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(Photos, clockwise from top left: plaid shirts, pink cardigan and green sweater, tie detail, knitted etsy scarf, Members Only jacket with corduroys and hat, Bed Stü shoes, Topman sweater, dressy pants, holographic hat, wingtip shoes, another tie detail, summer sneakers.)

There are lots of stylish men out there, but it’s not often that Nadine and I have the chance to interview one. That’s why today’s conversation with her friend Ryan feels like such a treat. He walks into Nadine’s house wearing an off-white t-shirt, cords, a flat cap, and a truly gorgeous pair of brogues that look like they’ve been through the war, as my mother would have said—only when I say it, I mean it as a compliment. “I like to build from the ground up,” Ryan says, looking down at his feet. “Today I just have on a plain white shirt, but the shoes are good, so I feel classy.” Indeed: He has a retro look that looks put-together without seeming fussy. Since he appreciates old-school style, I ask if he’s a thrift store kind of guy. “Not so much anymore,” he says. “I had a real-person job in market research in Chicago, which opened doors to things I could afford.” Sure enough, he tells us that the shoes are not, in fact, old, but are by the hip clothier Bed Stü, whose leather goods are made—and distressed to look aged—by hand. Ryan has brought a bunch of his favorite clothes with him, things that are most representative of the way he likes to dress. He starts pulling pieces from his bag and I spot a beautiful sweater with blue intarsia done in a traditional nordic design. Since he likes to look unique, Ryan looks for limited-edition pieces from the shops and designers he likes; this sweater was only available at Topman’s UK stores. He’s got several nice knits and cozy looking caps, so I ask if cold weather is his favorite, fashion-wise. He nods. “Sweaters and hoodies are the best.” There are lots of nice colors in this jumble, too. I point to a bright pink Izod cardigan, which he says he’d probably wear with a v-neck t-shirt underneath. I’m intrigued because bright colors are sometimes hard to find in men’s clothes—and they can be hard to wear, too, Ryan says. “Wearing pink in public can be weird. When I’m with my peers I feel good, but on the way there, on the street, it’s more difficult. But I know these are petty things compared to what women go through,” he says. The three of us then have a brief but serious conversation about street harassment and the ways in which the patriarchy hurts men, too (cuz it does, you know), but I soon manage to pull in the reins and return the conversation to fashion. When putting together something to wear, I ask Ryan, does he have any particular person in mind who serves as an inspiration? “Being tall is awkward. I can always have a certain awkwardness, even if I like what I’m wearing. So I think I’m inclined to admire someone who carries themselves well even if I don’t like their personal style.” That said, he adds, he’s always admired bands who perform dressed up in suits. Ryan is a musician himself, a guitarist who has recorded with different bands and is now writing music for a solo project. While he’s telling me all this, I spy a snapback hat in a pinkish-yellowish hologram fabric and have to force myself to resist the urge to put it on. “Isn’t that great?” he says. “It’s the hat from Back to the Future 2!” Diamond Select Toys made a replica of the hat Marty McFly wears in the movie, which Ryan saw while scrolling through Facebook one day and couldn’t resist buying. He doesn’t wear the hat too often, but it was part of the get-up he wore when he played skeeball with a league in Chicago. We talk skeeball, which he says was as much fun as it sounds like, and then I ask about a beautiful long scarf that looks hand-knit. He confirms that it was, only by a seller on etsy, not by him. Then follows another earnest talk, initiated by me, about the value of handicrafts and the beauty of passing these skills down through a family. “The most that was handed down to me in my family that way was when my dad taught me to tie a tie,” Ryan says. Does he do that much? Sometimes he dressed up and wore a tie for his real-person job, but other days he kept it low-key and just put on a hoodie. He always wore a tie to skeeball, though. And he may not know how to knit—yet—but he likes to customize his clothes the DIY way. Rather than scouring every store for a sweatshirt or tee in the exact color he wants, he’ll get a white or light-colored one and dye it. The genius! For those of you seeking tips, Ryan has found that Procion dye works better than Rit. It comes in a powdered form that you mix with salt and washing soda, and you can blend the powders to create different shades. I make a mental note to try this one day soon. As Nadine takes a photo of the shoes Ryan has on, I mention that I like his colorful socks, too. “I actually think socks are my weakness,” he says. “You can wear any color, any print. They don’t really have to match anything else in your outfit.” So would he say his overall look is clearly defined? “It’s evolved slightly,” he says. “In high school I wore hoodies, Dickies and t-shirts. The only difference is now I can afford better pants. And I always loved color.”

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(Photos, clockwise from top left: Betsey Johnson dress, glasses, leather jacket, closet with Betsey Johnson tutu, bird dress, shoes, earring frame, lace dress with turquoise necklace, jewelry collection, bracelets, Betsey Johnson dress close up, earring frame, scarves, Betsey Johnson tutu rose detail). 

Rae is a Philly girl, born and bred. You know how we know? ‘Cause she calls her Keds bobos. Also because we took the trolley up Girard Avenue to visit her in Port Richmond, the old neighborhood on the Delaware River where her family is from, and we learned as much about the place where she lives in as we did about her bright, charming wardrobe. The house is the one her father grew up in, and a few years ago the family decided to refinish it for Rae to live in. It needed a lot of work, but there were some features that Rae kept because she couldn’t imagine the house without them: the little crystal doorknobs, the tile-floored front vestibule, and her grandmother’s art deco china cabinet, kept right in the same spot in the small dining room where it always was. And with her confident, eclectic style sense, Rae seems as much OF this house as she is IN it: A little bit modern, a little bit retro, and totally comfortable in her own skin. We troop up the narrow staircase and into her bedroom, where the first thing she shows us is a voluminous hot pink tutu-style skirt and a cute little cotton floral dress, which she bought together at Betsey Johnson in New York and wears at the same time. “I saw the dress alone and then the girl looked at it for a minute and said, ‘I have an idea!’” The idea was that tutu should go under the dress, like a punk-rock petticoat. Also in her closet is a cool but feminine black lace dress that Rae bought to wear on her thirtieth birthday. Did she do something special for the big day? Did she ever. A natural performer who has always loved to sing, Rae says the thing she most wanted in life was to sing a number with Martha Graham Cracker, a drag cabaret performer who is something of a Philadelphia institution. She knew some people so she got her wish, and got up on stage with Martha to sing “Natural Woman” as a duet. “It was epic,” she says with passion. “It’s one of the best nights of my life.” A lot of Rae’s clothing stories are Philadelphia stories. She tells us she got her bejeweled cat-eye glasses at the eyeglass lady’s stall in the old Antiquarian’s Delight, a Philly favorite housed in a former synagogue that sadly closed its doors last year. She recalls shopping on Frankford Ave. as a teenager, and wearing saddle shoes and an indestructible acrylic sweater to Catholic school. And for her day job, she does development at Career Wardrobe, a wonderful nonprofit that assists women throughout the city who are transitioning to the workforce. A good portion of the organization’s work is concerned with dress and appearance, since getting the right suit and hairstyle is so often the first step toward finding the right job. Rae says the style suggestions Career Wardrobe offers its clients have benefited her as well. Before starting her career in nonprofit development, she spent a good ten years working in coffee shops, so when it came to getting dressed for work, comfort mattered most. Now, she says, she’s a devotee of Ann Taylor Loft, which has been her key to an easy professional wardrobe. Easy, maybe, but not boring. I spy two small picture frames on the wall, both covered in bright dangling earrings. They’ve got chicken wire attached behind them in place of a picture, and the earrings hang from the delicate wires. When I ask about her collection Rae says she swears by earrings, earrings and scarves. And before I know it she’s bringing out armloads of floaty, feminine, bright-patterned scarves and displaying them across her bed.   “I’m famous for always wearing jeans and a black sweater, but with all this,” she says, gesturing to her bed of scarves, “I can look different every day.” A few details can make all the difference. Rae tries on her leather jacket and shows us how the knit panels keep it from being too ... serious. Then she shows us her favorite outfit to wear with the jacket: An orange animal-print scarf and great big leather boots (Dr. Scholl’s so they’re comfy, too). “Then I become a total badass,” she says. I ask Rae my favorite question to ask folks: Does she have any style icons, celebrities or real-life, living or dead? She hands me a book by one of them, the food writer MFK Fisher, who looks striking and elegant in black and a combed-neat hairstyle. “I admire people who have the attitude and vibe that I like, rather than specifically wanting to look like them. MFK had a look that worked and stuck with it, and I admire that. I think that takes time, but she’s one of those people who knew what she liked at a very early age and stuck with it.” The other icon is Rae’s grandmother. “My Bubbe had very short hair and she wore a wiglet. When I was little she wore these themed outfits. Liker her watermelon outfit: green slacks, a pink top, pink bobos, and pink and green plastic earrings that she probably found at Clover. “She always dressed to the nines: faux fur, nails always done—the Jewess to end all Jewesses. In her bedroom she had the walls painted emerald green, and a giant picture of a black panther with matching green eyes. “My Aunt Ida would have these benefits. They’d pick a disease to raise money for and then everyone they knew would get dressed up, and my grandmother would get her nails painted to match her outfits. That’s just what they did.” And just like that, our conversation about family and home, appearance and identity, came full-circle. 

