Kitty Corner: Eccentric ensembles, outre outfits: I am not what I wear

Last weekend, my friend invited me to go shopping with her. And though I readily agreed at the time, once I was faced with the flashy fluorescence of Forever 21, she noticed that, rather than rifling through the racks, I was instead blinking in bemusement and cataloguing exits and escape routes.

“Aren’t you going to get anything?” she asked.

“I buy most of my clothes from online thrift stores,” I informed her in that smug, patronizing holier-than-thou manner adopted by anyone who has decided to don an exclusively secondhand wardrobe after reading an expose on the exploitative relationship between fast fashion and developing countries.

Just kidding; I’m not that altruistic. I curate an unconventional wardrobe, replete with wacky, look-at-me statement pieces, because I want to stand out from the Kanken-toting, Stan Smith-sporting crowd. Some of my favorite threads: a punchinello-embroidered Bob Mackie sweater; fishnets juxtaposed against juvenile Winnie-the-Pooh overalls; a t-shirt with “NUDES” emblazoned across the front. Tellingly, they are all garments that have garnered a “What are you wearing?” response.

There is undoubtedly a performative aspect to my showy ensembles. I am unduly aware of people’s eyes sliding over me as I saunter through campus, relishing in the prolonged stares and double takes cast my way. You’d think someone attired in such attention-grabbing apparel would love being in the limelight, but in fact, the opposite is true. My clothes are at odds with my personality, which is, in actuality, very shy and attention-averse.

Call me vain, shallow, image-obsessed — and I’d be inclined to agree with you. Most of my disposable income is swallowed up by increasingly unusual (and expensive) clothing from increasingly obscure sources. Certainly, the time I spend in the morning agonizing over mes vêtements could be better devoted to curing cancer, ending world hunger or just catching a little more shut-eye.

But I would argue that getting dressed in the morning is as valid a form of self-expression as any other art form. Finding new media for making a creative statement, whether through dance, literature, or art, has always been a necessity for me, likely because of how quiet I am. When the neurons relaying messages between my brain and mouth short-circuit and the words get lodged in my throat like a fish bone, I’m forced to employ some other method of communication, of asserting myself and my presence.

I am afraid that if I wear jeans and a t-shirt, I would vanish completely, fade into the drywall until all that’s left is a pair of glasses. That people would skim over me, discount me, believe that I don’t have anything to say or offer, even though nothing could be further from the truth. I myself lack the audacity to demand your attention, so my clothes do the job for me; but once I have it, I can take it from there.

Kitty Guo is a sophomore majoring in journalism and computational linguistics.  She is also the lifestyle editor of the Daily Trojan. Her column, “Kitty Corner,” runs every other Wednesday.