Yesterday I had to take my laptop in for repair so I was left with a full day of being untethered to work since there isn’t much I can do on my iPad that I can do with my laptop (except for writing this blog it appears). So of course I did what any normal person in my generation would do and I scrolled Tik Tok. I am not sure why I keep getting ads for shoelaces and hair growth oil but part of me is annoyed and the other is offended.
Anyway, I stumbled upon this guy who is called “the best dressed guy on Tik Tok” named Wisdom Kaye and he just presents the most INSANELY fire fits that I have ever seen. Every single outfit is immaculate. He’s a style icon and did a few videos stitching together people on the street or recording their own videos of things they hate like flannels, skinny jeans etc.
The initial emotion as a millennial when these gen z kids dressed like me and my friends in middle school after a trip to Limited Too told ME I couldn’t wear SKINNY JEANS anymore was rage. Just pure, unbridled rage for the youth.
However, Wisdom Kaye did his amazing thing and destroyed everyone by styling skinny jeans into the most ridiculously FIRE outfits that I’ve ever seen. It was actually a comment by another user that brought me the epiphany:
The comment read “All the people hating on skinny jeans are gonna be the first to jump on them as soon as they’re trendy again.” And this made me realize something….
Everyone who hates on past trends are typically guilty of just following the new trends and that place of insecurity is what makes them feel like they’re Anna Wintour and they can judge anyone else on what they’re wearing. It’s lazy. It’s the fucking ratatouille of style. You’re not thinking for yourself or using any real talent, skill or individual taste to put something together, you’re just following what the rat inside your white baseball cap tells you to do.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that crocs and cargo pants are the worst. But that is also because I’m too lazy to figure out how to style them. Crocs came full circle into being trendy again because a select few people figured out that similar to Balenciaga, you can take something that is clearly a joke and make it haute couture easily if you have the right attitude. Isn’t that what fashion is, anyway?
I am by no means a style icon. I’m writing this article wearing cheetah print pajamas and an oversized sweatshirt from a friends travel company with her logo splayed in large pointy letters across the front of my torso. Most days I opt for jeans and a sweater in the winter or jeans and a simple tank in the summer. I have done lazy style my entire life and relied on my décolleté and “fake it til you make it” attitude to put an outfit together rather than the random assortment of various costume jewelry that sits, longingly on my dresser waiting for the day that I have a change of heart and throw it on out of pity or irony.
But I also had a weird individual sense of style ever since I was a kid, part out of creativity but mostly out of necessity. When your parents are below the middle class line, you have to make due with what you’ve got and creativity is born out of desperation and lack of options. I had a better sense of style when I owned 3 t-shirts and one set of Tommy Hilfiger overalls that I would repeatedly wear every day to middle school until my bully called me out in front of everyone while we waited for class to begin. (I’m totally over that incident and don’t hold any resentment at all over that, don’t worry)
Of course life and accessibility wore me down over time. There is an interesting thing that happens when you start to make your own money and can afford some of the things you want but not quite the level that you’d like.
For example, if I had an unlimited budget, I would style myself in Zimmerman and Dolce & Gabana for every trip. I would have a classic black quilted Chanel bag gracing my shoulder on a daily coffee run.
Because I don’t have an unlimited budget, I find myself investing in pieces that have meaning to me. When I travel and when I’m with friends or family, that’s when I invest in pieces. I love occasionally perusing a thrift store, donating a bag and picking up a new bag to make up for the tiny amount of space I just built myself in my closet.
I also understand that other than the very obvious moral implications of shopping fast fashion like Amazon and Shein, I feel like shit when I get a very cheaply made piece of sweaty polyester that was assembled poorly and makes me look like the $10 I paid for it.
Thrifting is fun for me. The thrill of the hunt has always been in my blood. Growing up my dad would take me to the flea market every weekend and I found joy and stimulation for my undiagnosed ADHD while browsing the stalls, observing people haggle and pay, looking at the possessions that people laid out before them to make some extra cash and the way the object became a treasure in a cheap takeout bag in the hands of a new owner.
This is a very easy segue into the evils of capitalism and how it’s ruining our mental health, relationships and country. But I also think that it’s just a machine that works if we keep pressing the buttons and lubricating the gears.
Buying secondhand clothing seemed dirty to me for a long time. Even though I obtained so much joy from those trips to the flea markets with my dad, it also built an associated memory of shame because I wasn’t doing it by choice, I was doing it out of necessity. It’s a part of my wounding I haven’t quite healed yet but I believe the only way out of that shameful wounding is directly through it by embracing my flaws, my gritty origin story, my creativity and my belief in myself that anything is possible.
So for now, I’ll be holding onto my skinny jeans and figuring out how to style them in a way that makes me feel good, regardless of what the youths are saying.
I still refuse to give cargo pants their day but maybe that will be the next epiphany.