I’ve always enjoyed design, whether combining unexpected elements in a collage as a kid, or decorating my first dorm room. Something about finding the right combination of colors, textures, and shapes gives me a zing of autistic joy. Style has long been an outlet for this enjoyment. Yet at certain points, I felt trapped by the effort and expense of the style I developed. Read on to find out how I went about unmasking my style in the time around my diagnosis.
Childhood
My childhood style revolved around comfort and color. I vividly remember the bright plaid of my favorite Bermuda shorts. The neon chameleon staring out from the aqua background of the shirt I’d convinced my parents to buy on vacation. And the paisley dress my dad surprised me with as a souvenir from a work trip.
I also navigated sensory issues in my style. At times, I refused to wear pants, only dresses. Then, leggings became OK, but jeans were a no. Over time, I accepted more textures and styles, but still prioritized comfort and fun over others’ opinions.
This began to shift in middle school. The wrong outfit could yield negative attention, which I found overwhelming. I began to pay attention to what others wore, and tried to blend in. I managed to find safety from a group of girls who bullied me, and new friends who were kind.
Fashion Designer
This new safety inspired a last burst of non-comformity before high school. In 8th grade, my friends and I formed a “fashion company.” We called it QWEST, based on a combination of letters from our names. I was the most frequent model, empowered by the uncomfortable response of my former bullies. They seemed to cringe in secondhand embarrassment at our bold statements. Highlights included: high heels with plastic plates staple gunned to the bottoms and piled high with fake fruit. A belt covered in multi-colored pom-poms. A hat, sported in gym class, upon which a Beanie Baby squirrel perched, its nose in the air. And our favorite, capes cut from old t-shirts and decorated with fabric glue.
We began taking requests, and the recurring characters in our clothing developed their own mythologies. We’d make up songs about them and play air guitar on tennis rackets, to the frustration of our gym teacher. Where these unlikely combinations and descriptions came from, I don’t know. But I reveled in the childlike creativity that I’d previously tried to stifle. And it would be the last period where I was more unmasked than masked until my diagnosis decades later.
High School and College
After the wild fashion of my 8th grade year, I began to blend in again, but with flashes of my own style still showing through in some new ways. My new influences were the old movies I watched on the TCM network, and my new extracurricular career as a jazz singer.
Vintage style, in retrospect, was a way to balance rebellion with conformity. Cat eye glasses and polka dots set the tone, combined sometimes with more current fashions. I was beginning to dress differently than my peers, but within the confines of an established style. I was masked, but in a disguise that still communicated something about me.
At the same time, I had taken to heart the comments on my hair. By sophomore year, I was painstakingly straightening my long hair nearly every morning before school. Heat protection and anti-frizz serums were not on my radar yet. So I damaged my hair with heat, then used more heat tools to hide the damage. It’s a vicious cycle lots of you probably recognize.
I realize now that much of my life has revolved around avoiding overwhelming interactions. I don’t want to wield the straightener until my arms hurt and the bathroom smells like burnt hair (2000s girlies know). But I also don’t want to be called out or teased.
My senior year, I was ready for something different. I chopped my hair into a bob, which sometimes puffed out from my head with humidity and wouldn’t stay put with a hair tie. But the drying and styling process was shorter, and it seemed to fit with my vintage style. I’d oscillate between long hair and a medium bob for years after.
As for college, it was such a blur of stress and panic that I began to let go of some aspects of my personal style. If I was singing with the jazz band, I’d get “dolled up.” But much of the time was spent in comfortable tees and jeans. It would take graduate school to inspire a new burst of effort.
My Twenties
My masking reached a peak in my twenties. By that time, I’d had enough of the conflicting feedback on my personality. Aloof, quiet, shy. Diffident, bored. Mysterious. Poised. Calm. Now I understand that these judgments were a reflection not of me, but the observer. I could be difficult for others to read. So people made things up.
Because I was now teaching as a graduate student, the impression I made on others was crucial. Students filled out evaluations at the end of every term. They could write anything they pleased, about any aspect of me. And I calculated my teaching persona carefully. I was the cool older sister. The polished and poised intellectual with a dry sense of humor. The fast-talking leading ladies I had watched on TCM were my model. Barbara Stanwyck. Rosalind Rossell. Katherine Hepburn. At the same time, the jazz singers I had listened to and learned from informed my fashion sense. Lena Horne. Billie Holiday. Anita O’Day.
