The outfit that spoke volumes
And made me feel like I belonged
“What is the most transformative conversation you have ever had on the subject of fashion or style?”
“Hey. Can I sit here?”
A girl with curly brown hair and a black leather choker was asking to sit at my table in geography. I’d never met her before and she seemed very cool; very much someone who wouldn’t want to talk to me.
“Sure,” I said, tentatively. She smiled.
It was my first week of high school, September 2000. I was 13 years old and it was my first day as my new self: a goth girl.
All summer I’d felt in my bones it was time to reinvent my style, to match my outside appearance to the way I felt inside. So that morning, the day the cool girl with the curly hair and choker sat beside me, I’d gotten dressed with intention.
First, I slid opened my mirrored closet door and pulled out a fitted long-sleeve black T-shirt that read “GLAM” across the chest in rhinestones. Then, I buckled myself into my midnight blue fleece Modrobes (a popular “lounge pant” in Canada in the ‘90s and early aughts; they’re apparently “back” as of 2022) and slicked my long blonde hair back into a tight ponytail.
Next, I fished out a black eyeliner I’d swiped from my mom’s makeup stash and pulled down my lower lids, one at a time, coloring in my waterline, nice and thick.
I looked at my reflection, twisting from side the side, adding a few more silver rings to my fingers. There. Perfect. I recognized her.
—
The curly-haired cool girl, Adriana, had the look and persona I was so striving for: all-black everything; scuffed-but-chic combat boots; no time for anybody’s shit; and a mostly moody and sardonic but occasionally playful vibe. After geography, she asked if I wanted to eat with her in the caf. “Yes.” Obviously, the answer was yes.
We squeezed onto the end of a long lunch table.
“I saw you and had to meet you,” she said, picking at her food shyly. She had a gazillion silver rings on, just like me. “I kept thinking, ‘She’s wearing all black! She’s wearing all black!’ So, hi.”
It was my outfit. The outfit I’d so carefully planned that morning had sung its siren song and drawn this strange, stylish, pretty girl into my orbit. I couldn’t believe it.
Outsider inside
I was not a kid who ever fit in. I was born with strabismus, aka a “lazy eye” that turned in toward my nose, and it made other kids nervous. It’s not that I didn’t have friends — I did — but it wasn’t easy to be social. Another kid had to be really confident to reach out their hand to me and say, “Yes, I’ll stand by you. Yes, I’ll be your friend,” because they risked being ostracized by the rest of the group.
I did a lot of things to try to fit in, like adopting the same taste in music or TV shows as everyone else, but one thing I never compromised on was my clothes. I loved clothes — especially funky ones.
I remember being in grade 5 and getting a black pleather dress (the shiniest of pleather) from someone my dad worked with. It was at least three sizes too big for me but it was the coolest garment I’d ever owned. I wore it to school one day with a black turtleneck underneath, and by lunchtime a girl in my class had fashioned her own “black pleather dress” out of a trash bag and was wearing it all over school asking other kids to “guess who I am!” I was completely humiliated and never wore it again.
By the time I reached the summer before high school, my inner life was dark. I was still friendly on the outside and tried hard to get people to like me, but inside I was all fear and anxiety and worry that I’d never find my “group,” never have a first kiss, never feel like I belonged.
But then I met Adriana. And she liked my outfit. And she was nervous to talk to me, for heaven’s sake. That had never happened before.
Being goth? It was the best.
Slowly, slowly, in the years that followed, I built up a little confidence. I stopped caring so much what other people thought of me. And the bullying started to fade away. I don’t know whether it was the clothes, or the new friend, or the fresh start in high school, but I suddenly had a little armor; a shell that was harder to pierce.
When I think of that girl, teenage me, I think of someone who was free — to chop and dye and change her hair on a dime, to wear a lace dress or a miniskirt one day and black Dickies and a hoodie the next, to kiss anyone and everyone she liked who’d kiss her back. Was I a little wild? Sure, but I also wasn’t afraid. And I would like to channel just a little of that fearlessness now, in a 35-year-old way.
As far as my clothes, I’m not sure if channeling her means wearing a “uniform” again, or at least nailing down my “look” in a more specific way. Probably it means digging into the way I feel now, in my bones, and unlocking what that looks like in my closet and on my body. Whatever it is, I’m definitely holding my teenage self close and thanking her for being brave.