Style Evolution

I know, I'm going super easy on posts this week. On the upside, my floor is sort-of safe to walk on now, and I can use my couch again (though I have to transfer books between sides to make it work...)

So, now, for an admittedly probably boring post (I'm sorry!), we have my fashion evolution. Brace yourselves for some weird stuff. I don't count anything before the age of ten, as, well, you really have no sense about your clothes then. (And your parents are usually dressing you. And I was in whatever would stand up to constant abuse for more than three days...)

Age 10

You can't see in this picture, but I can tell you: white t-shirts and jeans were pretty much my wardrobe of choice. Every t-shirt was crew-neck, every pair of jeans was bootcut, and usually lacked a hem because the legs were too long, and instead of folding them (I read in some fictional story that that looked 'trashy') to not drag on the ground, I abused the poor things till the hems literally came apart. I'd wander around with whatever fragments survived dragging behind me. (FYI, the dog was my aunt's - the aunt I no longer seem to speak to).

Age 12

This was one of my....weirder thrifting finds. I wore it to death, of course. My hair was as wild then as it is now (it's wild when short, and when longer, and sort of behaves when it's chin length, but looks bad unless you hit the right angle). I used to wonder what I was thinking for wearing something so "look at me", now I wonder what I was thinking because the prints were hideous, and each section had an upraised line between them. Live and learn?

Age 14

As long as it was black, it was good. I was trying very hard to be gothic (despite being highly offended, at age ten, to be called such for wearing one of the only black shirts I owned), so I wore a uniform of black pants and black t-shirts. I ruined it by being silly. This is another one of the same aunt's dogs, Fridley, who is still around and adorable.

Age 16

I am a curvy girl. I've got a D-sized chest, forty-something inch hips, a ridiculously small waist (seriously...twenty-five inches? Is that even proportional?) and I'm well, to quote Madam Maxime from Harry Potter, "I've got big bones". I blame the enormous amounts of Swedish and German ancestry. (Seriously, except for a few Cherokee, my mother's side of the family is entirely descended from Germany. No. Variation. Whatsoever. My dad's side is the real mutt - Cherokee, Swedish, UK-area people, people from everywhere in Europe...) Well, imagine being a curvy girl and going to a school full of girls who literally look like celebrities. Talk about image issues! I'm the largest girl in my school, despite being the shortest. But from the moment I entered my school, my style sloped towards baggy and unrevealing. That shirt's a large. Granted, at the time of this picture, I was a B. It hangs slightly better now.

Age 17

I got more inventive, and a bit less self-conscious. The first picture features one of my uniform skirts turned into a top via a huge safety pin and a belt too tiny for my hips. I got quite a few compliments on it, and believe me, it increased my willingness to keep experimenting with fashion. My wardrobe expanded, too, from baggy t-shirts and jeans to fitted pieces like the oxford shirt from Forever 21, and the bubble skirt from Wet Seal. I started incorporating the enormous high heel collection I already had into my ordinary wardrobe - no longer logo'd t-shirts and huge jeans, but some actual flattering shirts and skirts, and even dresses. I've done more in the past year with my clothing than I'd done in the past sixteen. And I'd say it's been worth it. (And none of it would've happened if I hadn't gone to Spain, seriously...)

(All pictures were taken from my facebook.)