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(Photos, clockwise from top left: floral tapestry blazer, wooden bracelets, white polo shirt, vintage clutch, pin, men's dress shoes, vintage designer ties, Indian necklace, green felt hat, carved bracelet, owl necklace).

This installment of Portrait was a special treat. Instead of traveling to visit Ashley’s and James’ closets, the closets came to us! 

The two partners behind the magazine Modern Stitches, which looks at modern updates of vintage looks, visited us recently for a photo shoot and a good long talk about clothes.

I first met Ashley at a cocktail party, where—with her bold statement necklace and her long hair up in a striking topknot—she was far and away the best dressed person there. (Or maybe that was me. It’s a tie!) Today she’s color-blocked a bold sweater-skirt-belt combination, and has brought along some other interesting things to show us. One of them is a cream-colored leather clutch bag, a beauty from the 40s that her best friend gave her for Christmas one year.

“I have worn this bag like crazy,” she says, holding it dearly. “We’ve had a lovely time together. We go to New York, we’ve gone to a lot of parties. We’re a match made in heaven.” 

She adds, “Cream does a lot for me in the holiday season, even though they say not to wear white in winter.”

Breaking fusty fashion rules and creating her own distinctive style is important to Ashley. The skirt she’s wearing, for instance—another secondhand find—is a couple sizes too big, so she just cinched it up with a wide belt with a large silver buckle. No big deal: She scored the belt at Mustard Seed, a vintage shop in her hometown of D.C. 

“That’s how I got the idea for this magazine, as an undergraduate living in Virginia,” she says. She went to school in a rural area, 30 miles south of Richmond, and got into the habit of visiting the one Goodwill store nearby to look for fashionable things to wear.

“I’m a city girl and I grew up near plenty of Goodwills, so going there was a hobby, it was something to do. Then one day I found a Louis Vuitton luggage case there” (!!!) “and that’s when it struck me. I’m gonna do a magazine that covers vintage clothing as street wear.”

Ashley has previously tried to partner with other people on Modern Stitches, but when she and James met in a graduate publishing course—and bonded over the fashion sketches he’d made in his notebook—she knew he was the one.

Sure enough when it comes to fashion, James can talk the talk. He’s brought a few of his gorgeous silk ties to show us, including a Halston and a Pierre Balmain—all vintage—and we talk about how well-made vintage clothing is, even pieces made a mere 20 or 30 years ago.

“Pierre Balmain is a couture house in Paris. In the 80s they started to do more licensing here in the U.S. but they were still really good quality.”

He’s also brought a white button-down Polo shirt—”It’s amazing what a staple a white shirt is,” he says—and a sampling of the kinds of jewelry he wears with it, natural pieces made of wood and ivory from various sources, including Chinatown and a sale of Native American pieces. 

I tell him that I don’t know a lot about men’s clothing, but that my boyfriend often complains about a lack of fun options in the men’s section. James nods.

“For men it’s in the details. Accessories are important.” He talks wistfully about the “Peacock Revolution” of the 60s and 70s, when it was stylish for men to wear natty suits in bright colors and loud patterns. 

“This is another reason I get into secondhand clothes, because the fun stuff I like they won’t make available here. Men’s dressing in the U.S. is more basic. It can be hard to be an individual in the U.S. because everyone feels like they have to blend in. It’s like a costume,” he says.

Ashley gets a kick out of menswear, too—for women. She’s planning a feature for Modern Stitches called Anything He Can Wear She Can Wear Better, showcasing manly looks for ladies. Some of her own favorite pieces are men’s accessories, like the flat houndstooth cap she ordered from Scotland (“It took 6 months to get here!”) and now wears all the time. 

Another accessory she’s brought with her is a pin that reads Style is Freedom. She says her parents are very traditional, and she feels like the only one in her family who is really daring when it comes to expressing herself with clothing. 

“I really feel like there is no specific style for anyone. Whenever I try on something different it’s a feeling of being liberated,” she says. 

James totally agrees. 

“I felt so liberated the first time I wore a skirt,” he says, describing the look he created by wearing a long skirt, sandals, and draped fabric inspired by some African tribes.

Ashley shows us one of her favorite blazers, a thrift shop find made of a tapestry-like fabric.

“It reminds me of Vera Bradley, those floral purses, which I hate. If you had asked me ten years ago I never would have thought I’d choose something like this,” she says. But she shows me a photo of herself rocking that blazer at Philly Fashion Week, with cute denim shorts. (She attended New York Fashion Week too, as a backstage volunteer at the Rebecca Minkoff show. She said it was a whirlwind—a dream.)

So they both love to experiment with style. Does either one feel they have a clearly defined “look”? 

“I do a lot of color blocking, sometimes I’ll do my hip-hop feel—Timberlands from the 90s are back!—and sometimes I’m sporty. Sometimes I’m girly, but it all wraps up into the same bow,” Ashley says.

