~Fashion~ *jazz hands*
In which I write an overly long essay on My Life and Philosophical Self before showing you pictures of my favorite outfits and personal fashion trends from the past two-odd years, which occasionally escalates into a haphazard reflection on life in a pandemic and all that jazz.
I remember once discussing with my childhood friend a particular show--what was it called, “Fashion Nightmares”? Ah, I’ve looked it up now, it was “What Not to Wear”. It’s the one where the pedantic couple of fashion experts would come in and tell a hapless person, who had been nominated by friends (rather rudely, honestly), that their fashion sense was atrocious and they were here to help them “dress better”. They would go through the person’s closet and throw out anything and everything they deemed unfashionable or tacky. Sometimes it was fun to watch the outfits they put together to show the person a “better” way to dress, but on the whole, I found the premise largely terrifying and irksome. Sure, the person got a few thousand dollars to replenish their wardrobe with more “fashionable” clothes, but my heart ached for all the lovely, discarded garments.
“I wouldn’t care how much they paid me, I’d never let them throw out my good clothes like that,” I griped to my friend, probably as we were changing dance shoes between tap and jazz class back in our glitter-encrusted dance school dressing room lined with little white cubbies overflowing with spare tights and hairspray.
“You’d have to,” she told me with the unshakeable confidence third graders have when discussing things about which they know very little, “you can’t tell them no!”
“I would,” I rebutted, “I would simply refuse them. I wouldn’t go on the show or let them anywhere near my closet.”
“Nobody does that,” she assured me gravely. “It’s a huge honor to get to be on a show like that! You don’t get to just tell them no.”
“Well, I wouldn’t let them touch my stuff, so I’d have to tell them no. I like all my clothes and I like how I dress and I wouldn’t let them change me.” I have a lingering sense that she was rather horrified by this--in hindsight, looking at some of my memories of our friendship, I’m often surprised by how passive-aggressive our relationship could be, even though she was my very closest friend at the time--but we probably had to get to our next dance class before much more was said on the matter.
I can’t say for certain how much of this memory is constructed and how much of it has been reconstructed with time--childhood memories are notoriously fickle, and they say each time you remember something, you change it a little bit. If I talked to my friend, it’s unlikely she’d remember it the same, if at all. And I can certainly see how I frame myself as a hero in it; it reflects my image of myself as a free-spirited, independent person who does not bend to social pressures and the judgement of my peers but who instead lives as my own true, weird self--I’m sometimes my own manic pixie dream girl I think, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing to strive for, but it can be a slight caricature, a somewhat warped lense in how I look at myself. It is, however, a fairly good basis for understanding my approach to, and my sense of, fashion.
With the onset of the pandemic, I heard a lot of people talking (mostly jokingly--mostly) about what apocalypse fashion they would adopt as the world around us fell increasingly into disarray. Fortunately, I had recently acquired a new dystopian obsession with a bright, colorful aesthetic that I felt was perfect to lean into--My Chemical Romance’s Danger Days universe.
As it had happened, in February 2020 (t-minus one month to pandemic, little did we know), I idly started listening to My Chemical Romance again. I think what initially sparked my return to MCR, actually, was when I got recommended a series of videos relating to Panic! At the Disco, including this very nice acoustic set. In the comments, people were discussing the Emo Renaissance, and also debating whether this band was a valid member of the emo genre (according to isthisbandemo.com, a site I would discover much later in the obsession cycle, they are not, but obviously there is debate among fans who often lump them into the diverse musical category). I had listened very occasionally to one or two odd Panic! At the Disco songs before, pretty much exclusively through fan edits, many of which were of Gotham (my roughly 2017-18 obsession), although I think I also recognized “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” by virtue of having been alive and in the habit of occasionally listening to the radio and/or the music other kids were listening to in the 2000’s.
Regardless, the other primary band whose name came up in the “what is emo” discussion to whom I had any sort of interest or connection was My Chemical Romance. I had fallen in love with this beautiful Doctor Who fanvideo set to Welcome to the Black Parade long ago, and watched it on repeat for both the excellent Doctor Who edit and the brilliant new (to me) song. I also grew an affection towards “I’m Not Okay” after it appeared on Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III’s playlist as assembled by Taliesin Jaffe; I didn’t necessarily connect the two at the time, but I glommed on to the song--perhaps partly through a familiarity of having heard it before, I’m not sure--but certainly it was the song on the playlist that was closest stylistically to the rock music to which I typically listened. I also heard “Blood” in a Gotham fanvideo, and that one didn’t stand out quite as much over and above other music I learned from my Gotham fanvid era, but it was another early appearance of MCR in my music library. Broadly speaking, I’d had interactions with MCR songs before, but had never gotten deep into their music. But stumbling onto this new discussion sparked an urge in me to make a scholarly study of Emo Culture. I actually read the wikipedia article on Emo music--actually, now that I think about it, that may’ve preceded the Panic! at the Disco youtube videos, because I know I went through and listened to one song each from a whole list of emo artists, and it was a while before I circled back to MCR.
