Beets to Beast
Less than a year ago, I was crunchy. I was the woman wearing a maroon flannel over a knit green sweater over baggy jeans over Blundstone boots, practically brandishing a baking tray and saying, “take a fucking muffin,” in your worst Berkshires day-hike nightmare. I could have left lecture and gone Alpine-ski-camping at any moment. Or at the very least knitted and watched the sunset from a porch swing or rolled in literal mud with a golden retriever named Kombucha. Least to say, it was a total disaster.
I mean, I’m from a city. I love cement and I like being stressed. I also love drinking out of plastic straws. Crunchy just isn’t me. But more than that, crunchy is when you’re in high-school and you want to have a THING, and you also go to private school and the cool thing is to look like you’re destitute. This is a sucky thing. High school is also when girls are supposed to look nice and fun, and who the fuck cares about that now?
Last Monday, I truly realized how far I had come in my quest for style reinvention: Less than a week after Yom Kippur, the day I repented for all my past style transgressions, my Kenzo Polo tee, freshly purchased from Grailed, arrived in the mail.
“What’s Grailed?” you ask, a mere novice in the online purchasing of high-end menswear. Well, let me tell you. It’s a community marketplace targeting the personal need of style-forward randos who want to buy expensive stuff for less money. On Grailed, shoppers don’t merely want, they covet. And that’s me, a damn materialist, searching for big new materials.
Picture this: a neon red polo with a spread collar and breast pocket, made legible with thin black strokes. At the neck, there is one elegant black button and two more hidden below. Beneath the collar reads “KENZO,” each letter a different color: blue, green, yellow, red, blue. Beneath “KENZO,” “POLO” is written in subtle red stitching. It’s an item that guarantees an era of self-redefinition. But what does the public think?
“Bold statement,” says Molly Ono, ES ’20. You’re right Molly, I’m just a shy woebegotten wallflower trying to finally be noticed by wearing bright colors.
“Who is Julia getting revenge on?” Jack Kyono, PC ’20, was heard asking an unknown conversation partner. Good question, Jack. I’m getting revenge on my previous self, for rejecting my cosmopolitan roots and getting into this whole “nature” thing a little too hard.
“Hot 93.7 Tell ’em why you mad” says Fiona Drenttel, BF ’20, apparently quoting a popular Connecticut radio station. I think I agree?
More importantly, what does this shirt say to me, the protagonist of this saga? Well, it signifies a new epoch in my personal appearance. It’s not enough to not look crunchy, because then I’m simply floating in style limbo. It wasn’t enough to throw my red flannel shirt in the garbo, use Sun-In to make my hair a brittle yellow-blond (in a way that makes you say “huh, weird”), and purchase pink tennis shoes that looks like they’re floating on big-ass rafts. It’s time for me, a lover of menswear and a lifelong reader of GQ magazine, to enter the world of high-end big-name streetwear. Supreme, Palace, Bape — I’m coming for you. Am I a hypebeast in the making? Not yet, maybe not ever, but I can sure try my be(a)st.
