Personal Style Mad-Lib

Maybe we're getting a little too specific.

When I was very young, my sister and I were often asked as we stood side by side, how others could tell us apart. Since we were identical twins, and very alike it wasn’t particularly easy coming up with a way to tell people who you were. 

“What does it mean to be Ava?” Felt like what they were asking. In elementary school that was a very existential question. I think in later years it made me feel pressured to have the words to describe myself. It felt like everyone was in this fluid space and I was stuck in a rigid one. I had to know my interests and what I was good at because if I didn’t my identity was lost altogether. It was hard. It didn’t make being a twin hard, it made being myself hard. It felt like I always had to embody the words of my identity instead of embodying myself. I had to analyze every micro-interest and log it for later.

I started to sense maybe my hatred of hyper-specific aesthetics boils down to having to constantly categorize myself for others. It’s hard to describe how reducing that feels. My sister inadvertently became one of the faces of the eclectic grandpa movement. Which I felt reduced my sister to something trendy, instead of years of refined organic personal style.

To me this is how it usually happens: A real trend comes into play, and people are interested in it. One person finds a pair of pants that fit the trend and creates a take on the look. They post it to social media. It then goes to Pinterest. Someone who wants to forecast the next big thing wants credit for the next idea sees an image of someone with personal style, and names their style based on one outfit. What gains traction is the micro trend because the larger idea isn’t specific enough, and it’s not clear enough for people to shop for. That ONE outfit becomes trendy. But only for a short time. Soon enough, the unique elements of their personal style which made the outfit so interesting in the first place, are like yesterday’s newspaper— on the outs.

It’s the specific naming aspect to me. It makes me feel like I am in elementary school again grasping for anything that sets me apart. The idea that we are creating an aesthetic from one outfit. We are forecasting trends based on one photo. We get so specific that the idea itself has no barriers to break, no play. Forcing ourselves to hyper-analyze and name singular facets of personal style creates a rigid identity instead of an evolving one. It reminds me of that feeling of being the twin who liked such and such. The specific categorizing of my identity gave me no room for self-discovery. I was the twin who liked this and therefore that was my identity. These different aesthetics create that same mindset but for ourselves. We believe we belong, that we have an identity if we just buy the clothes.

There is a difference when describing your style and naming it. The three word method is a great example of a sort of freeing effect of knowing your style. Finding your three words requires you to look across your entire style history and use adjectives that mean something by way of fashion and to you. My three words were
60s, eclectic, classic.
These words are a cultivation of references and organic interests I’ve had all my life. It’s not rigid or specific enough to make it hard to grow, or to make my own. It welcomes rediscovering not reinventing.

Not to mention these words have been referenced in fashion for years. Aesthetics are created in the moment. Eclectic is a real world but adding the additional grandpa title makes it confusing. A small microgenre of a real concept. Discovering the next big trend for people to tie their identity to for a short while has become a Madlib. Adjective, noun. I think it’s sort of faux analysis or forecasting. People think they are predicting something they are seeing in real-time with their eyes. The trend gives people the sense of knowing themselves when they really know an algorithm. When I classified who I was through different interests what I was really doing was giving myself a place to belong.

In the past, we have allowed our forecasts to be specific. But most examples I can think of belong to editorials— that’s where eclectic grandpa can thrive. A creative idea instead of a prediction or trend title. Even then, the ideas used for photoshoots and articles come from a real analysis of the cultural landscape, runway, and history, and not from a refreshed Pinterest feed. I am not trying to kill the whimsey of others, to not support the hopes of forecasters everywhere. But I think it would be insulting to believe without proper experience or understanding that you are qualified to be telling us what the next big thing is.

When we continue to reduce and reduce organic cultural trends, to subgenres upon subgenres we lose that sense of purpose and belonging that the original title created. If we broke down indie sleaze into every subculture that came out of it, we’d lose the meaning of it all together. So many people participated in indie sleaze because it was one of the few defining trends of the time. People had their own take on it and yet, belonged to something larger which makes the whole concept fun and exciting. Separating the people within this idea by their take on a large trend breaks the sense of belonging. It creates a lack of discovery and growth within your own identity. It’s like reading the same story over and over, there’s nothing new to learn here. If we only focus on fitting into one hyper-specific aesthetic after the other, we’re simply putting on different costumes and never diving deep into what it means to be ourselves. We are so focused on belonging to a preset identity we forget we already have one. People look to aesthetics to feel like they understand themselves—to fit in. But the answer to who you are isn’t someone else’s Pinterest photo.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope that the naming thing we’re doing doesn’t give people an identity crisis on the daily. I hope that people feel like the ideas have longevity. I hope no one feels lost in the onset of change the way I did for so much of my adolescence when the label I created for myself got too small forcing me to pivot from my incredibly small comfort zone. I hope no one feels the burden of defining themselves over and over just to have an identity. I hope and hope and hope.

A few years ago I had a peeling sunburn on my cheek around the area of a freckle I have had forever. The freckle for some time, was the only visual indicator of my identity to many. When I peeled away the area, it appeared my freckle was taken with it. In the millisecond I believed my freckle was gone, I felt like I was losing a key part of myself. Like someone was stripping away the thing that made me Ava. One look in the mirror and I saw my freckle was still there. It should have given me relief but all I could think of was my panic. As if a single freckle held my entire being. Eventually, I had to ask myself, if I lost the freckle what would happen?

I would wake up tomorrow and I’d be Ava. I’d be Ava for a long list of reasons and Chloe would still be Chloe. I imagine waking up to the next aesthetic launch feels like this. You feel a little lost until you can seek guidance on what to do. I think letting go of the iron grip I had on who I was, freed me from the burden of constant definition. Maybe in the past, I thought too much about how to be me, like I was playing myself in a movie about me. To be me, I have to do this. To be an eclectic grandpa, to fit in, I have to do this. The same story. To know ourselves, we sometimes have to give up searching for what it is and simply be. Some things require no words at all.

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In hopes our self-discovery is done through experiences and not Pinterest! Also to note. I wrote most of this while sitting with Heather in a coffee shop in the East Village where upon leaving hurricane-style winds flipped her umbrella inside out and sent me into hysterics. A story I vowed to tell upon sending this newsletter. Maybe classic wind-blown aesthetic will be the next big thing to hit the market? If so just know Heather and I did it first.