From Fashionable to Stylish

This story originally appeared in our March 2017 Expressions Issue.

Growing up in a small suburb of Philadelphia, I found very few things exciting. My house was always decorated the same, the people I went to school with were always the same and my after school activities were always the same. That repetition of sameness was only punctuated ever so occasionally when my copy of Teen Vogue arrived in the mail. I remember flipping through the glossy pages in awe of the colorful clothes, the beautiful photoshoots, but most importantly, the excitement of fashion.

I quickly became engrossed in the fashion world. I religiously followed trends, bought every style guide I could get my hands on and routinely found myself back at the mall, shopping for the newest “it” item. What I failed to recognize in those early years of my fashion obsession was that “fashion” and “style” are two different entities.

When I show people my freshman year yearbook picture, more often than not they respond by asking: “Is that even you?” Yes, that blonde-haired, perfectly polished young girl is in fact the same black-haired, septum-pierced, tattooed girl you are looking at today. In that picture, I wore a red flannel shirt under a navy blue sweater from Forever21, a decision determined by my mom’s latest edition of People, which deemed the nautical, preppy look as all the rage. Today, you would not catch me dead in an outfit like that. More likely than not, you will see me in my dad’s vintage XXL Harley Davidson T-shirt and my barely-white-they’re-almost-brown Vans I snagged for a dollar at my local thrift store. In the three years since that photo was taken, I finally understood that I was not dressing for me. I was dressing for how the fashion industry wanted me to look. I was dressing for fashion, not style.

Granted, my transition was a slow one that took multiple years, and my style is continuously evolving to this day. How I appear is a constant reflection of my growth as an individual. It was not until I hit my first year of high school that it dawned on me that the image I created for myself was not one that accurately portrayed who I was on the inside. As cliché as that may seem, that navy blue pullover told people a different story than what I wanted them to read. When people meet me for the first time I want them to see my hand-me-down XXL t-shirt and know that I am a little unconventional, mostly edgy and very much my own person—not what the fashion industry wants me to be. And contrary to what that industry wants me to think, no one thought of me differently once I branched out on my own stylistically. My closest friends barely even noticed a change because I simply grew into myself. I shaped the mold to fit who I was instead of someone I was pretending to be.

Most people would not look at my wardrobe and immediately think, “Wow, this girl is a fashionista,” but I am still deemed a “stylish” or “trendy” person.  As it turns out, I’m a walking fashion contradiction. When the floral mini-skirts gracing New York Fashion Week runways appear in the pages of Vogue, I go out and buy another beat-up golfer’s jacket. The key to being “trendy” or “stylish” is not following the trends, but rather curating your own.

Grace Wade