If you know me, or if you even see me, you may notice I wear Hawaiian shirts like no other. I literally love Hawaiian shirts. I don’t know where it came in me, but my freshman year of high school (when I actually began caring about how I dressed), I bought one from the thrift store. I did not like the way it looked buttoned up, so I wrote it free-flowing, with one of my favourite t-shirts underneath. Nonetheless, I was in love with the result. Ever since that year, I have worn a Hawaiian shirt at least twice a week. It has become a huge part of the way I dress, and I do not plan on it stopping. In the past, I shopped obsessively at some of my favourite stores: Forever 21, H&M, Macy’s (surprisingly good finds) and American Apparel (rest in peace, old friend). My sophomore year, I had peaked in terms of my personal sense of fashion, though I did not dress as well as others. It was a good place for me, I wish I could go back.

As my last two years of high school progressed, and now that I am at the end of my high school career, I realised that I have honestly stopped caring about how I dressed. Now, this may make me sound like I don’t care about my appearance, albeit the fact that I believed myself to be one of the best dressers my sophomore year (wrong). I think the fact is I simply stopped caring about what others think about what I wear.

Coming to terms with the fact that literally almost nobody cares at all what you do in high school was tough. I wanted to have my own semi-sequential set of mini peaks, the way I dress being one of them, amongst other things. I had none of these, as much as I planned for them to happen. You can plan and plan and plan but as much as you do the latter, things are almost always destined to not go your way. This doesn’t always mean they won’t happen, it just may not go the way you wanted to.

Personally, I love fashion. This may come as a surprise, as most days I am adorned with the same outfit combination: a t-shirt, Hawaiian shirt and pants, usually shorts. I had planned to become a fashion designer for a very long time, but the drawing and planning of outfits and the actual designing of the clothes did not suit me. I wanted to dress people. I did not want to make the clothes people dress in. I sometimes see people and I say “I want to dress that person” (as odd as a phrase as that may come as), or “Outfit XYZ or Article XYZ would look great on them.” I believe this comes from the development of my photographic vision as a photographer, always seeing the beauty in everyone and everything and how those things come together to make something amazing. To me, that amazing thing is the one picture I take I know is the one. The clothes the person is wearing is important to this, but true art is being able to separate one’s opinions and tastes to favour the importance and relevance of the art.

Beyond my own crazy mentality behind the connection of clothes and my art, I believe fashion will truly be important in the decades to come. With a large resurgence in popularity within the last two years, I doubt it’s destined to fade away anytime soon.