Standing Out and Fitting In

H&M sweater
Uniqlo shirt
Mavi jeans (c/o)
Mango boots
Looks Like Summer clutch (similar)
Mango sunglasses (similar)
Daisy London earrings (c/o)
Location: The Ambassador Apartments – Winnipeg, Manitoba

All of the clothes I desperately wanted to wear in high school are suddenly available again. They don’t all look quite so appealing fifteen years in the future. Mostly, I wanted them back then because having the right clothes meant fitting in and fitting in was as important to me as it is to anyone else. I never really managed it, mind you; I was too smart for my own good to start with, and I never did have the right clothes. By thirteen, I was mostly funding my own wardrobe with my babysitting money, which meant the vast majority of what I wore came from sale racks. That was a choice. My parents would have bought clothes for me, but that meant giving them a kind of control over what I wore that I wasn’t willing to let them have.

Buying my own clothes from such a young age forced me to get creative, there’s no doubt about that. But it also meant that in a sea of Gap jeans and American Eagle t-shirts, I always stood out.

Standing out wasn’t a bad thing, but it took travelling to Europe for me to learn that. I wanted to fit in where I was – sartorially unsophisticated Winnipeg was the only world I knew until my first trip to Paris. That there might be other, better places to fit in where people dressed differently (or, dare I say it, more elegantly) didn’t occur to me until I experienced them first hand. In Europe, my classmates, who all had the sneakers and brand names jeans I covetted, stood out. They looked young and frankly, a bit artless. My clearance satin trousers and ribbed turtlenecks, on the other hand, meant I was right at home.

And I was, in so many ways.

I embraced standing out, after that trip. I couldn’t fit in – it wasn’t within my budget to be able to – so I gave up trying. The words constantly overdressed probably best describe me in my last two years of high school. When I think back on my favourite outfits, in particular a specific denim shirt dress that I regularly paired with knee high boots and a peacoat, I wonder how I didn’t freeze to death waiting for the bus everyday. Maybe my determination to be different kept me warm?

At times, I took it too far. Standing out became my signature which meant I pushed the sartorial envelope for the sake of doing it, because that was “me.” A particular outfit involving a green top and orange boots comes to mind. I’m glad there’s no photographic evidence of it, if I’m honest. At a certain point, standing out became how I fit in. It was hard to move away from that even after I moved on from high school. For a long time, even in my twenties, I wrestled with the notion that classic outfits were too boring, that someone “like me,” (whatever that meant) couldn’t get away with just wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

I can, of course. This outfit is proof of that. It’s also proof, I think, that the basic combination of jeans and a shirt can be both sophisticated and interesting. Its all about how you style it, and it’s true that styling it in certain ways may make you stand out in certain places. But as long as you feel good in what you’re wearing, that what matters.

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