i randomly came across a recent interview of Andrew McCarthy (that Blane from Pretty in Pink) last week, which got me thinking about high school, coming-of-age, and the clothes we wore that defined us when we began to think about what that meant. and i don't mean that in the worst, popular-kids-screwing-with-your-self-esteem kind of way.
one of the items on my wardrobe planning list this season is a denim/chambray shirt. i was looking around online earlier today when i realized – the slightly oversized, light-blue chambray shirt on my list is pretty much the same one that i wore all the time back in high school and college. unfortunately, i got rid of it when i graduated and moved.
this is how i'd wear it these days. something about the denim shirt has stuck with me after all these years. oddly enough, i find it to be as timelessly versatile now as it was a decade ago, or even twenty years ago. it seems there's been an iconic version of the denim shirt every decade from the 1950s on. when i first wore one as a teen, i remembered feeling comfortable in my own skin. it was a kind of small epiphany that made me understand for the first time how i always wanted to feel with my clothes, style, and personality. it's comfortable and stylish and comforting in its versatility, and definitely a wardrobe classic, then and now.
and speaking of late '90s flashbacks - anyone remember California Dreams?
but back to the present. i'll close this time-warp post with the inimitable Gaia Repossi, rocking a denim shirt in her characteristic minimalist style:
via quite confidential
was there one thing that you wore as a teen that was integral to your style uniform? do you still wear it now?
p.s.: Andrew McCarthy is as handsome as ever (more so now i think than in his '80s acting heyday), and apparently has become an award-winning travel writer for National Geographic! :)
I kept my beloved, perfectly worn, oh-so-soft J.Crew denim shirt from high school. Now that it's back in style, it does not fit my 36 year old body like it fit my 18 year old body, but it's like a good friend. Maybe I should try it on...?
ReplyDeleteyou should! you could always figure an updated way to work it into your current wardrobe :)
Deletei never wore denim shirts in the 80s and early 90s. in fact, i didn't even wear jeans until i was in college! anyway, as much as i love chambray shirts, i'm starting to get tired of seeing everyone wearing them here in toronto. a friend gave me a SA boyfriend shirt in blue linen, which is like but not like the chambray shirt. it has the advantage of keeping me cooler in the heat.
ReplyDeletei went through 2 phases as a teen: peasant tops and my mom's dresses from the 70s, and then 50s dresses and pencil skirts. i still wear loose tops, but they usually don't have elephant prints on them!
i am a huge linen shirt fan too.
Deleteyour vintage dress phase sounds really cool. i still have a place for fun prints these days with some of my VJ shawls :)
Love this post. Oh Blane...swoon. I think I will wear cardigans forever-and have always been somewhat obsessed with western-style chambray or denim. I had an old faded Wrangler denim shirt that has gotten away from me I still wish I had.
ReplyDeletei know, right?? sooo cute.
Deletei am also regretting letting go of my old denim shirt...the one i'm getting now will be a keeper!
Oh teenage obsessions! I made a post two weeks back about the persistence of teenage sartorial choices haha! For some reason, I'm completely blanking on any one specific item I wore over and over again. I was really into vibrant layering in 9th grade (think, maybe, Gwen Stefani back in her No Doubt days), and I wore around that panda hairstyle that was so popular in the late 90s, early 00s. I'm kind of surprised I never sported a bindi. In some ways, that brilliantly colorful look has been creeping back up on me in the form of workwear. I've been giving some major thought to what I would like to ideally wear in a work environment, and I've realized that I would love to wear conventional workwear looks in slim cuts...only in head to toe monochrome. I think there's definitely something shocking about a woman in all red or all cobalt blue or all blood orange.
ReplyDeleteoh i love your post! and i remember all the No Doubt fandom - 'Don't Speak' is permanently etched in my memory from all the airplay it got back then.
Deletebrilliantly colorful plus a conservative suit sounds pretty rad and ever so slightly subversive for work. do you have a definite dress code you're planning around?
