Fashion and Embodiment at Connecticut College

Photo courtesy of Lucie Englehardt.

Fashion is a fascinating avenue of storytelling, and I firmly hold that every outfit is a sort of narrative. It has a capacity to express deep affect and forces a beautiful romance between art and science, economies and ecologies. Not only is fashion has become a deeply important site of my personal embodiment, but fashion culture is a visual marker of larger societal innovations and conditions, especially in times of global strife. We wear our inspirations and aspirations, our values and beliefs embedded in ourselves and in our worlds. I have seen the landscape of style and fashion among young consumers shift towards androgyny, sustainability, and inclusivity, but mostly towards a collective celebration of the deep diversity of personal expression. As secondhand shopping, albeit contentiously, becomes more and more normative for how and where we source pieces, creativity and resourcefulness are suddenly of large cultural importance. Interestingly, however, it comes at a time when fast fashion brands foresee trends and act upon them with lightspeed to produce thousands of new styles for constant consumption with a promised low cost. Contemporary fashion is therefore predicated on the ebbs and flows within retail versus resale sustainability and the ethical quandaries of consumption, but also social and cultural change, boldness, and what seems to be newfound confidence with style and self. Not because contemporary fashion must be predicated as an act of resistance from a status quo, but because it can be honored as its own beautifully amorphous historical relic of our times.

Fascinated by this idea of fashion as an identity-marker, I interviewed three people who I knew to see clothes as formative to their sense of self: Alice Volfson ‘23, Caleb Griffen ‘24, and Malachi Ward ‘24. 

Alice, who grew up in New York City, feels that her fashion identity is very much shaped by where and how she was raised. As I usually have the privilege to bond with Alice over our favorite consignment and thrift stores in the city, I knew that sourcing her clothes is just as much of an experience for her as curating the outfit itself. She shares, “I typically thrift all my clothes. Ever since I was really young, five or six, I’ve been thrifting. It’s what I could afford. I shop for big statement pieces. I’m not a basics girl. I have always dressed out there; I get it from my mom. And, in regards to makeup. Expressing myself in this way is a very core part of who I am and a source of therapy and self-care.” 

Alice, clad in burgundy patent leather Mary Jane oxfords offset by mustard-yellow socks and a knotted white button-down, believes that her various pieces of clothing can engage in conversation with each other and most certainly hold family stories. “My constant piece is a Star of David necklace. It is my grandma’s. Before, it was her cousin’s in the Soviet Union before my grandma immigrated to the U.S., and she gave it to me about a year ago. I always have it out in the open, and keep in mind: ‘how can I make this the most visible?’”

Caleb Griffen is another New York City-native who sees clothes as a potent outlet of self-expression. Caleb was wearing a pair of wide-legged True Religion jeans, washed and worn with love, on which deconstructed True Religion pockets and patches of various fabrics were stamped and sewn. He had made the pants, dedicating around twenty or thirty hours to the placement of the pockets and hand-embroidering in and around the negative space that laid bare. It mattered that the pockets and the jeans themselves were True Religion brand. “True Religion is a brand that epitomizes New York. It’s very bizarre because they’re a high-level fashion brand, and all their marketing features white people, but it is just Black people that wear it. Some of the people I grew around told me I needed to have a pair of trueys, so I searched far and wide for one and ended up making my own.” The denim tells a story, as well. “Denim is a working class garment,” Caleb shared. “There are two functions of clothing that are cultural universals: utility value and aesthetic value. Denim is worn for the purpose of being durable. But, I’m not a cowboy nor a coal miner, and here I am still wearing this garment. I’m wearing it for the ideal of what it presents rather than utility, which is very long gone.” 

We discussed personal style as materialistic and fashion as a form of fine art. “It’s a very beautiful, artistic thing but also a matter of vanity and presentation.” Later, Caleb remarked: “I am a very material person, but clothes are ephemeral. If everything burned down, I think I’d be okay with it. I like the idea of possessions being able to pass through me.” 

When meditating on fashion and personal expression, it is hard not to revere Malachi Ward, who composes an outfit carefully, artistically, but above all effortlessly. When asked about what fashion means to him, Malachi replied: “it is the one realm of my life where I do not care about judgement. I am extremely particular about how I look. Either you love my outfit or you hate it, but you think something about it.” 

Malachi shared with me a photo of his handmade corset from costuming class. “The story in this photo, from the hair to the necklace and all the way down, is six year-old me finally happy. Finally vindicated. Self-designing a corset I made myself. I always wanted to be a fashion designer, but I was afraid. I was so afraid. I wanted the safe option. And this photo just tells a story of six year-old me cheering; he would be so happy to see where I have grown. I don’t even think it’s my best outfit, but I’m wearing a corset as a man. My corset almost feels like a bulletproof vest that is protecting me from what everybody else thinks. My family didn’t believe it, but I was like, ‘No, I am going to wear this. And I’m going to look good in it too.”’