Fashion, the Mirror, and Me

I was going to do it. It was just too tempting. I could imagine how it would feel—so smooth and sleek upon my body. The thought was riveting. And you know what? Dammit, I needed this.

I walked over to her, glaring. As she looked up, I said: “Yes. I would like to buy this pair of Diesel jeans.”

They were the perfect jeans. Dark wash, slightly worn at the thigh. Slim, but not too slim, with creases at the pockets and behind the knee. They were button fly, like all Diesel jeans. And, my God, when I tried them on, I just knew I had to have them. The Viker cut is all I buy nowadays. They’re a bit more expensive. But when it comes to designer denim, it’s just worth it.

It wasn’t until I got home and laid the stiff denim on my bed that the magnitude of the day’s purchase hit me: did I really just buy a pair of Diesel jeans at full price? What happened to that young Chicagoan who scoured the Marshall Fields on State Street for marked down Guess? What happened to me at Harvard?

There’s a picture of me that my mother took when we drove from Chicago to Cambridge at the start of my freshman year. Why on Earth we chose to make that 18-hour drive, I’ll never know. Well, that’s not entirely true: I was starting a new adventure.

In the picture, I’m standing in front of a “Welcome to Massachusetts” sign at the Connecticut border. My hands are stuffed in my pockets. If you look closely enough, you can see a hint of fear-tinged-excitement in my eyes as I prepared to arrive on the campus that would forever change my life.

I knew it was going to be a long drive, but I also knew that the clothes I wore sitting driver’s side would be the first impression I made at Harvard. Never one to fold at the demands of fashion, I carefully chose an outfit both comfortable and indicative of my sense of style: an orange-stripped polo, army-green cargo pants, and light-caramel Timberland boots.

Looking back at my high school wardrobe, I am stunned at the many phases I’ve gone through. Like Ben Affleck when he was briefly engaged to Jennifer Lopez, and only wore the most luxurious V-neck cashmere sweaters, only to toss them for a pair of track pants and Jennifer Garner, I was a style chameleon, a true shape-shifter.

I remember reading an article in GQ last summer about how in each celebrity relationship, there’s always one partner with the recessive fashion gene. Was that me? And was Harvard my new significant other?

In the summer before my senior year of high school, my so-called best outfit was a short-sleeved “Speedy Gonzales” tee by Iceberg, black shorts with red lining by Guess, and a pair of black and red Chi-town Air Force Ones that I had custom outfitted with Gucci material on the toe and swoosh. I’d be shocked if anyone at Harvard even knows what Iceberg is, or once took the trouble to have their Timbs or Forces outfitted with Gucci, or even Louis Vuitton print.

For two years in high school, I sold Gucci and LV outfitted shoes—sometimes to kids on my older brother’s basketball team, and sometimes to the suspected drug dealers living around the edges of Hyde Park. I had revenues in the five figures. I danced in a hip-hop group that performed at the Taste of Chicago, Chi-town’s infamous ghetto-fabulous carnival, and had stayed so true to my South Side roots that I rocked Timbs...even in the summertime.

This past summer, on my first day of work as an intern at Men’s Vogue, my best outfit consisted of a pair of Dolce & Gabbana navy-blue trousers, a thin wispy dress shirt by Ralph Lauren (worn with a silk knit tie), and a pair of Valentino grayish-tan lace-ups that I got for free when my PR exec boss of the previous summer told me “buy something for yourself” at the Barney’s warehouse sale.

Today, when I think about all the changes I’ve had in college—how I reverted to wearing loafers, the staple of my adolescence, sometime during sophomore fall; how junior year I once grimaced at the sight of my roommate wearing a T-shirt under his dress shirt (similar to the look I sport in the picture); and how this year my wardrobe consists of lux sweaters in various shades of blue and grey and moccasins by Ermenegildo Zegna—I look back at that picture and wonder if I’m even the same person.

In a state of panic, I fish out those old cargo pants—still in my closet, I’m very sentimental—and try them on to see if the me I see is anything like the me I am today. But then, I take a closer look at the mirror, go back to my closet for a top I bought at Saks, and realize: My goodness! These pants look great with my navy half-zip pullover!

Getting my books together, I head to Lamont. And on my way up Plympton Street, as I catch a friend stealing a glance at my pants, I know it’s not because the look I’ve put together is not working, or that it isn’t me.

And I know this because she tells me: “I love those pants!” she says. “How come I’ve never seen you wear them before?”

Maybe now, I will.