James says that when he worked for a few years at a hotel he dressed in a suit, and that he feels safest, strongest and most confident in dress clothes. “I will mess around with men’s and women’s clothes, but I feel safe in a suit. Classic, dandy prints like windowpane and houndstooth—it’s all in the details.”

James’ style icons are the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, for his experimentation and beautiful hair, and Madame de Pompadour, whose opulent style set the stage for the Baroque and Rococo periods. 

Ashley has two style (s)heroes as well. Her first one was Phylicia Rashad.

“Mrs. Cosby!” I say. 

“Ms. Cosby,” Ashley corrects, citing Rashad’s elegant, classic style as an inspiration. And these days, Ashley most looks up to Solange, Beyonce’s little sister. 

“She does a lot of floral patterns and Afrocentric looks. Sometimes she wears an afro, sometimes braids. She mixes prints really well. She’s so daring.

“And she really had to come out from the shadows of Beyonce. Everyone loves Beyonce, but there is something special about about Solange. I’m a little sister myself and I can really relate to her in a lot of ways. I think someday she’d be a perfect person for our cover!”

***

Modern Stitches has some exciting things in the works for the new year, including some how-tos, a section on dressing for your body type, and a Youtube channel with lots of thrifting goodness. Check them out! Modern Stitches website, Facebook, Instagram

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Today Nadine discusses her ideal Outfit of the Day. 

The clothing in the images above exemplify my ideal style, and while I normally wear jeans and Doc Marten boots when the weather turns chilly, every fall I become insanely excited for the idea of tweed skirts and Edwardian-esque shoes. Grey, cold weather inevitably reminds me of England, and England plays the leading role in my fashion preferences. 

My English countryside style developed when I was in high school. As a fan of British comedy, I became absorbed in Jeeves and Wooster, the BBC series that was based on the books by P.G. Wodehouse. Many of the stories take place at ancient country estates and poke fun at the antics of their upper class inhabitants. The costumes for the series are the epitome of countryside fashion of the 1920s and ‘30s. Another source of inspiration were the photographs in Andrew Morton’s book Diana: Her True Story, which I read right after Diana’s death in 1997. Diana and her siblings grew up in stately manors and played in gardens and fields wearing pea coats, heavy wool sweaters, and Wellington boots. Their clothing was traditional and practical. To protect against the rain and cold, tweed, wool, and Wellies are necessities. I think this is partly why I love everything about this style: it is dictated by the weather.

As a New Englander, I can tell you that being warm and dry is often more important than being fashionable. That is why with classic, well-made pieces, you can look sharp and be comfortable. Trends and disposable fashion be damned. If you invest in quality items whose look hasn’t changed in the last 100 years, you can be certain you’re going to look good for many years to come. Sadly, it is becoming more difficult to find high quality clothing. Even if the price suggests it’s going to last forever, the Made in China tag tells the truth. It’s so unfortunate. 

Now let’s have a look at what’s in those photos above. The grey cardigan was a recent purchase from L.L. Bean. Grey is my all-time favorite color, and I always prefer cardigans to sweaters for some reason. The ruffled shirt underneath, a sort of Edwardian/Lady Diana Spencer blouse, I got on sale at J. Crew a few years ago. The tweedy skirt is about eight years old now, and from the Gap. Since I hardly wear it it’s in excellent shape. The gigantic bag and the scarf are both from L.L. Bean. This bag is absolutely huge, and it was exactly what I wanted: extremely simple in style, but seemingly tough enough to handle all the things I put in it. The scarf was actually made in Ireland, which is awesome. The shoes were a recent purchase from Clarks. I chose brown over black for these because I absolutely love how a warm brown contrasts with charcoal grey (a very common color in my wardrobe). Clarks is a brand that used to have really excellent quality products. Their shoes still look great, but I can’t help but expect them to fall apart in a couple years.

And speaking of quality and expectations, those rain boots are L.L. Bean Wellies. I seriously contemplated getting Hunter boots, but when I saw they were made in China, I decided to get the L.L. Bean version, which are also made in China, but cost about half as much as the Hunters. Brand names mean nothing when the products are all made in the same place. Finally, there is the navy pea coat with teal lining, made by Sterlingwear of Boston. And guess what? It was custom made for me, in the United States. Sterlingwear makes coats for the military, and they have a couple of retail stores where you can buy coats off the rack, or order a coat with a particular lining color. I’ve had this coat for two years now, and it’s still looking good. If you want a carefully crafted coat, as well as excellent customer service, check out Sterlingwear of Boston.

It is appropriate, of course, that a company located in Boston would be making wool coats here in the States. New England weather and English weather do have some things in common. Growing up in rural New England made me long for what to me was a more exotic version of my surroundings. I immersed myself in images of country estates, whose lords and ladies gallivanted with sheep in the fields and then came in out of the rain for afternoon tea. These images still appeal to me, and since it seems unlikely that I’ll ever spend much time in a manor house, I can at least look like I’d fit in there. And you bet that when it rains in the fall, I put on my Wellies and go for a walk.

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(Photos, clockwise from top left: watches, bike belt buckle, pins on bag, hats, bag lining, bag made by Joe, knit hat made by Katie on hat shop mannequin, two plaid shirts, pile of shoes, owl pin, tie collection, ship belt buckle, close up of a tie).

For this installment of Portrait of a Closet, Nadine has met me and Joe at Joe’s apartment, which is on the second floor above a bike shop in a little town on the Delaware River. Joe is my boyfriend of a few years, so I’m not sure there will be much he’ll be able to tell me about his wardrobe that I don’t already know, but I'm keen to find out.

I already know, for instance, that Joe isn’t timid about wearing things that are bright and cheerful, and isn’t afraid to attract a little attention. I ask him to put together a favorite outfit to show us, and builds a clashing-patterns look around one of his many thrift store ties.

“I don’t have much reason to dress up in my daily life, so sometimes I have to just do it anyway,” he explains.

This gives me an idea. “Do you have anything in your wardrobe that you find ... challenging to wear?” I ask.

He nods and takes out a sleeveless, dark blue argyle sweater vest with the label Sebastian Cooper. 

“This is a little fancier than I usually like to wear because I need to wear nice pants with it, but I don’t like to wear those pants that often because I find them kinda dorky.”

Does he remember where he found the sweater vest?

“I remember where I got everything!” he says. It’s from New Life, one of our all-time favorite secondhand stores.

Joe favors variety in colors and patterns, and he frequently complains about the boring nature of most men’s clothing departments. I bring up this issue and he tells me he actually has two complaints about menswear.

“Number one is diversity, although that’s actually becoming less of a problem. There’s more color and more styles than there ever used to be. My second complaint is sizing! People always say that this is true of women’s clothing but it’s true for men’s too.” He shows us two button-down shirts, both marked size Medium, one clearly larger than the other. So it happens to them too!

Joe is ready to talk accessories, which he’s much more excited to discuss. He says the only ones he buys are things he finds at thrift stores because he prefers pieces that are “interesting and weird.” He’s got a number of neat old belt buckles, including an embossed-leather one with a ship on it, one that has an old-fashioned bicycle on it, and one made out of seat belt from a Dodge Viper; a growing hat collection; and tons of buttons, which he finds at zine fairs and flea markets. One of his pins is a gold-colored one of two owls on a branch that we share custody of and which he has been hoarding, so I make a mental note to take it back with me when I go home. The band buttons, he says, have mostly come from record stores and mail-order record sellers. 

