My "Style Awakening"

Growing up and becoming more mature means we become more aware of ourselves and our appearance. One day you just wake up and look at yourself in the mirror, and instead of making funny faces or whatever kids do in front of the mirror, you think "Damn". There's a point in your childhood where your mental development reaches a threshold, and you suddenly start caring about how you look. So there's that moment where you gain this ultra-awareness about your face and body, and then not long after, you start caring about the clothes you put on, too. Before that happens, your outfits were most likely dictated by whoever was responsible for taking care of you. Then, when the adults step away, you get to mix and match the pieces in your wardrobe as you please. The thing is, when that happened, all I cared about when I prepared for school were things like whether or not I brought the right books or whether or not I brought that cool figurine I wanted to show off. I didn't care about the conflicting colours between my creased sweatshirt and my school uniform. I had my priorities straight.

It went on like that until about high school when I had a group of girls from my grade who went up to me during a school event and judged my outfit. I was wearing a nylon t-shirt with a monochrome plaid flannel on top that was folded up.

The encounter shook me. It was then I started to take notice of the people around me, and I realised how unlike me, they appeared to have put significant thought into the clothes they wore. I realised that they didn't wear clothes just for the sake of it. Up until then, I would just put on anything from my wardrobe that was clean and seemed right for the occasion. Since then, I put a little bit more thought into what I wear. I also actually started shopping for clothes. Before that, my entire wardrobe only consisted of pass-me-downs, things my parents bought me and birthday or Christmas gifts. Now, I can comfortably say about 80% of the clothes in my wardrobe are things I actually chose and purchased. So, this "style awakening" has been positive for me in the way that I don't look like a socially awkward caveman who stumbled across a Salvo's. However, every now and then, I think to myself how carefree I would be if I didn't give a damn about my clothes. I think about how much time I'd have if I didn't ever stress about what to wear for an outing with friends. But at least I look good, right?