I'm not sure about any specific dress code, but I've seen outfits in law offices range from the shockingly casual to the surprisingly revealing (okay, maybe I only see that when watching Damages--btw I would just die if my first boss turned out to be Glenn Close). In my last law office, you could pretty much wear whatever you wanted as long as you didn't have to go to court and I even got away with wearing a breton shirt with a pencil skirt to court (but, then again, there was also an attorney trying to convince his client to tuck in his confederate flag wife beater into a pair of jeans that day so....I was pretty dressed up compared to the rest of the crowd)!
Deletehaha!! also in terms of revealing legal workwear, let's not forget the heyday of Ally McBeal! i mean, they really glammed up law firm work ;)
DeleteI have kept a baggy kaki pants from my teens. I still wear it, not anymore à la the late Aaliyah way (with tight belly showing top and sneakers!) but with a blazer, a shirt and classic flats or heels.
ReplyDeleteah, well you could still wear it in the new IM way with wedge hi-tops as a tribute. ;) that would be an awesome weekend look!
Deleteoh young style! back then I think I thought I had style. in middle school I was just obsessed with contempo casuals. too young to really know style but old enough to know that it was trendy. I use to wear this oversized blue flannel and another oversized denim shirt over everything. I remember such atrocious trends like super bell bottoms, I remember thinking it was cool but didn't think I can pull it off. unfortunately in high school, I fell into the deep abyss of abercrombie & hollister. uggh...
ReplyDeleteahhh Contempo Casuals!! i think that was the first store i bought a 'trendy' pair of jeans from back in middle school. i used to do the oversize flannel and denim shirt over black pants too! actually one of my favorite pair of flare jeans was from abercrombie - got it one sale and then wore it for years all through college until i got rid of it when i moved to nyc. kind of wish i had kept it though.
DeleteGosh, I was such a tomboy up until halfway through high school, when I decided that making a conscious change about how I dressed would make me feel better amidst the torrent of stress in applying for college, etc. So I started wearing dresses and things that made me feel more pulled together and ended up hardly wearing pants/jeans at all for a period of about 2-3 years. Now I feel like I've settled somewhere in between, into a comfortable happy medium.
ReplyDeletePart of me still pines for my first pair of chucks that saw me through ALL of my adolescence, but letting them go felt good too (the soles were so worn down that they were starting to let in water). I'm glad I've still got some of my old band t-shirts around though--one of The Clash from when I was in middle school is perfectly worn in now and great for slummy casual days and cutoffs but equally great tucked into a pencil skirt. It feels good to wake up and not have to stick to one look or the other now.
that's interesting that your style changed as part of a reaction to dealing with stress and the next big stage of life post-high school! i got really into vintage mid-way through high school and that stuck with me ever since. though i think i've always been too much of a tomboy to really get into dresses or skirts.
Deletei agree though, it's great when you've become more settled into yourself and can mix things up easily. :)
This is such a great post! I don't think I have any clothing that I either kept or wish that I had kept from my teens, as I have come to terms with the fact that I was a mess - fashionably speaking - until about the age of 24 ;)
ReplyDeleteI think I had a sort of tomboy-grunge thing going on at first, then I had a quasi-goth phase for a few years, until I started to feel more comfortable in my own skin (and discovered style blogs, yay!) and transitioned into the style that I have today. I have such a huge soft spot for 90's/early 00's fashion though, and although I'd never wear them in a million years I secretly adore the comeback of platform sneakers, and rainbow-colored hair and crop tops. Oh, and I do occasionally like to feed my inner goth with tiny skulls and lots of kohl ;)
lol platform sneakers! i think everyone needs to feed their inner teen fashion alter ego sometimes ;)
DeleteI honestly have nothing clothes-wise from when I was a teenager. I don't have any of the clothes I literally wore, and I don't have anything that resembles what I used to wear. I think I was incredibly blasé about what I wore (like, just non-descript T-shirts and shorts and cargo pants that stylistically meant nothing to me - they were just practical clothing items) because my friend group largely wasn't that interested in clothes. I do remember at one point that I liked the very occasional statement item (manifesting itself in a tank top featuring a photograph of a dog in a spacesuit floating across a galaxy, hahaha) but I put that down to clumsily enacting the teenage desire to feel unique and to have people appreciate how unique you are.
