Fashion Stories - J.R. Harrington

1. Bottle-Green 

When you were young you had a bottle-green velvet dress. Like all things, you loved it to shreds. You remember your clothes, you remember—the oversized leather jacket you wore all summer, the red boots you wore year-round to school and everywhere else. It’s hard, trying to remember the rest. Cloudy skies. 

Last night you were kept up late trying to remember details about your childhood sweetheart. The one who died last year: September, motorcycle accident. You wouldn’t get on a motorcycle now, but you used to want one of your own—funny how that goes. In the car you hold your own hand and pray not to crash, in the car you’re infinitely nervous. 

He used to come over from his nana’s next door, bringing banana bread and asking to play. You only know that because of your grandma, but you remember some things. Bits and pieces. You remember peeking through the holes in the fence to see if he was in his nana’s back yard, you remember being over there. 

Still, it seems to be so little from a time so important to you. Those days before concerns came to you, those days before the ache of violence forced its way into your life. Last year, after his death, you found an old account belonging to him. You listened to his child-voice and remembered hearing it, how it was higher than yours even then. 

2. Dress Hatred 

In eighth grade you decided you hated dresses. Not just because they were uncomfortable, but because they didn’t seem to mesh with who you were inside. It seemed so simple, then, identity. You would be one or the other, and you had discovered you were the other. You have always felt this sense of apartness, perhaps this was why. 

So you got rid of all your dresses. You started wearing flannels and your stepdad’s old jeans he wouldn’t wear for the holes. Old graphic tees that were far too large, a jacket your mother gave you that she’d had since before you were born. A lot of greys—now you hate greys, you aren’t sure why. 

Slipping out of time with yourself, unsynchronized. This was the age of arrogant boys and shy girls, the contrast between your friends ravine-deep. You fell in love with both of them, the way you’re apt to with any friend. Now you hardly talk to either, they’re so far away that there seems little point in keeping in touch. 

In the distance there is the past, the one where you wanted nothing more than to become a doctor of psychology, do studies and experiments. You had planned to go to a school in Los Angeles, now it seems ridiculous. You’ll continue at community college and maybe one day go further, for now that seems as a distant dot on a map. 

As distant, it seems, as that time when identity was a simple thing, boy or girl. 

3. Skirts Again 

In your junior year you started wearing skirts again. You got a bright red flowy skirt at Goodwill, you loved nothing more than twirling in it and seeing the way it shifted in the air. You

stopped caring what anyone else thought of you, your identity became something you didn’t think about for too long. Clothes became something genderless to you, as they remain to this day. You consider all your clothing to be unisex, because you’re the one wearing it. 

You liked the Dark Academic aesthetic, and so you wore a lot of darks and neutrals. Collared shirts under sweaters. You grew your hair out, in your freshman year you had chopped it all off, completely. By your senior year your hair was long enough to braid, or put up with a chopstick or paintbrush. 

You liked crop tops you had made yourself, cutting up old teeshirts with fabric scissors and not minding the messy outcome. You were no longer ashamed of your skin, your fat, your girlish figure. It took a long time to get there, forcing positivity every time you looked at the mirror until it became effortless, like breathing. 

You started calling yourself genderqueer, because it seemed that, while microlabels are useful for others, they were too narrow to encompass all that you are. Simpler, you thought, to paint in broad strokes. You stuck with old pronouns, because you never really liked they or them, but you added it and its to your repertoire. 

4. New Clothes 

Today you got new clothes. Your uncle sent money since all your winter clothes are stuck in Colorado with your mother, who, as it turns out, isn’t coming for Thanksgiving as planned. You’ll miss her, and all your things you left behind, but you can live without. Your grandma insisted you not only get black and white clothes, but some colorful items too. 

You have nothing against color, but since college began you’ve been trying to dress more gothic. It matches what you feel inside, the strangeness of your spirit. You like all sorts of strange things, like snails and odd literature with dark themes. You like some rather normal things too, of course. You listen to all kinds of music, but goth is among them. 

You’re most excited by the clothes you got brand new—you’ve done most of your shopping at thrift stores, or gotten hand me downs. It’s been years since the last time you bought something new off the rack. You got a few sweaters, shirts, and a jacket new. A few days ago you cut your hair short again—not as short as freshman year, but not as long as your senior year. 

It’s a bob, with longer bits in the back to keep your neck warm. Usually you cut your hair in Spring or Summer, since you don’t need the length to warm you then. On impulse you chopped a good half of your hair off with safety scissors in the dorm room sink. It was mainly because you wanted to look less like a girl. 

You finally told your friends your actual pronouns a while back, and so they’ve started calling you by them. Not that you particularly mind she/her, but it’s refreshing to be called what you’re more used to. Most of the colored clothing you got is reds or greens, a hint of blue on one shirt. 

You don’t really like to wear blue—you have a complicated relationship with the color. Still, the mandatory pop of color is fine. Actually, you’re rather delighted by your new maroon

sweaters. Clothing is a huge part of your identity. You like color, though usually you prefer the color you wear to be in your pants or skirts, worn with a black top. 

5. Bunnies 

You still think of that bottle-green dress from time to time, like a dead relative. Even if you still had it, it wouldn’t fit. You’ve grown so much since those days. It was always your favorite, the best thing your mother had ever gotten you when it came to clothing. It reminds you of the rabbits. 

When you were quite young, your mother got you and your brother rabbits. Somehow, one ended up pregnant, and had bunnies. One or two bunnies she stomped to death. A few died from the cold. The rest went to your uncle Joe when you moved. You don’t know what happened to them after he died. They’re probably all dead by now. 

You still remember the way you threw dead bunnies in the trash, along with the mice caught in glue traps in the infested house. It was, altogether, a terrible experience. You shouldn’t have been made responsible for them so young. Your brother blamed you for all of their deaths, and some part of you still carries that guilt. 

Now you like to wear fur when you can. You have a mink stole, auburn and soft, though it’s still at your mother’s with most of your beautiful things. Now you wear a lace-up sweater and black corduroy pants, both fresh from Goodwill. 

The first snow came and went, your grandma loaned you one of her coats for the season. It has a fur hood, black and soft. It keeps you warm and reminds you of her love. You owe everything to her—you wouldn’t be in college today if it weren’t for her help. You remember the skirt she made you when you were young—floral and pointed, a faerie skirt.