I hold up one that says Great Taste. “Is this a band?” I ask. Yeah, a fake band, he says, explaining that Great Taste is two of his friends who got together and practiced a lot and made a ton of merchandise but only played like one show. Sounds real enough to me, I think, and shrug.

Joe wears the buttons on some of his cardigans and jackets, and he has lots of them festooning the shoulder bag he made a few years ago out of upholstery fabric, a floral cotton fabric for the lining, and carabiners to attach the strap. Back when I first met him Joe did a lot of sewing using his mother’s machine. Once he even made a hooded sweatshirt.

“Why don’t you sew much anymore?” I ask. 

“Sewing was a lot of work for not much return,” he says. “I’ve moved onto making books, and I get a lot more satisfaction out of that.” (Joe writes zines, and as Displaced Snail Publications he designs and prints chapbooks for other writers.)

“Want to see my hats?” he asks, and sets out a collection of them on his bed. There’s a white cotton one, which he found at the bottom of an abandoned shopping cart at Marshall’s. He thinks it might have been left behind by a customer, but the manager gave it a price and sold it to him. 

Then there’s the “Link hat,” a long, knitted winter hat modeled after the one the elfin Link wears in the Legend of Zelda game. I ran across the pattern for the hat on the craft community Cut Out + Keep, where users can post their own ideas and designs, and showed it to him because I knew he’d be charmed by it. He surprised me by announcing that if he had a hat like that, he’d wear it every day. So every evening for a couple of weeks, I sat on my couch and knitted the hat to give him as a Christmas gift. Sure enough he wears it all through the cold weather and always gets a few compliments a season, usually from a kid.

Joe also has a Panama hat that he bought for his brother’s wedding in St. Lucia.

“It only cost a dollar or two,” he adds, and I look at him skeptically. “It was!” he insists. “I think they thought it was for a costume.” He adds that he’s thinking of getting a real, good quality Panama hat like the one his friend Dennis has. That one cost more than a hundred dollars but the shop where Dennis bought it will repair it for free whenever any of the straw comes lose.

It’s about time for us to wrap up our interview, so I ask Joe one last question, the same one I ask everyone we profile. Does he have any style icons?

“Hmm, tough one. I’d have to say old school prep. I love the bright colors, especially the different colored pants. Mix that with Spencer Moody (singer for the Murder City Devils — dirty t-shirt, ratty pants, big beard), and you've got me. I kind of like the look of dirty and uncareful clothing, but I also like it to be bright. And minimalist!”

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(Photos, clockwise from top left: detail of embellished leather jacket, Sick of It All t-shirt, Guess frames, Wisdom in Chains t-shirt designed by Tim, leather jacket, Mark Nason boot, bracelet made of fishing swivels, Guess jeans, '68 Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible (photo by Tim), Fossil watch).

Tim is the first guy we’ve profiled here on Portrait of a Closet, and he also happens to be Nadine’s boyfriend. I interview him one morning over Skype, chatting with Nadine until he walks into view wearing jeans and a Sick of It All t-shirt showing a little kid with his fists up. It’s not that surprising, then, when our conversation about clothing turns out to also be a conversation about music.

“I guess most people change over time,” Tim says, “and I know I’ve had an evolution in my style.” In seventh grade—“the same time I became interested in what I looked like and what I was wearing”—he got into skating and other alternative sports. Reading Thrasher magazine he saw the skaters wearing Vans, and artists like Jim Phillips doing graphics for Santa Cruz skateboards.

“There was an emphasis on a certain image,” he recalls.

It was the ‘90s, and as he got more into bands and music metal was ending and grunge was born. His next big influence was the movie Singles, with Matt Dillon and cameos from about a million musicians: Eddie Vedder; Tad Doyle, the singer from Tad; Chris Cornell from Soundgarden. I’m Tim’s age and I can vouch for this: Everybody in that movie looked really good.

“I paid a lot of attention to that kind of stuff because I was super absorbed into music,” he tells me. In fact, he still is. Today he runs a record label, co-owns a record distribution company, and does the videography work for his label, shooting video of bands at shows.

Growing up in northern Pennsylvania, lots of hardcore bands from Jersey and New York played the local venues, and Tim got into the scene. Did going to shows and trying to fit in with the other kids influence his style?

“In a way,” he says. “It wasn’t exactly a feeling of need, just the idea that I wanted to be a part of that.”

These days, like back then, boots and jackets are his biggest passions. He favors low-cut boots or ones that have a timeless, grunge style. He pulls out a sick pair of Mark Nason boots of the kind he’d wanted “forever, but they’re always like $700. I got a good deal on these.” Up close, the black boots have incredible detail: ruched leather on the sides, ornate buckles, elaborate stitching, and two tiny silver buttons in the shape of skulls.

“I was a big fan of Top Gun back in the day too because Tom Cruise rode this fucking cool motorcycle, and I wanted like a jacket like his, with patches and everything.”

He brings out a big, dark-wash jean jacket covered with buttons and a Ramones patch, a leather jacket with a Social Distortion patch, and his favorite one, a beautiful leather motorcycle-style jacket from Guess that he’s kept clean and unaltered.

This leads into Tim’s other passion, motor sports and classic cars and the aesthetic that sometimes goes with them them: pompadours and sideburns, motorcycles and horror movies. As such, clothes aren’t the only thing he likes to personalize. Recently, for instance, he was given a motorcycle as a gift that isn’t necessarily the kind he’d have bought for himself. So he plans to make it into something he would buy, customizing the body in a triple-black design with matte black behind a medium black behind a high-gloss black, giving it a ghosted image. This sounds awesome and I resist the urge to nod sagely and say none more black.

When it comes down to it, Tim tells me, cars are the ultimate accessory. He’s always had two or three classic cars that he alters and tinkers with. These days his baby is a ’68 Cutlass Convertible, painted red with two black stripes on the hood. Nadine takes the laptop downstairs so I can see it, a sleek gorgeous monster asleep in the garage like a tiger in a tree.

In talking about his daily personal style, we’ve covered watches and eyeglasses—Tim’s wearing a modern-looking pair of Guess frames, and owns around 8 watches—and I wonder aloud if that’s that all there is for men when it comes to accessories. We women can get away with festooning ourselves, but most men don’t wear jewelry and it seems they have to choose just a few things for embellishment.

“Well, I do wear jewelry actually,” Tim says, and raises his arm to show me the silver strands wrapped around his wrist. But they’re not exactly bracelets. He got the idea years ago from an album by the hardcore band 7 Seconds. There’s a picture of the band on the cover, and the guys all have on leather wristbands and stuff. Tim could see that one of the members was wearing fishing swivels on his wrists (!), so he got himself some and has worn them to this day.

I tell Tim that I don’t know a lot about men’s clothing, but I do know my own boyfriend’s complaint, which is that menswear is boring. Though his look is different than Joe’s (Joe favors color and patterns and jokey hair), Tim agrees. 

