My passion for fashion all began back in 2010 when
I was in Los Angeles for a poetry competition. My friends and I decided to do a
little shopping with the spending money our parents had given us for the trip.
Los Angeles was much bigger than Milwaukee and had more options for us to
explore. This was the first time I had ever been to H&M. It was also when I
purchased my first pair of slims. (For those who don’t what “slims” are, they
are like skinny jeans but a little more loose.) They were light gray, size 32,
slim but still comfortable. This bled into my senior year as I started to care
more about how I looked. Ties, blazers and fancy sweaters became daily attire
for me.
Though my love for fashion had been fairly new, I
have always had a passion for writing. Poetry, in addition to how I dressed,
became my medium of
expression.
I began to compete on a local and national level,
going on to compete at Brave New Voices, Russell Simmons’ largest international
youth poetry slam, in Los Angeles in 2010 and again in San Francisco in 2011.
While I had this love for fashion boiling inside of
me, I did not know how to incorporate it with my lifestyle. I wanted something
more than just developing my own style. I wanted to be an influence to others
just as I had done with my spoken word poetry. Eventually this love of fashion
led to me helping my little sister with some of her outfits in high school.
However, this still was not enough for me.
Before I knew it, I graduated from high school and
found myself all the way in Stevens Point, a small town I had never heard
about. Coming from Milwaukee, I didn’t think the fashion scene here would be
too exciting. Everywhere I looked I would see camouflage. I’d see camouflage
hats, purses, coats and anything else you could think of. I’d turn my head and
see neon colored jackets and tights were the most popular trend of them all. I
even remember my roommate buying a green, yellow, and black Green Bay Packers
jacket and wearing it with everything; even if it didn’t technically match.
After a long first semester, I realized that
Stevens Point did have its own sense of fashion. It’s nothing like Milwaukee or
Los Angeles, but its style cannot be ignored. I began to notice that each group
of students had their own style; from the hipsters who wear skinny jeans and
ride long boards to the natural resources majors who love camouflage. Over time
it became apparent these people were much more than categories and my hunger
for fashion had once again been revived.
Months had gone by and my friend Kiah Hardy, a
junior majoring in English, suggested that I start a fashion column within The
Pointer newspaper, and this fall I am introducing The Pointer’s first monthly
fashion column. My goal is not to turn The Pointer into a fashion magazine, but
to capture the many trends in Stevens Point from the fall scarf collections and
the girls who wear Ugg boots in the winter time, to Toms, camouflage, and much
more.
This
column will not only shine a light on these trends, but will give a little peek
into the lives around us in the Stevens Point community. This column will
feature articles about fashion and how we incorporate fashion into the lives
that we live; how fashion connects to our life, major, and how we represent
ourselves because whether you know it or not, we all are inhabitants of this
world of fashion, no matter what city you live in.