesthetic labels throughout my life, from finding them to be safe and comforting, to being inherently boring, and to the happy balance I’ve seemed to strike up in the present day.
The Early days
As a young girl, I was so desperate to find myself. The kids in my elementary school classes always seemed to have it all figured out, with their devotion to their respective hobbies and militant allegiances to their favourite colours. It felt weird to not have something that made me stand out, especially in a tiny school where you stayed with the same 15-20 people for every grade level.
However, when I discovered the Internet, things began to change for me. I remember being 11 or 12, and searching endlessly for the perfect wallpaper for my iPad Mini; back when the term “aesthetic” only covered the vaporwave, Tumblr vibe. I remember somewhat liking it, with the cool futuristic art style and use of Lo-Fi music, but it didn’t make me obsessively happy to the point where everything I owned was pastel purple and covered in photos of old statues.
Still, finding out that I could identify my personality using pictures and videos really excited me. I would scroll for hours, putting together mood boards on Polyvore and WeHeartIt (I am definitely aging myself with these apps), desperately trying to find a collection of images that spoke to me. There are only so many photos of fairy lights, messy buns and latte art you can look at before your little pre-teen brain starts to melt.
Finding solace in being similar
When I reached high school, I really began to delve into aesthetics. I bounced between so many in my teen years, photos of me from the ages of 14-18 look like totally different girls with braced smiles and choppy haircuts.
I had a brief emo/alt-rock phase where I exclusively wore black skinny jeans and listened to Panic! At The Disco. I tried the VSCO girl vibe with scrunchies and sticker-plastered water bottles, and even contributed to the TikTok “indie” girl trend of 2020, with vibrant photo filters and gigantic sweatshirts. I wish I had the photos to prove it, but for the sake of my dignity, all traces of evidence relating to these eras have been effectively destroyed.
Despite my frequent style experiments, I felt secure. I plastered so many labels on myself, many of which contrasted each other greatly, but I didn’t care. I was just happy to fit in. Dressing a certain way and upholding my Pinterest profile to a certain standard made me feel safe, and it felt great to have similar fashion and lifestyle tastes as my friends and people I admired on social media. It was like we all automatically had something in common.
By Grade 12, I reached a common ground with what helped me conform and feel like myself: bright colours and a mixture of 1970’s and early 2000’s style components. This meant a LOT of flare pants and Claire’s jewelry, as well as eclectic nail polish colours and pastel pinks and blues in my outfits. I stood out among my peers, known for my various pairs of Converse and butterfly hair clips, while still fitting into the early 90’s nostalgia-core.
I even coined the affectionate yet clever nickname, “Lizzie McGuire”.
“Who even am I?”
Slowly, after being known for looking like a vision of the early 2000s for months, I got bored.
I started getting sick of it, particularly when I started university. I wanted to be taken seriously, which I thought was impossible to accomplish while wearing overalls and pink sneakers. The weight of the image I had created for myself started to feel more and more like a facade, one that I still tried to keep up long after I phased out of buying brightly-coloured jeans and an obscene amount of enamel jewelry.
The feeling of being safe in my own aesthetic, one that I had grown to love, was slipping away. It soon started to feel more like feeling trapped in the confines of what other people expected me to dress like, after looking a certain way for so long.
My first year of university was a tricky one for a multitude of reasons, but one of the main ones was the issue of my not knowing who the hell I wanted to be. I had somehow transitioned from high school student to young adult in a costume of who I thought I was, and the thought of sticking another aesthetic label on myself just to have another identity crisis in a year was maddening.
I spent a lot of time in sweatpants during that era. Nothing wrong with that, if that’s how you feel comfortable, but for a fashion lover like me, it was depressing. Expressing myself through my appearance (no matter what aesthetic I was currently enthralled with) was always my medium of choice. As opposed to feeling trapped in the confines of a specific style, now I felt as if I were lost in space, floating aimlessly in a vast abyss of the unknown.
the revelation and present outcome
That was until, finally, it hit me.
Who was I trying to prove myself to by sticking to “my” aesthetic?
Nobody in my life was expecting me to dress or act a certain way; the ones who had been, like random high school peers, had been left behind in my teenage years. My true friends and family wouldn’t love me any less for bouncing between looks, going from sweatpants one day and a sundress to another.
After my lightning-bolt moment, I could feel my passion for fashion slowly beginning to re-take its place in my life. My palette expanded, with overalls hanging next to preppy blouses and ratty band tees in my closet. My general happiness with my appearance also began to improve again, with the weight of my self-imposed standards to look a certain way falling futile.
Now, I continue to glow under the shining affirmation that, even if I didn’t strictly adhere to one style, I still love dressing up within a certain aesthetic when the moment called for it. For instance, I’m never without my clunkiest, coolest boots when going to a rock concert, even if there is an absurd risk of killing my feet with blisters and melting under the 40°C sun.
(Don’t try that, by the way.)
Moral of the story? The key component to having your own aesthetic is making it yours, not just parading yourself around in whatever social media tells you to wear.