ReplyDeleteIt genuinely surprises me when people say that they first started to develop their sense of style in their teenage years, because I honestly have very little memory of my style during those years (since I obviously wasn't too fussed about it at the time) and only once I got to university, aged 18, did I start to attempt to convey my personality and my sensibilities through my personal style - and even so, my style has evolved through some pretty drastic changes since then. Actually, I've been tempted to do a post about it, in relation perhaps to the classic wardrobe I've been discussing, since I say I want a wardrobe that is timeless and elegant but given how much my personal style has changed over the past few years, can I know that that's what I'll still want in a few years time? Or am I old enough now that I'm probably not going to be experimenting with identity and style any more? Also I just want the opportunity to put together some hilarious collages of the things that I've worn since I was 18, haha.
yeah even about 6 years ago my style was pretty different than what it is now. but i can sort of see how i went into one phase and how that led to another. i think i've always been really interested in clothes, and i really started experimenting a lot in my teens. your post sounds awesome - bring on the teen fashion collages!
DeleteI haven't kept any of the clothes I wore as a teenager, but my love for denim and breton stripes haven't changed! I also used to wear a lot of baggy sweatshirts which I still love, but mostly wear now just off-duty:) Great post, fun read!
ReplyDeletethanks Nanne! denim and breton stripes...now those are two things i will always have in some quantity in my closet... :)
DeleteAh, this is so interesting - as a teenager I was really into punk and grunge style, and used to steal my dad's worn out tees, chambray and of course his 70s Pendleton wool shirts! I went through a super-girly phase while getting my bachelor's degree, wearing a ton of cute flats, trapeze dresses and loads of makeup (probably as a reaction to moving to Europe where women are just so... feminine compared to the NW United States).
ReplyDeleteBut lately - I chopped my hair, I gave up mascara and eyeliner, and I am rediscovering the joy of shopping menswear. My "new grunge" is more glamorous and body-conscious than my "old grunge" including a lot of well made silk and wool pieces and refined jewelry, much more minimalist too. But my inner teenager is overjoyed when I stomp out of the house in a thrifted men's Izod shirt, a black cashmere cardi, a leather cuff, silver stud earrings, straight-legged gray chinos and my glorious Doc Marten Triumph 1914 boots. I'm in graduate school and I work a job that involves a lot of outdoor surveying - what's the next time I'll be able to be such a tomboy?
Items that have survived the past 10 years of style whiplash: a pair of wide legged blue-gray chinos that are now cutoff shorts, and Daddy's blue and green Pendleton plaid shirt. Sometimes I still wear them together, even.
see, the fact that you wore your dad's stuff is pretty legit. wouldn't he be proud and amused that we now have 'the dad jeans' thanks to current/elliott? :D
Deletei totally stole one of my dad's jackets and izod shirts (!!) back in middle school and wore it all the time too. i love that you're totally doing a more refined grunge right now. i can totally relate!
Such a great post :)
ReplyDelete10 years ago I was weaing clothes that I wouldnt dare to wear today.Also if someone told me that we would once wear orange with fuscia I wouldnt believe him but..fashion changes a lot!!!
xx
hehehe. that's the fun and the frustration of it! :)
DeleteWhat a fun post! I'm probably dating myself when I tell you I remember labels like Ton Sur Ton, Marithe & Francois Girbaud, and the original OMO Norma Kamali. Even when Guess? jeans were in their very early heydey (far removed from where they are now). I am (probably) a little bit older than your average reader! Alas, I have not held on to any of these things, unless they are somehow floating around my parents' house! Memories...
ReplyDeletei remember looking at Guess jeans ads in magazines as a teen! i wish i had kept more of my old Vogues - sometimes i think my de-cluttering habits go a bit overboard...
DeleteI still wear the grey hoodie sweatshirt from college even though it has a huge hole in the arm now and my mom keeps on wanting to throw it in the garbage bin every time I come home. She insisted on getting me a new one but it's just not the same. It's almost like Charlie's blanket to me. Same goes with a off white denim jacket, still rotate it every year between seasons.
ReplyDelete