Or, a reflection on finding normalcy during times of change.
There’s something about an outfit that can change the entire course of your day.
The moment you decide to wear it, it shifts the places that you’ll go. It can become the driving force behind one’s confidence, self-expression, and even the things that make them who they are.
Just the other day, I was planning to meet a friend at the library, but I’d subconsciously stumbled upon a look an hour earlier while getting dressed that far exceeded the library’s potential. I needed to be at a coffee shop, or my outfit did, so I asked her for a rain check.
On the way home, alone, from that cafè later the same day, an older woman chided me in the street, exclaiming that my “legs must be very cold!” But as my scarlet red Mary Jane slippers daintily stepped around the muddy puddles, I knew that it wasn’t really me that had perhaps unwisely selected this outfit for the occasion, but the very opposite. The look had chosen me, and my day simply needed to form around it. Though this isn’t always the case.
Over the course of my admittedly short life, I’ve had the true privilege of living in several markedly different climates and cultures around the world. I grew up in Ohio, went to undergrad in Minnesota, studied abroad in Barcelona, Rome, and London, and then taught in Athens, Greece, for two years before starting my master’s at St Andrews. These tremendous shifts in temperature and environment imbued me with a serious respect and a humble reverence not only for my surroundings but also for the act of shifting in and of itself.
A good look in Berlin falls way short in Lisbon. In London, I came to understand I would need a black puffer coat like all the other cool teen boys, while in Rome, it would be a wool trench and loose trousers. In Minnesota, I simply needed to survive. No patch of skin is unarmored. In Athens, it was Mamma Mia at work and Y2K grunge punk fairy in the streets. I started warning my friends and family as they came to visit me in Greece: “your Gap khakis are not going to work here. Do you have any cargo pants that have been converted into mini skirts?” Real style, I’d come to believe, is not in the outfits. But in adaptation.
Shifting this past year again to St Andrews, I learned to set aside my little hair clips and reach for bright, striped scarves. I traded my messenger totes for purses. Swapped my track pants for those little office-worker peplum tops. My sneakers for more expensive sneakers. My glitter for gold. But as I packed my suitcase this last December to travel back to Dayton, Ohio, I stilled. It had been a while. I threw in some long-sleeved tees, jeans, and a sweatshirt. I figured, as a last resort, that I must still have some clothes left over in my childhood bedroom anyway. There was an old prom dress I’d wished several times that I had brought to St Andrews, so if anything, I could wear that.
When I landed in the US, though, it quickly dawned how unimportant all of that was. How ridiculous it seemed to have been worrying about whether or not I would stand out in my hometown. It only mattered that my parents were there waiting. That I made it through customs, albeit with a new app and a renewed promise of inoffensive social media. When we joined our extended family for Christmas, all that mattered was that we were all safe and together, when so many around the country weren’t.
I had planned to write an article about transitioning to and from the fashion of your hometown. I meant to playfully tease Dayton, Ohio for its style and compare it to major cities around the world. But it’s an article I don’t feel like I can write anymore. As I walked past several armed national guards in D.C., theirs were the only outfits I seemed to be noticing.
And there’s something about an outfit that can change the entire course of your day.
I sat down originally to write about adapting to a changing environment through style. But to write about adaptation would be remiss without highlighting the genuine adaptation so many in my home country are doing. To consider your outfit in the morning might be to consider how long you might be wearing it. What you’ll have on in the photo that the news uses. A new way of getting dressed in the morning with new considerations and new concerns. A new way of answering the door when it’s knocked.
To think about what I was wearing, in the midst of everything going on around me felt selfish and small. And it hadn’t been on my mind until a few weeks into my trip, when a good friend invited me over for dinner. “My mom says smart-casual,” he told me. “What even is smart-casual?” I wondered, trying on different outfits in the mirror. I’d been living out of my small suitcase since getting home, and I really had nothing that felt like either word. But we spent the night catching up. And we ate well in a warm house with yellow lights and a real fire. And we promised not to go so long again without seeing one another.
There’s something about an outfit that can change the entire course of your day.
The moment you decide to wear it, it shifts the places that you’ll go. It becomes the driving force behind the rest of your evening. And as I looked down at the clothes I’d chosen, they became smart-casual. I had taken what I had and made it work, and I fit into my environment and I felt good. I felt proud to have picked the right outfit for the right occasion.
And amidst it all, somehow, something selfish and small felt fun again.