“There isn’t a lot out there. There’s the suit and tie look, there’s the sporty/athletic look, there’s the more, I guess, adolescent look, which is the one I like and have tried to work with.” 

Tim has worked on maintaining his look while letting it evolve as he’s gotten older and more ambitious in his field.

“When I first entered my profession, I realized a t-shirt and jeans weren’t always acceptable, but khakis and a button-down weren’t necessarily ‘enough.’ I learned that in my career path, I could wear a really nice blazer, a rock shirt, and good pants and boots, and that would make it okay. Some of this clothing is more expensive than a suit, and that compensates for it not being professional in a traditional way.”

Tim wandered into Guess one day and the woman there helped him find a bunch of well-fitting jeans, and now he’s hooked. Well-made clothes cost more but they last longer, and they’re consistent in a way that he values. If he used to wear $20 jeans and a band t-shirt, he now wears $150 jeans and a band t-shirt and a really nice jacket.

“You can bring your personality and attitude out in more subtle ways. We all do it, we all judge people, look at someone and form an opinion of them."

“So whatever I put out there, I want people to take away from it what I want them to see about me.”

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This week Nadine discusses one of her style icons, Mrs. Slocombe. 

��    If you aren’t already familiar with the BBC series Are You Being Served?, I highly recommend checking it out for its ‘70s fashion and classic British humor. It held its 7pm weeknight timeslot on PBS throughout my junior high and high school years, and I tuned in practically every night. Fearing that someday PBS would cease to air it, I bought the DVD box sets as soon as they became available. Obviously, this show was an integral part of my adolescence, and continues to be my most favorite show of all time.

            Are You Being Served? follows the goings-on of the staff of a London department store, and like many British comedies, the humor stems from the eccentricities of the characters. One of the most memorable of these characters is Mrs. Slocombe, head of the Ladies Intimate Apparel department.

In her company uniform of white blouses and brown vests and skirts, Mrs. Slocombe stands out visually from the other employees of Grace Brothers department store. As the above image illustrates, the most striking thing about Mrs. Slocombe’s style is her ever-changing hair color. No other character ever comments on these rainbow hairdos, which makes it even more odd, and awesome. Her hair is the marker of her defiant personality. She obediently plays her role as a matronly head of department, but her colorful and rebellious personality can’t help but show through.

As she is the older of the two women working at the Intimate Apparel counter, Mrs. Slocombe is often the butt of sexist and ageist jokes. The comments come from her colleagues, superiors, and customers. While the commenters are sometimes reprimanded by other characters for being rude, Mrs. Slocombe herself usually shoots back snappy remarks. Her junior, Miss Brahms, tends to laugh along with the others, and is perhaps too young, pretty, and naïve to realize that she is also the victim of these attitudes. But Mrs. Slocombe has the guts to stand up for herself, taking daring jabs at those who put her down. She holds onto her self-worth, and is not afraid to make an outward show, in the form of her hair, of her individuality in a workplace with rather rigid rules. What’s not admire about that?

Besides her signature hair, Mrs. Slocombe’s personal style is reflected in her choice of shoes and handbags. These are both sensible and practical, with the shoes usually being a dark brown, low-heeled pump (as comfortable as fashion would allow for a woman standing on her feet all day), and the handbags of a sort that one associates with the Queen: short handled, worn over an upturned forearm. Of course these classic choices, paired with her uniform, set the backdrop for her shocking hair colors.

In the episode entitled Mrs. Slocombe, Senior Person, Mrs. Slocombe is by chance temporarily promoted to a managerial position, a role that comes with a private office and keys to the  “executive washroom.” She is the envy of her colleagues, and relishes the opportunity to use her new authority over the people who have always been so disrespectful toward her. Now free of her sales associate uniform, she requests that the Gentlemen’s department make up a suit for her. Mr. Humphries and Mr. Lucas come to her office for a fitting, and soon realize that their tape measures aren’t made to measure a woman’s body. A few fat jokes are implied as the two men improvise, using an eraser and a calendar to fill in the gaps where the tape measure falls short. But it is not the fact that Mrs. Slocombe has curves that is the problem. This scene is a wonderful metaphor for women’s progressing role in the workplace. The suit department wasn’t prepared to have a female customer, and both the Ladies' and Gentlemen’s departments were not expecting their manager to be replaced by a woman. Although it turns out that office life is not as exciting as she’d hoped, Mrs. Slocombe proves that she can act like an executive. And in her sharp new suit, she certainly looks the part.

            Mrs. Slocombe is adept at conforming to professional standards, but her brazen personality cannot be contained. Her hair colors explode just like her temper, which frequently flares up in the highly regimented, sexist department store. As a teenager I was drawn to her saucy attitude, and as an adult I have much respect for how she handles her hostile work environment. Mrs. Slocombe is worthy of style icon status for her ability to remain true to herself, no matter how vulnerable that may make her. She demonstrates that being older doesn’t mean you can’t have hot pink hair, a fact worth remembering in our youth-obsessed culture. Sometimes when I feel confronted by restrictive social standards, in life or work or wherever, I think of Mrs. Slocombe in a particularly vibrant hairdo, her handbag tucked firmly in the crook of her elbow, blowing a raspberry.

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Girls on the Street

When it comes to fashion, Katie Haegele prefers the sidewalk to the catwalk.

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We're taking a break this holiday weekend to celebrate the end of summer, but in keeping with the '90s theme from our last post, here's a photo of the August 1993 issue of Details magazine to tide you over till next time! 

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In a special installment of Portrait of a Closet, your hosts Nadine and Katie have made a selection from their own closets. Nineties-style!

NADINE

In 8th grade (i.e., 1994 – 1995) I was obsessed with Courtney Love, as probably most girls with a rebellious spirit were at this time. While I was still too timid to put on red lipstick and smudgy eyeliner, I set out to find the perfect Mary Jane shoes that reminded me of Love’s iconic kinderwhore look. As I have learned by now, my personal style is what may be called classic, often to the point of boring, and so it is not at all surprising that I was drawn to the simple, timeless Mary Jane.

            On one glorious trip to the mall I found this pair at Aldo, which in the ‘90s sold their own brand of somewhat expensive, Italian-made, and sometimes very edgy shoes. Since getting this pair in 8th grade I have acquired several more variations of the Mary Jane over the years. Whenever I browse a shoe store I find myself stopping to look at anything with a strap. No matter what is in vogue, the Mary Jane manages to bring a sense of class to any crazy shoe trend.

            Although Love herself may not be known for being “classy”, as a fan of hers for two decades now, I can say that my encounter with her music, personality, and style has most certainly helped to shape my own image and worldview.  Before listening to Hole I had not heard that kind of rage coming from a female musician, and not coincidentally, I had not previously wanted to emulate a celebrity’s style. By getting this pair of shoes, I was for the first time truly inspired to not only look a certain way, but to attempt to fully experience an aspect of my personality that I had only recently discovered. It seems like the Mary Jane will never go out of fashion, and considering the world we live in, female rage continues to be as relevant as ever, too.

