Metal Head Hippie Chick

My personal style has evolved over the years but there are a few qualities that have always been consistent: I am a jeans, t-shirt, and flat sole shoe person. When I was very little I dressed with hand-me-downs, boys clothes from Old Navy, and other various graphic tees. During middle school I went through the classic emo/scene phase. Then through the majority of high school my style was old band t-shirts, flannels, with a dash of other more "beachy" elements (I'm a marine science major and used to wear seashells in my hair). It was an odd mash of everything I like. Today I wear mostly monochromatic items, graphic t-shirts, and platform shoes. If we are really digging into why, it can easily be seen that I started wearing black jeans nearly exclusively (only not wearing them for outdoor manual labor jobs) since someone I was very close to passed away three years ago. The graphic tees are just what I'm most comfortable with because it's what I've always been drawn to. I don't really speak up a lot so I can tell the outside world something by a print on my shirt. The platform shoes are just really comfortable in all honesty, that and I love punk music and that scene where styles like "creepers" came out of... as well as fulfilling my childhood dream of being a Spice Girl.

I don't think I necessarily have a specific style per se, but I tend to dress in a more "alternative" way. I don't think that it translates into other areas of my life though as one would imagine. There are certainly elements of it in for example my home decor because it is a part of how I express myself but the walls are not painted black at all. The way I like explaining it is that how I dress is how I allow others to perceive me, and how I live/decorate is how I perceive myself. My rooms are almost like the inside of my head, if that makes any sense. Both my room at home and my dorm room have mainly blues, muted greens, and grays around. I have a lot of books, nerdy collectables, and items I've collected from my travels (including rocks, sea shells, vials of sand, and a couple of leis). 

My relationship with my clothes is as I've previously stated: how I allow others to perceive me. I wear things that express my interests when I feel I have no voice to express it myself. In a more tangible sense I was always taught how to care for my clothes with properly washing them and mending them. My family doesn't come from money so I only ever really got clothes for my birthday, back to school, and Christmas. I remember having a favorite pair of jeans in elementary school that started to wear down and get a huge rip in the knee. I was so upset and ended up getting a tank top that I was starting to grow out of, cutting out the graphic, and teaching myself to sew it onto the jeans to patch up the hole. My mom was impressed and then helped me with a few areas that I didn't sew all that well. I continued wearing those until I couldn't fit into them anymore. It was fun for me to DIY my clothes and is something that I continue to do and enjoy today. 

Shirt I made for my Halloween costume as Captain America.
Patches I made for my "cap" and my boyfriend's Tony Stark shirt.
(Shield, which is just out of frame, is made by my father)

Going through these questions from Women in Clothes made me think about all the things I've written about. While it didn't necessarily affect my perspective, it gave me a more solid one. Because I've never really thought about it before. When I was trying to think of a title, I was going through my Pintrest boards for clothes and homewears and that was my bio; I thought it was fitting considering my love for nature and hardcore music.