Wednesday - April 06, 2005
Unraveling.
I can't figure out my wardrobe these days.
High school geekhood, and a complete ignorance of what other girls my age were wearing, led me one day to wear a bright pink polo shirt, jeans, pink felt maryjanes from Baclaran and black socks to school on a Saturday. At least three of the popular girls smirked at my socks. Not only did that incident give me much joy, it also gave my budding personal style a sense of direction - specifically, away from everyone else's.
In college, that meant wearing black fishnet socks I'd found in the old Isetann in Cubao with green moccasins from Divisoria, white cropped pants and a royal blue t-shirt. Or wrapping a red tie around my leg. Or using an old table runner as a scarf, pinned in place with a clashing floral hairclip. I also raided my relatives' cabinets for old clothes. My favorite was a lush tropical jungle-print skirt with accordion pleats. The fabric was slick, like a raincoat. The waistline was extremely small, so I left it unhooked, and wore it with white t-shirts. The white shirts I also wore with various printed cotton shorts with elastic waists that Mom got wholesale in Baclaran. She didn't understand why I insisted on wearing three-inch long gold-plated crocodile earrings with them.
I wish ukay-ukays had existed then. (Well, they did, but they were in Baguio, and that wasn't what they were called.) As it was, I had to be content with the bargain outlet of Cinderella in Ali Mall - in which I unearthed two machine lace tank tops, one in slimy yellow, the other in Stabilo orange (this was the eighties, after all) - and this tiny, tacky jewelry and knick-knack shop along Aurora Boulevard.
Cheap and strange gave way to expensive and strange, most decidedly when I was in Jakarta. I splurged on Miyake, Ann Demeulmeester and Dries Van Noten. (Well, on sale, but still...)
Nowadays, it takes too much energy to not dress like everyone else. Lucien's bound to get milk on whatever I'm wearing. And yet I feel peculiar, off-center, in jeans and a shirt. I told Roach the other day, "I can't figure out what I'm trying to say with what I'm wearing." So I seesaw in and out of normality. Today torn and tawdry, tomorrow in white and crisp khaki.
High school geekhood, and a complete ignorance of what other girls my age were wearing, led me one day to wear a bright pink polo shirt, jeans, pink felt maryjanes from Baclaran and black socks to school on a Saturday. At least three of the popular girls smirked at my socks. Not only did that incident give me much joy, it also gave my budding personal style a sense of direction - specifically, away from everyone else's.
In college, that meant wearing black fishnet socks I'd found in the old Isetann in Cubao with green moccasins from Divisoria, white cropped pants and a royal blue t-shirt. Or wrapping a red tie around my leg. Or using an old table runner as a scarf, pinned in place with a clashing floral hairclip. I also raided my relatives' cabinets for old clothes. My favorite was a lush tropical jungle-print skirt with accordion pleats. The fabric was slick, like a raincoat. The waistline was extremely small, so I left it unhooked, and wore it with white t-shirts. The white shirts I also wore with various printed cotton shorts with elastic waists that Mom got wholesale in Baclaran. She didn't understand why I insisted on wearing three-inch long gold-plated crocodile earrings with them.
I wish ukay-ukays had existed then. (Well, they did, but they were in Baguio, and that wasn't what they were called.) As it was, I had to be content with the bargain outlet of Cinderella in Ali Mall - in which I unearthed two machine lace tank tops, one in slimy yellow, the other in Stabilo orange (this was the eighties, after all) - and this tiny, tacky jewelry and knick-knack shop along Aurora Boulevard.
Cheap and strange gave way to expensive and strange, most decidedly when I was in Jakarta. I splurged on Miyake, Ann Demeulmeester and Dries Van Noten. (Well, on sale, but still...)
Nowadays, it takes too much energy to not dress like everyone else. Lucien's bound to get milk on whatever I'm wearing. And yet I feel peculiar, off-center, in jeans and a shirt. I told Roach the other day, "I can't figure out what I'm trying to say with what I'm wearing." So I seesaw in and out of normality. Today torn and tawdry, tomorrow in white and crisp khaki.