KATIE

Nadine’s eloquent post about her Mary Janes inspired me to talk about the '90s too, and my experience of the ’90s nostalgia that's going on right now.

As an adult I’ve tried a number of different looks, and increasingly “pretty” has felt more important to me than it ever used to. I smooth my short hair down over my forehead, powder the shine out of my nose, and use eyeshadow to manufacture a little sparkle for the days I’m feeling dull. But when I was in high school during the ’90s, I wore nothing but Chucks, beat-up jeans, and either my soft oversized oatmeal-colored sweater or the LOSER t-shirt I bought at The Wall. I wore a uniform to school, and this other get-up was my uniform everywhere else. I thought that shirt was so cool and to be honest, I kind of wish I still had it. My hair was bobbed and I wore no make-up. That’s the kind of kid I was, a female Beck (though he had a fairly feminine look going on himself back then). I refused to watch 90210, though it was hugely popular. I liked beauty but I liked the androgynous, cool, makeup-less Kate Moss beauty, and I thought the girls on the show, with their bouncy hair and floral-print dresses, were dorky and annoying. I didn't understand why everyone was so into that show. I thought it was the opposite of everything we were supposed to be excited about then.

But the ’90s are back, and so are little dresses like that, and I am on board. Last winter I found this one in the one-dollar room of a mildewy thrift store in South Jersey and for months I dreamed about wearing it as soon as the weather warmed up. The skirt was really long and voluminous so I cut it short and gave it one of my not-very-meticulous hems. I love the print and the fit and the fact that it laces up in back. (Isn't the back great?) It’s so Kelly Taylor. 

It’s been strange for me to watch kids who are teenagers now develop a fascination with a time they don’t remember but that I remember very well. I realize that it’s a lot like the retro obsession I had at that age. When I was in high school I cared about the Ramones and my idea of the New York music scene of the ‘70s as much as I loved Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell (which was quite a lot). Both things seemed equally present to me, and in a way I guess they were. Things don’t always really end at the time they’re supposed to. Sometimes they stay around longer in a different form, haunting you. The ‘90s aren’t done with me, I suppose. Good thing I found this dress.

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(Photos, clockwise from top in a sort of spiral: floral blouse, hanging necklaces, "Where the Wild Things Are"-type sweater, clothing rack, seahorse cardigan, gold sequined dress with top, Jeffrey Campbell shoes on stack of Nylon magazines, hanging purses, shelving unit holding clothes and nail polish, glasses, striped shorts, King Tut holographic pendant, white huaraches, American flag sweater.)

Jackie lives in a gorgeous old Center City Philly neighborhood, and the only thing bugging her about her apartment right now is that they're blocking the view with construction on a large building. We peek out the window and see Tyvek and raw lumber.

"It's gonna be an LGBT retirement home though, which is so nice, I can't really complain about that," she says.

It turns out today is an auspicious day for talking about style, because tomorrow Jackie has a job interview at a magazine in New York—exciting!—and she still needs to figure out what to wear. She is getting her nails done later today, by an artist named Hani (pronounced like honey) who Jackie has heard will do things like Frankenstein, or sugar skulls. She’s thinking she might ask for tiny pictures of those troll dolls with the cotton candy hair.

Jackie's bedroom, which is large and airy, looks art-directed. None of her clothing is "away"—hanging from a rolling rack between two windows, or folded neatly into cubbies alongside pretty books, knick-knacks, and an army of eccentric-colored nail polishes, it's all a part of the decor. 

Jackie’s last job was as the voice of a major brand on social media, which had its perks: In January she went on tour with Lady Gaga, traveling from show to show to interview the fans. But working full-time didn't leave her with enough energy to chase her dreams. So she gave her two weeks' notice, and has set her mind to thinking about what she'd most like to do.

We wander over to the bright-looking clothes rack and ask if there's anything special she’d like to show us.

“Special? No. Everything means the same to me. Is that weird?” (Though as she says it she pulls out a cardigan with an all-over print of tiny hot pink sea horses, smiling.)

Jackie doesn't consider that she has a clearly-defined look: "I just get what I like." But she has lots of charming and evocative things to say about clothing and style. “Lipstick makes me feel like I can do anything,” she explains, and, of her old-school-style white huaraches from Urban Outfitters: “They remind me of being a little kid on the boardwalk and getting tired and my mom carrying me and the shoes flopping on my feet.” And about a sleek black top with glitter and a print of jagged spikes: “I call this the Where the Wild Things Are sweater.”

Can she name any early style heroes? For instance, we say, several Portrait of a Closet interviewees have cited their own grandmothers as their first fashion icons. Jackie considers this.

“I can’t say that her actual style inspired me, but I would look at her and think, She’s a classy broad.”

Magazines are certainly a major inspiration. Jackie has an MA in publications design, and she swoons over lovely layouts. “I always made collages as a kid, and always loved looking at the pages in magazines.” In front of a lovely old bricked-up fireplace sits a tall stack of them, artfully arranged: Paper, Spin, Jane, Nylon, an arty one called I Love Fake, a UK titled called Betty, and Teen Vogue. (“I love the style and the size of the magazine itself.”)

We notice a metallic jumble of necklaces hanging from the end of her clothes rack and the silver one reading "Jackie" stands out, reminding us of Sex and the City back in the day. She tells us how she once went out to dinner with bunch of people when one of the girls criticized nameplate necklaces. Instead of shrinking in embarrassment, Jackie, wearing hers, pulled it out of her sweater to show everyone. “I was like, 'I’m wearing one right now, and I think they’re cool.'”

Other stuff she likes:

* Mixing prints and putting unlikely pieces together into an outfit. She shows us a tiny gold-sequined slip dress and says she’d probably pair it with a striped button-down, tied at the bottom

* Menswear, like her American flag sweater and her faded Budweiser t-shirt

* A cool holograph pendant with a moving image of King Tut that she bought on a museum trip as a kid

* Glasses. (“Confession, I wear fake glasses!”) She's excited to get real ones soon, and plans to try on Warby Parkers at Philadelphia's Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction before choosing a pair. 

In fact, Jackie's cute fake frames are part of tomorrow's interview outfit. We help her decide on the rest. I'm partial to a black-and-white 90s-looking skirt from Urban, but the consensus is that the black dress is a little more interview-appropriate. As we get ready to go I notice an art postcard tacked to a bulletin board that says QUIT YOUR DAY JOB. And it seems appropriate, since in all ways, this visit was a reminder to follow your heart.

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(Photos, clockwise from top left in a sort of spiral: hanging belts and a corset, red patent purse, close up of black dress with blue roses, clothes in closet, cowboy boots, a corset, jewelry tree, silver shoes, striped '70s dress with hood [not visible], ring with a secret compartment, Ann Taylor dress, necklace with purple gems, embroidered earrings.)