Communicating with Style
I realized that my style could both keep people out and invite them to know me. My polished and controlled exterior discouraged negative feedback on my looks. Yet those who enjoyed the same old movies and music as I did recognized the pattern and gave me an opening to talk about something more comfortable to me.
By the time I took my first job as a full time tenure track professor, I was fully committed to this style. I chopped my hair into a gamine inspired pixie cut and lined my eyes with a sweep of my black felt-tip liner every morning. My lips were matte red (Wet n’ Wild Liquid Catsuit by Wet n’ Wild).
Did I enjoy this style and relate to it? Yes. Was it high effort, expensive, and time consuming? Yes.
As I confronted my mental health, I began to rebel from this strictly vintage image. I dyed my hair platinum blonde (shoutout to Jolene Landstra!). And during the summer, when I wasn’t teaching, we dared to finish it off with pink toner. My palette began to shift away from the harsh contrast of black, white, and bright red to pinks and turquoises. I was expressing myself in new ways as I learned to be more gentle, forgiving, and creative in my relationship to myself.
Breaking Down and Rebuilding
And then the pandemic hit. At first, I dressed up for online classes just as I had in person. But as my platinum blonde hair grew out, and the toll of teaching under those conditions built up, I lost the motivation. First, it was comfortable pants and a dress top. Then casual tees and sweaters. And finally, a blazer thrown over the oversized shirt I’d slept in.
Like many working from home during the pandemic, I lost my tolerance for uncomfortable clothing. I recall getting dressed for a rare in-person event during a drop in COVID cases. How did I walk in these shoes? How did I tolerate the skinny dress pants and uncomfortable blouses?
A pile of donations began to accumulate on my closet floor. We were getting ready to move, after all. I’d learned to code, plotted a career change, and we were headed back closer to our families. But I couldn’t let go of my old style completely.
Once we were re-established and unpacked, I began to see a frustrating pattern. My wardrobe was split across two extremes. On in-office days, I wore the most comfortable of my old clothes. On work from home days, I wore oversized tees, sweats, pajama bottoms, and loose dresses. When I went out with my husband and our friends, I struggled to define what I wanted to wear. Previously, I’d mixed and matched from my teaching wardrobe with a few bolder pieces that were more Marilyn Monroe than Audrey Hepburn, letting my bombshell side out. Now I had less to draw from. Something had to change. And while I didn’t know it, I was about to start unmasking my style.
Style as a Special Interest
As I continued to work on my mental health and self-image, I began to realize that I was not allowing myself to express my creativity. I was playing it safe, and while I was more comfortable, I was not having fun with my style.
So I began to research. What was the best way to figure out what I like to wear? How could I build a wardrobe that met my needs and was easy to mix and match? Most crucially, could I do this in an environmentally friendly and budget safe way?
One of the first big changes was shaving my head. I was sick of the effort of long hair and unwilling to commit more time in the salon chair. So I grabbed my husband’s beard trimmer and made the chop, trimming the top with scissors to approximate a pixie cut. Then I thought: what if I just buzzed the whole thing? So I did, and decided I looked like a badass.
Now to think about my wardrobe.
Naturally, I did extensive research into several methods for determining your personal style. Here are the highlights.
The following are tools, not rules. I didn’t know what I liked to wear as I unmasked. And by exploring style from multiple angles, I’ve remembered how to have fun and feel comfortable in my clothes!
Tools for Unmasking my Style
Kibbe and Gamine Style
The Kibbe system looks at the lines and shapes of your body so that you can echo those in your clothing. Long story short, I am, well…short. Not only that, I appear short even without anything next to me for scale. That’s because my proportions are petite. Remember, “petite” isn’t about tag size. It’s about every pair of pants being too long, sleeves draping over my hands, and waistlines falling too low on me.
I had good instincts when I gravitated towards Audrey Hepburn. The short lines of cigarette pants, the cropped hair, and tied waist button-downs all honored my petite proportions and shorter vertical line. In addition, I learned about the gamine combination of sharp and soft lines. I had always wondered why, for example, a particular dress never achieved the effect I imagined in my mind. It turns out it was all soft lines, more of a Romantic cut. And I need sharpness, especially near my face, to feel balanced.
