Fashion Through My Eyes

Every day we chose what clothes we want the rest of the world to see us in – what other people see as an initial judgment of who we are and what we represent, whether it is true or not.  Through my own fashion choices, I will explain why I believe that clothing cannot truly represent who a person is.

Softball 2009

            When I was in middle school and high school, I played sports ALL THE TIME (anywhere between 1&3 sports at a time). I saw this as a reason to dress in athletic clothes…every day. At that time, I would never have gotten out of bed and throw a pair of jeans on, unless I was forced to. All I cared about was being comfortable because I was ALWAYS on the go – always going to a different practice or game, but I didn’t care. I was comfortable with who I was and people talking about what I wore meant nothing to me. Dressing the way I did back then only represented a small portion of my personality: athletic and confident (mainly). No one would have ever guessed 

that I was a straight A student and that I took AP classes all throughout high school.

Eventually, I started to care about what people said about my clothing choices, which was around the same time as when my grandmother died, and that’s when I see the biggest change in my fashion choices.

Prom 2012

  As senior year of high school came around and I knew that I would need to be leaving for college soon, I became really self-conscientious of what I wore. How society thought women should dress started to affect me and I became a victim to, by my own fault, social norms. I began to use fashion as a competition between myself and other women (Kant proposes a theory that fashion is vanity and used a competition between people – and that is exactly what I do). Prom was probably the greatest example of this, in my life (although, I mean, most girls have the same thought when buying a prom dress).

            Pretty recently, I have realized that this imaginary competition that I made up within my own mind does not make me less conscientious, it makes me much more self-conscientious than ever before. What truly makes me less self-conscientious is surrounding myself with my family and friends – the people that I know care about me. I don’t want to look back on my fashion choices and know that I was only dressing to put on clothes that didn’t represent anything about me and made me look superficial. More and more, I have been wearing clothes that mean something to me: clothes that were given to me by important people, remind me of important people or a memory of someone important.

Graduation Party 2012

Aran Sweater

            The article of clothing that I have that is most representative of this is a sweater that was made on the Aran Islands of Ireland. Because my family is mostly Irish and Italian this sweater reminds me of my family and of home. Whenever I miss home, I wear this sweater because it makes me feel as if I have all the comforts of home by just putting on this sweater.

            I don’t want to be seen as superficial, or look back and think that I am superficial. Strangers may think that I am superficial because their initial judgments are based on how I am dressed. I am being more true to myself and who I am through my clothing choices than ever before, but only people that truly know me would know that.  Strangers would not see me wearing this sweater from Ireland and think, “That sweater shows how family oriented she is”.  I see clothes as an intriguing shell to a person’s character, not a representation of a person’s full character.