By Liana Satenstein
Name: Allison Thomas
Year: Junior
Major: Secondary Education English
“My worst fashion mistake? Well, everyone thinks my fashion is a fashion mistake,” Allison tells me, clad in a technicolor patchwork of primary colors and patterns. “But I like everything I wear.”
“When I was in middle school and the beginning of high school, I wore some pretty ridiculous things. I wore spandex in 5th grade. I also went through a Hot Topic, punk rock phase; think ‘stove pipe pants.'”
“Did you wear the big chains that hung off the belt loops?” I ask her.
“No,” laughs Allison. “My pants would have fallen off if I did that.”
“So what made you change to the whole color scheme thing?”
“I just got distracted with color. I’ve fallen in love with skirts. It’s weird, I was into the whole bright color style six years ago. Now you see that trend in the malls. Basically, I was ’80s in the ’90s before it was the ’80s in the 2000s.”
“Ahead of your time. You wore spandex before anyone else,” I jokingly tell her.
“Yeah, but I wore spandex because I had just started BMX racing. Not to be lame, but I’ll quote a bumper sticker, ‘spandex is a privilege, not a right.'” Allison laughs.
“That’s a good point. So where do you actually find your clothes?”
“I believe that if you see something that you like, then you should buy it. Unless it is expensive-then you cry. That’s why I like consignment shops, because you can find so much crazy stuff,” Allison explains.
“You know what you would like. There are lots of flea markets in downtown New York in the summer,” I add.
“Yeah, I know exactly what you are saying. They have outdoor markets in London. That is where I bought my kitty and mushroom dress.” From her chromatic decorated dresser, Allison pulls out a ’60s-style mod dress. “I tried to walk away from it, but it kept on calling my name. I must have mentioned it 20 times until I decided to go back and buy it.”
Allison pats out a wrinkle in her skirt, reminiscent of either a multicolored mash of ’60s free love or a store saturated with bohemian incense that sells hemp and tie-dye. “Actually, I bought this at Kohl’s. I should start saying to everyone that I made it, because everyone is positive that I did.”
“Do your parents like what you wear?”
“No, my mom makes fun of me so much. She has gotten over it, except for one skirt. She calls it the ‘Goodwill skirt’ because that’s where I bought. It is extremely shiny and colorful. She tried to sneak it out of the house; she didn’t want me to bring it to school. I wore it on 4/20, and some guy asked me if I smoked. I just said ‘nah, dude.'”
Although many may believe that Allison dresses according to the fringes of eccentricity or seams of disaster, she believes that neither description can be applied to her style (“It’s not a stunt to get people’s minds to blow up. I just like what I wear.”). And still, although she claims there is no such thing as a fashion mistake in her wardrobe, she still brightly remembers one monochromatic piece of her past.
“I hated it. You could call it a mistake. It was an extra large men’s black T-shirt. It read, ‘This is my anti-social, mad-at-the-world, scare-soccer-moms T-shirt.’ I didn’t really want to scare moms, and I definitely wasn’t anti-social,” Allison laughs. “But now that I think about it, I thought it was cool. I can’t even hate that.”