Now, there’s no rule that you have to care about this! I just found that I couldn’t always land the visual effect I was going for. Like a painter unsure where to place the next stroke. For example, I learned that when seeking out longer pieces, I like having shorter lines within the pattern or cut.
I also used the Gamine designator to broaden my inspiration. I looked to Janelle Monae, Zoe Kravitz, and Sinead O’Connor, for example, reaching beyond the vintage into a more modern aesthetic. But I was still finding certain pieces in my closet that I never wanted to wear, even though I liked them on the hanger. So, on to color analysis.
Seasonal Colors
The seasonal color system looks at your natural complexion, hair color, eye color, and so on to build a palette that feels harmonious on you. And I was happy to find so many modern creators building on this system to make it inclusive and diverse! Past explanations were more focused on white women, while the best modern systems show a range of diverse examples and even add new subtypes.
As I looked at my appearance, and considered my color palette choices in the past, a pattern started to emerge.
The first strong feeling I had about wearing any particular color involved a yellow shirt I wore to the last day of 6th grade. When I got my disposable camera developed, I thought, “Wow, I do not actually like wearing yellow!” And I excised it from my wardrobe, along with most orange. This reaction to bright and warm colors was a sign that I was muted and cool: a soft summer.
Other signs emerged. My black eyeliner and red lips read as bright and bold, while charcoal or even plum blended better into my features. The bright kelly green top I’d always try on and then throw on the floor was replaced with a softer green top I’d thrifted. And gradually, I defined a whole new palette. Soft lavender and dusty rose were now my go-tos, and navy became my new neutral.
Yet I do not take color analysis as a rule. To me, it’s a system for calculating the effect you want to achieve. So if I want to appear more goth and mysterious or ghostly, borrowing black from the Winter seasons (cool and bright) is great. But if I want to feel classic and understated, it’s a soft summer navy for me. And if I want to appear really bold and rebellious, going completely out of my season for a warm and bright lime green from the Spring season can have an interesting effect.
But what about the overall vibe of my style? I was not committed to the vintage look anymore, so what was I gravitating towards instead?
Ellie-Jean’s Style Roots
Stylist Ellie-Jean Royden came up with a system to help capture the essence of your style. She calls it Style Roots. Eight natural elements correspond to a potential element of your style. Royden encourages you to pick several to avoid feeling constrained in your style, so I took the quiz and found three.
Stone
Stone is comfortable, athletic, and casual. I found this aspect of my style working from during the pandemic, and as a kid running around in oversized t-shirts. I’m also a fitness instructor in my spare time, so that tracks, too.
Moon
Moon is mysterious, rebellious, edgy, and a little goth. As someone with a philosophical bent, a love of metal music, a buzzcut, and tattoos, I feel at home with Moon.
Sun
Sun is bright, playful, and quirky. This element never left my style! Gamine is naturally playful, and my polka dots and peter pan collars were very Sun coded. But I was more Mountain and Mushroom than Stone at that time, which is all about structure and classic shapes. So Sun has taken on a new life for me when combined with Moon and Stone.
Combining the Elements
This trio of elements is now at the core of my style. And I can let each one take the lead depending on the occasion. At work, Sun leads with business casual elements in pink, purple, and fun patterns. In my daily life, Stone often leads, with athletic clothes and a hint of Sun sparkle in my Converse shoes or my fluffy purple Kuromi bag. And Moon is always with me through my shaved head and tattoos.
I feel more myself than ever for it. And I often think, “What would my ten-year-old self think of this outfit?” And if she would love it, I’m wearing it! I no longer use fashion to control my image or stay safe from negative feedback. I’m unmasking my style, and I’m now back to the creative expression I found as a kid. I love thrifting pieces to try new things and keep exploring. And if you don’t, that’s great too! Sensory issues, budget, time–all of these things affect how we engage with our clothes. In the end, it’s about who you are, and not what you are wearing.
As always, thanks for reading! If you want to stay up-to-date on the latest posts, and access OM, my free meditation tool, be sure to subscribe.
Has style played a role in masking or unmasking for you? Let me know in the comments!
