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Unlike most of life’s “biggest regrets,” my choice to let lime-green swimming goggles dangle from my 16-year-old neck like a decadent string of pearls was a triumphant icon of one of my greatest personal philosophies in modern dressing.
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but self-expression has always kind of been my “thing.” With a surprisingly low level of shame for an adolescent boy, there was nothing that I would refuse to strut down the halls of Alta High School in. Swimming trunks, bathrobes and rain boots were just a few of the staples from an obnoxiously vast collection of oddities that I somehow had the guts to wear.
Times were simpler then. Most people say high school has a rigid social pyramid with an overflow of rules and guidelines for dress and grooming standards among the different cliques. For me, it was a wild frenzy of “experimental” (read: classifiably insane) styles. My adolescent years were a time where anything imaginable would fly and everything on my body was a glimmering testimony of the peculiarity and intricacy of my ripening soul.
I would love to accept this as truth today — that the ultimate goal of getting dressed is to whip up an outfit with shirts, pants, shoes and accessories that can also act as a reflection of my psyche with the intrigue and honesty of an expressionist painting — but with so many other sources of sartorial instruction whizzing through my consciousness it is far too easily jumbled among the other thoughtful words of advice.
“Dress for success” is as cliché a phrase as any, but it really makes a lot of sense if you think about it. While readying yourself for a job interview, a day at work or even just a night out on the town, keeping an image of a successful person in mind can work wonders for you. By following that aesthetic blueprint you are essentially creating an alter ego for yourself to play and others to perceive, like a secret agent or a girl playing dress-up.
The idea here, while fundamentally wholesome, is problematic for me. Dressing for success implies that a person’s choice in attire is merely a manipulation of perception, that the only reason we get dressed in the morning is to impress all the peers, superiors and strangers we pass as we meander through our day.
Now, I understand that for a lot of people in the professional world, this mind-set is a hard one to avoid. I am not talking to you. Do yourself a favor and turn the page immediately. Reading on will destroy any sense of professionalism, leaving you yearning to express yourself in brighter, more uninhibited ways. If what I am about to say strikes a chord with you, there is a high chance that you’ll be fired from your job — and nobody wants that, now do they?
Anyway, during my senior year of high school the seeds of a style revolution were planted. For reasons not entirely known I began to be more aesthetically selective with what I could dress myself in. I gradually found myself bidding adieu to pieces like my iconic yellow swimming trunks and my bright green goggles. In the meantime, far more wearable shirts snuck their way into my wardrobe, bringing actual pairs of pants and real-life coats with them. By the time I started college, my closet finally resembled one of a functioning adult.
With more streamlined, wearable clothes hanging in my closet, it could easily be assumed that I’ve “sold out” over the course of the last few years, that I decided to usurp “dressing to impress” as my personal philosophy. That, I am here to assure you, is simply not true.
Four years after I put down my dingy blue bathrobe for the last time, I still find myself enthralled and even obsessed with the idea of “dressing for myself.” The “oddities” of my closet are still wildly present — they just present themselves in humbler, quieter and undeniably prettier ways.
A half-rack of Hawaiian shirts, countless pairs of “dad-jeans,” a seemingly infinite row of tweed blazers, hand-painted pink oxford shoes, a denim cowboy vest, a neon-green overcoat and a jacket fashioned of belts are just a few of the articles of clothing I take most pride in. Still breathing with the life of sophisticated individualism, my expressive clothes now reside in the coveted land of stylishness.
Each garment comes with a story and an abstract poetic purpose in my closet. I bought an oversized green Eddie Bauer coat from the D.I. last week simply because it reminded me of one of my closest friends who was whisked out of my life for a period of eighteen months to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Wearing it temporarily satisfies a desire to be with my BFF when that option is obviously out of the picture.
One of my favorite purchases during my second round of expressive clothing, however, is that thick, Aztec printed jacket I was photographed in for this very column. When I saw it at a now-disbanded consignment store in Provo, I immediately thought of “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch’s groundbreaking (and short-lived) television series about a mysterious murder in a fictional Washington town from the early ‘90s. This, as you might suspect, is one of my favorite morsels of pop-culture history, making the internal debate on whether to buy the jacket nearly nonexistent.
I buy what I buy for one simple reason: It makes me happy. I might sound crazy here, but my clothes mean something to me beyond just being “cute” or “stylish.” Admittedly, there are instances when they must be toned down to make myself more hirable or whatever, but even then I find myself marketing a uniquely genuine version of myself. My personal identity — curated solely for myself — revolves around my choice of style, and that is pretty cool if you ask me.
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