  It's the dog days now, hot as can be, but when we get to her place in South Philly Meg is cheerful and sipping a cup of coffee. It’s clear this will be a fun visit: The first thing she shows us is a fabulous, ankle-length, striped ’70s dress with a sleeveless halter top and a hood. It’s a hand-me-down from her mother, who took the dress on her honeymoon.  The co-founder of Flashpoint Theatre Copmany, Meg now performs as one half of Chlamydia dell'Arte, a safe-sex burlesque show. She has a flair for the dramatic, but says the only element of her va-voom costumes that has found its way into her regular wardrobe is the corsets. Meg knows a thing or two about corsets. "I got my first one during my study abroad in London. And honestly, I started performing so that I could get all these beautiful things and write them off," she jokes. To be sure, they’re not cheap. Meg explains that corsets are expensive in part because they're usually at least partially made by hand. She shows us one she calls a waist-cincher (it doesn't have a bustier, only a waist piece), a machine-made corset that is "bottom of the line” but still cost a few hundred dollars. I mention that the only time I've seen corsets in action is at the Renaissance Faire, to which Meg says, "Yeah, a lot of girls in the scene wear these outside of their clothes to show them off, but I don't do that. I like it magical and seamless, with classic lines." Does that mean she’s a sucker for old-school clothes? "I wish I had the patience for looking for vintage pieces, but I hate shopping," she says. It turns out that some of her favorite clothing has found her, like the black dress with blue brocade roses that was at the bottom of a box of fabric someone donated to the theater company.  She does show us one vintage find she’s proud of, a mint-condition red patent purse she found during a visit to Chicago. Another important vintage piece is her beautiful cowboy boots (“my shit-kickin’ boots”) that she bought from Puss in Boots in South Philly’s Italian Market. They were more expensive than she’d usually spring for, but she considered the purchase a consolation prize for the end of a long-term romantic relationship. “I didn’t get married but I got some great shoes!” she says merrily. And she does enjoy searching for interesting old jewelry, especially Venetian glass, which she collects. Meg keeps most of her necklaces on a jewelry tree that looks like a real tree (with birds and everything), and we make a fuss over one gorgeous one with large purple gems. Maybe not the easiest thing to wear, but it was a gift from her mother, who told Meg, "you'll figure it out." Meg keeps a style blog called Touche...Way Too Shay ("It was supposed to be about culture, art, and food but it sort of spiraled out of control"), where she likes to blog awards shows. She's been known to criticize stars for failing to wear jewelry when the occasion calls for it. "I have a lot of opinions. I feel the strapless gown needs a necklaces," she says. Now she feels remiss if she doesn't follow her own advice, especially since readers of her blog will call her out on it. Even if she's just in jeans and sneakers she'll always put on some nice earrings, at least. "If I'm gonna see people who I know will say something, I wear jewelry." Many of Meg’s dresses have a classic, feminine shape, like the yellow floral Ann Taylor dress she snapped up from her roommate, who was about to give it away to the Salvation Army. She’ll try trends occasionally, but only from H&M or Old Navy where the stuff is cheap. She claims her style is mostly understated, but her attitude about clothing is definitely dramatic.  “One of my great delights is to buy the same dress as one of my friends and coordinate to wear it on the same day,” she says. The gag is to act nonchalant about the “coincidence” and freak people out, which is definitely the best idea Nadine and I have heard in a while. Meg shows us one dress she did the stunt with, a black sequin tunic thing that she initially got to wear for performances because it gives her confidence. When it comes to style icons, Meg looks up to people who have a very specific idea about the way they want to look and are unapologetic about it, citing Diane Keaton and Helena Bonham Carter (and the time Carter wore two different shoes—or rather the same shoe in two different colors—to the Golden Globes). The other person whose style she admires is her sister. Trained in opera, she teaches piano and voice lessons and even goes to teach 7-year-old kids dressed to the nines, from the right earrings down to a gorgeous pair of heels.  It must run in the family. Before we go Nadine and I admire her mother’s striped dress one last time. We muse on the weirdness of it having a hood. “I guess if it rains?” I offer sincerely.  Meg throws her head back and laughs: “It’s raining fashion!”

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(Photos, clockwise from top left: vintage dress and close up of bodice, Doc Martens, clothing rack, studded Jeffrey Campbell shoes, leopard print vest and tutus, hanging shoe rack, close up of tutus.)

Grace lives on a sweet residential block in Northwest Philly. Nadine and I visit her there on a warm spring day in a house whose lawn was sprinkled with white wildflowers, which we later learn are called Star of Bethlehem. Our interview subject opens the door dressed for the warm weather, in tight low-rise jeans, a cropped plaid top, and enormous red Jeffrey Campbell heels covered in some serious-looking studs.  The clothing Grace wants to show us is stored on a rolling rack in her bedroom, and the simple room is decorated with a couple of posters of Marilyn Monroe.  “I wouldn’t say I have a distinct style," she tells us as we begin admiring her dresses. "My style changes every day.” A model and aspiring actress, Grace has already popped up on local street fashion blogs Street Gazing and Urban Fieldnotes. Getting noticed in public isn't always easy though, as any woman knows. “When I was in high school I got a lot of shit for the way I dressed. Now I get shit in a different way, walking down the street. The idea that I can’t dress the way I want frustrates me so much. So I wear what I want and people can deal with it.” Grace is inspired by old Hollywood glamour, film noir, and Marilyn herself, who she identifies with strongly and doesn’t care if that’s “a model cliche.” She tells us her identity and experiences as an actress inform her sense of style, though not in a direct way. “I try to be as me as I can, not fall into characters. But I love The Hunger Games and films like that, and I’m gonna channel Katniss when I want to be powerful! It’s like the setting on a stage. Maybe the character is a sexuality or a fierceness, maybe something you want to be but maybe don’t feel that day.” She channels Marilyn the most, she says, and points to three of the several glamorous white dresses she owns. Her most treasured one is a vintage number from the 50s that’s encrusted with crystals around the neck and bodice. It was a birthday gift from her father, a treasure he unearthed from her favorite vintage store in New Haven, but she thinks she might wear it when she gets married one day. I make the comment that it’s neat when someone close to you can appreciate your sense of style well enough to choose clothes you’d actually wear, and she tells us her father has a way better sense of Grace’s taste than her mother does, and loves clothing himself. In fact, he wears a bow tie every day. (Grace’s fiance plans to get one to wear the next time they see her father, as a surprise.) Clearly stylishness runs in the family. And while she may idolize Marilyn, Grace has a style icon much closer to home: her two grandmothers. Her father’s mother lived on the Upper East Side, was wealthy, smart and very glamorous.  “My mom’s mom was a model for a while, she traveled around the world and had the weirdest fucking clothes. We found them all when we were sorting through her things after she died. That’s the person I want to be. I want people to be fascinated by all the weird shit I have in my closet.” On that note, she takes down some of the dresses on the rack to show us. A peach disco dress in the goddess style reminds Nadine of Peaches & Cream Barbie. There are two tutus—one white and one hot pink—that she got to keep from a fashion shoot, and a prized pair of old Doc Marten boots. But the final shot of the day has to be of Grace’s shoes (which weren’t cheap but, as Grace reminds us, “cost way less than raising a kid”). We go back outside for the daylight, where her shoes look especially dangerous. “Good! I want to look dangerous!” she says as she poses. I laugh in appreciation and tell her the silver studs are shining in the sun like a blade. “Good!” she shouts again. “I am a blade!”