But I did, and I delved into that obsession. With it came its own fashion aesthetic--emo clothing, specifically that of the 2000s, era of my childhood, described by Wikipedia as “includ[ing] skinny jeans, tight T-shirts (usually short-sleeved, and often with the names of emo bands), studded belts, Converse sneakers, Vans and black wristbands....The best-known facet of emo fashion is its hairstyle: flat, straight, usually jet-black hair with long bangs covering much of the face,”. I had never been into that scene (actually scene is another thing--I’ll explain later, or actually probably I won’t because next year is once again sneaking up on me) when it was in its heyday, and I suppose perhaps that makes me the very definition of a poser, but on the internet, my hometown is tumblr, and on tumblr, cringe culture is dead--tumblr is easily the social media outlet that best meshes with my personal philosophy of weirdo glorification--and anyways, basically the philosophy there is if you’re having fun and not hurting anybody, go for it, or as this meme so eloquently puts it:
So, guided by the literal wikipedia description of Emo Aesthetic, here are some looks I put together:
Featuring Dramatic Pose(tm)
I think technically the red fishnet glove is a bit more scene, but I was working with what I had, and I got that at last year's day after Halloween sale at Walmart, haha.
This particular hairstyle is specifically inspired by the singer Josh Katz in
this music video for Animal; I did it with my long hair by putting it into a low ponytail and then flipping it back up over my head and bobbi pinning it into place, and it became one of my favorite recurring hairstyles. Actually, it also started in summer as just a way to get my hair more off of my neck, but I began smoothing it over into fake bangs--fangs, if you will. I was very proud of coming up with that name for the hairstyle.
Eventually, as I got deeper into MCR fandom, I happened onto a deep well of sub-fandom in the delightful Danger Days universe. It started when I was watching the music videos and saw Na Na Na, then Sing, then from the comments learned that there were comics; read the comics, joined the tumblr fandom, and this and that, become deeply entangled in the colorful rebellion against the monochrome totalitarian dictatorship of the Killjoys vs. BLI. To this day (writing in July 2021) it’s still one of my semi-active obsessions, although we’re well past the main burn of the obsession flame (editing and expanding for posting January 2021, and it's still a semi-active but more backburner obsession now). I really vibed with what MCR said about color and art as a rebellion against the mundanity of neutrals and capitalist standards. Fandom-wise, it was a perfect fit, my own natural chaos and love for bright colors and creativity with a fantasy world that claimed the same as its central tenets of joy and rebellion. It influenced my fashion, my art, occupied my fanfic writing. Soon I came up with my own Killjoy name--Amethyst Sky-- along with several other OC’s in the universe. But crafting my own Killjoy persona went hand in hand with creating my own Killjoy cosplays, cultivating my ultimate, vibrant dystopian fashion look from the clothes I held in my closet. Here are some highlights from pictures of myself I had sat aside to potentially make into a moodboard for Amethyst:
This was my very first Amethyst Sky outfit, actually. I made the background of this one into a colorpop to make it cool and aesthetic for the moodboard, though you can still see the mirror streaks in front of my face.
I titled this one "breaking into BLI with the Homies", haha :) It's taken in a bathroom that gave me BLI vibes, and as you can probably tell, I photoshopped the BLI logo into the background.
This is the outfit I wore to work the last day before we went into work at home quarantine for the first time in March 2020. It felt very apocalyptic closing everything up and not knowing when we'd come back, and it felt like the perfect time to embody the Killjoy Aesthetic as I'd interpreted it.
Later that same day--this is mostly to show that the cat ear headband lights up!
A closer look at my shoes and accessories: intentionally mismatched socks, floral Vans, that same red fishnet glove, and purple skinny jeans from Hot Topic.
This was, I believe, the first time I went out after we went into quarantine--I went to take a load of our garbage to town, and it felt like enough of an event after working from home for a
This forest is far too lush for it to have truly Killjoy vibes, being as the series takes place in the desert, but the rusty pipe in the background was about as dystopian of a backdrop as I could find near me. Plus, if you expand the Killjoys universe to the rest of America, it's reasonable enough to imagine that some may be hiding out in more forested regions.
I kept the prescribed skinny jeans of emo since my only pair were already washed in a (relatively) bright color, pairing them with a vivid crop-top with a mission statement--Love--and a bright undershirt because I wasn’t actually going to go out without my belly covered, at work or not, but also for another fun pop of color.
As winter settled in, I found the need to dress more warmly; especially since my workplace was under construction and the heat was out, leaving my coworker and I at our desks with personal space heaters straining against the sometimes well-below-zero temperatures. I discovered that skirts over thick leggings actually kept me much warmer than my typical pants; as a result, my winter fashion involved a lot of my long skirts that I had previously saved for church weekends (by this point, I was also missing the now- lost opportunity to dress up for church because of, yanno, pandemic). This also coincided with the rise of my Bufffy the Vampire Slayer obsession, which arose in October 2020 as I looked for Halloweeny things to watch; its glamorous and vampiric flashbacks led incidentally to a sub-obsession with historical fashions, especially voluminous ballgowns from the Victorian and earlier eras. Thanks to
this fascinating blog post on historical costume accuracy, I learned what a robe à la anglaise and à la francaise were (beyond knowing the French--I could’ve already translated those, but knowing what they were was different). I did not have access to this fashion, but decorating my big skirts and wearing my long coats in my best modern adaptation of them brought joy to my winter looks.