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(Photos, from top left: blouse with hat, closet interior, closet interior, chainmail purse, embroidered purse, basket of sock, soft sculpture by Rachel).

For the second installment of Portrait of a Closet, we spent a September Saturday with Rachel. It was a clothing-oriented day that began at a clothes swap on a cobblestone street, part of an outdoor environmental festival called Greenfest Philly. This was a hoot; we picked through the piles of tops and jeans and funny-looking purses, trying things on and stuffing our bags full. Afterward we walked to Rachel’s place in South Philly, stopping on the way to help ourselves to books and stationery in the free box outside Thrift for AIDS and to chat with a girl selling old clothes on her stoop. (She had a beautiful pair of heeled leather Etienne Aigner shoes but they weren’t in our size.) Spending time with Rachel has a way of opening your eyes to interesting things you might have overlooked. The entirety of Rachel’s two-story apartment looks like a clothes closet, or an exhibit in a costume museum. On the wall leading beside the staircases leading up to the apartment’s main floor hang several beautiful beaded purses, and in different nooks and shelves all around us are displays of small, beautiful dress shoes. The shoes and the bags used to belong to Rachel’s mother, and now they belong to her.  “She loved clothes, she always dressed up and she always wore dramatic makeup,” Rachel says of her mother. She didn’t look like the other moms. The relationship I have to clothing and style, I got it from her.” On a table in the living room sits a dressmaker’s dummy dressed in a frilly, long-sleeved blouse. Stacked up on the floor nearby is a collection of attractive cigar boxes in different shapes and sizes, each carefully labeled. One reads, “small, cool sculptural objects + broken sunglasses.” A textile artist who makes soft sculpture using crochet, knitting, and embroidery techniques, Rachel wears some of the clothing she inherited after her mother died, but she makes art out of it, too.  “At first it felt sacrilegious almost, but it was a grieving process for me. And then at one point I thought, If there’s one person who would appreciate my art!” Pieces of Rachel’s sculpture hang in every room of the apartment, strung from the ceiling and tucked into cubbies and bookcases. Most of the clothing that Rachel actually wears is upstairs, in her bedroom closet, so we head up there. “I’m into using accessories, to augment my outfits,” she says, appraising her own closet as we peer inside. As she takes things out of her closet to show us we spy a huge basket filled with tons of bright colored socks, all neatly rolled into pairs. Rachel is a great one for interesting leg wear. Today, on one of the first cool days since the summer heat broke, she’s wearing a sweet red wrap dress with green knee-high socks and bright teal Saucony sneakers.  When we show an interest in the sock basket Rachel takes out two large plastic bins, these both filled with patterned tights and stockings. She also keeps her arm warmers in there, which makes me smile because it’s a staple of her wardrobe: she makes the arm warmers by sewing lace trim onto socks that have worn through at the heel. How would Rachel describe her sense of style?  “Sometimes I think I dress like a blind lady,” she says, adding, “I think sometimes I can get away with things because I’m an artist. I don’t care. I just wear stuff that makes me happy, or that I think might make me happy.” “Lately I’m into going to clothing swaps and finding things I maybe wouldn’t buy in the store. The thing I like about swaps and sidewalk sales is that there’s a limited amount of stuff. Going into ‘regular’ stores is overwhelming.” She says her style has evolved as her sense of self has deepened and matured. “I guess I care more about clothing now than I did when I was a teen, even though I really tried to express who I was, or maybe who I wanted to be. Now I wear what I like. I don’t care what’s in style, I don’t even know what’s in style.”  She also says she knows her body better now than she used to and wants to be comfortable.  “I won’t wear heels anymore. But I love these shoes I have around. I think they’re beautiful as objects.”

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(Photos, clockwise from top left: hall closet, inside pantry closet, pantry closet, disco dress, lace duster.)

It was bright and early on a Saturday morning when Nadine and I took the train to an old, leafy suburb outside of Philadelphia to visit Nadine’s friend Sara (and Sara’s mostly thrifted wardrobe). Nadine has made the trip many times before so she leads me on a shortcut through a small parking lot to the beautiful house where Sara lives. Sara’s apartment comprises two stories, and going up the stairs feels like climbing into a treehouse. Sara has a pretty decent-sized collection of clothing, which she stores in two closets. To get started we peer inside her main one, in the hall between her kitchen and bedroom. It’s filled with long skirts and dresses, decidedly feminine but in a clean, simple, and old-fashioned style.  “This is almost exclusively thrift stores, a few things from vintage stores and a few from more than a few years ago, when I started thrifting,” she says as we begin looking. She explains the difference between vintage resellers and thrift stores: a higher price tag. Sara says never used to shop for clothing at bona fide thrift stores, but once she realized that thrifting would allow her the freedom to experiment, she was hooked.

“I liked being able to buy things really cheap and then be able to experiment with my wardrobe in a way that I couldn’t when I would have to think, Well, will I really wear this crazy thing? Or will it be worth buying if I can only wear it one time? I love having lots of stuff to kind of play with. Basically I’m a little kid who never stopped playing dress-up.” By doing all this playing and experimenting, has she hit upon a preferred look? “I recently described my personal style as dapper goth,” she says to our appreciative laughter, adding, “with some hippie mixed in, because I like long flowy stuff, and crochet.” As we poke gently through the pretty things in Sara’s closet, I ask about a Victorian-style lace duster, which Sara bought from a vintage reseller on etsy. It’s truly gorgeous, but I tell her I can’t imagine where I’d wear it.  “Oh, I'll wear dressy things any day. I’m kind of used to being the overdressed one. I like to dress thematically, and I like being older and not caring what people think anymore. That’s kind of why I’ve gravitated towards goth. I really wanted to be goth when I was in high shcool, but I wasn’t secure enough in myself. So now that I’m older I don’t care anymore.” Is she at all interested in following trends? “I definitely have more of my own personal trend that I follow,” she says with a laugh. “I mean, I’m obviously influenced by what I see. I consume media so things will inspire me, like when I’m tumbling away on tumblr. I like fashion in the runway sense, I like fashion as art, but I don’t really follow trends in the department store level. I don’t think you should wear something just because it’s trendy. You should wear something because you identify with it.” Eventually we gravitate to Sara’s other closet, a converted cupboard where she hangs clothes from a shower curtain rod. We admire the higher quality of the thrift store clothes, noticing that even things made as recently as the '90s are clearly better made than trendy clothing made today. “You can look at the seams and tell it was made in the U.S., it was made more carefully,” Sara says. “I love that too because I can follow the seams and it makes it easier for me to alter it if I need to.” Sara’s favorite era for fashion is either the 60s or early 70s. To illustrate, she pulls out her one “disco dress,” a fluttery floral one in the goddess style. She also names her grandparents, who both dressed in a distinctive style, as having a strong influence on her own dress sense. Sure enough, on a nearby shelf is a great old photo of her grandparents, posing on the street during a visit to London and wearing lookalike belted-up trench coats. When we ask her to show us some of her favorite pieces, she jokes, “This is like choosing one of my children!” Still, she pulled out some of her most treasured clothes for us to admire, and here they are.