I cannot adequately convey to you how snazzy I felt in this outfit.
It's funny now re-reading the paragraph I wrote back in July about Panic! at the Disco's role in launching me down into my My Chemical Romance obsession cycle, because it was quite a minor moment at the time, but funnily enough, later on in October 2021, I did make the next step into emo bandom (band fandoms, as tumblr has termed that community) and delve into the Panic! at the Disco fandom, but it wasn’t as a result of the youtube video that sent me on my former obsession quest. This time, I was once again listening to It's Almost Halloween, which I'd found on someone else's Halloween music playlist and quickly inducted onto my own, and I began to wonder about the other person singing--I was more or less familiar with Brendon Urie, of course, but this was the first Ryan Ross's voice captured my attention, and I wanted to learn more about this other singer. This launched me into a proper dive into the Panic fandom, at least as it regarded the first two albums, and along with this, I fell in love with the aesthetics associated with each, and they too bled into my more recent takes on fashion.
Again, tumblr fashion experts played a role, and
this blog post got me thinking about the theatrical stage costumes of the era associated with the
Fever You Can't Sweat Out album. My own take on an outfit inspired by that was this:
I also found a deep fondness for the outfits associated with the following album,
Pretty. Odd, a more hippie-ish aesthetic with vests and florals; while there are a lot of Ryan Ross outfits from this era I adore, I think
the music video for Mad as Rabbits is the best quick showcase of this wonderful aesthetic I can share with you. This combined with my rediscovery of the vest I used for my Gotham Oswald costume back in Halloween 2018 lead to an assortment of heavily patterned fancy looks featuring said vest. (It's also featured in the
Fever look above, but whatever, this isn't the world's most sequential narrative.)
I love stealing men's fashion and looking snazzy in it, haha. Love Ryan Ross. Love to steal his clothes ;) Like especially his hats, man has some heckin snazzy hats.
Speaking of, this phase of my fashions compelled me to ask for more vests for Christmas, plus this snazzy as heck fedora; I've loved fedoras since I got obsessed with White Collar in, like, middle school, so my sojourns into old timey men's wear have been a repeated phenomenon for a while now I suppose. This vest/hat set was a very snazzy Christmas present I received :)
And this is me tonight! It doesn't really fit in with any of the fashion trends I've outlined in this post, but it still feels very wacky and very me, featuring a somewhat less snazzy but still fun paper 2022 hat and this bright, colorful scarf I love; I love feeling wacky but still fashionable.
Well, the close of the year is hurrying towards me once again; despite starting this blog post back in summer during the July session of Camp NaNoWriMo, I have once more sat out for myself more than I managed to leave myself time to cover in the depth and breadth I wanted to. I know last year I promised to continue my lengthy Buffy/Doctor Who fandom morality essay and then promptly lost interest and failed to deliver, so I'll try not to make the same mistake again, but I've been taking a massive amount of selfies this year with this blog post in mind all the while, and I find myself perhaps naively thinking that there is an actual chance I will come back to this in the coming weeks and make it more complete with a secondary post. I do have a general desire to continue my chaotic delve into fashion blogging, but I am also about to go off book for the community theatre production of Matilda I'm in, and while I have already learned my Russian lines for the mob scene with the aid and approval of my Russian coworker, I still have a ways to go with the rest of it, and immediately after that I will be reprising my role as Mercy Lewis in the Crucible, which had just gone off book when rehearsals were suspended by the initial onslaught of the pandemic... what a two years it has been, eh? Anyways, I know I'll be spending a lot of my free time on theatrical endeavors for the foreseeable future, and I know better at this point than to make promises of this blog, but there is a chance that I will return to ramble about fandom and fashion in the future before 2023 closes in. It is a wild sort of lense, really, this once a year reflection on my life and interests through assorted topics I ramble on once each year... I do rather wish I could get myself to actually bring one of them to completion to my satisfaction one of these times, but I'm glad I at least get something out each year so I have a snapshot of my life and interests to look back on. In any wise, Happy New Year to all, and may 2022 be as kind as the visual pleasantness of the number seems to promise! I really am quite fond of the shape of the number two, it's difficult to explain properly.
Update: I have now consumed a glass of chocolate wine, so if my writing is less coherent in any portion of this please attribute it to this, because I'm jumping around this whole thing with my final edits, so the wine could show up anywhere in the post. Yeah, it's 11:25pm now (11:40pm now!) and I have made the mistake of becoming significantly less coherent, so a lot of this is going out without proofing and not as finished as I'd like it to be. Happy new year, I might come back to this.
Beyond the violet mists, we enjoy exploring the wide variety of elegant garments in which we may drape ourselves, and the stories they weave in their various combinations.
