When you first see them you do a double take, “Was that a girl or a boy?” (pic.1, 2)

Despite the many different fashions that are available, most people stay within one main category: Gender. No matter how wild of a style that skater girl has or how old fashioned a boy looks with a cape, you can at least still tell what gender they are. An and Tya dress in such a way that it is harder for those who don’t know the, to be able to tell what gender they are. While both identify as female, for Tya it’s a 60/40 split between female and male, they both dress specifically, to buck the convention of what a “Girl” is supposed to look like. An describes her style as “Snappy Casual” while Tya describes it as “Preppy meets Bro-y”. For both, this entails wearing nice button down shirts, ties or bowties and on special occasions, vests. (pic. 3, 4)

An wears jeans meant for women and occasionally buys dress shirts also meant for women. Tya on the other hand buys very few clothes meant for women because she feels that they just don’t fit well on her. Tya also hated how women’s sizes for pants changed depending on the store, while in men’s sizes she is always the same. (pic. 5)

Both spoke about hating how female dress shirts tend to go in at the waist and then flare out (done in order to accent the waist), hence their preference for men’s dress shirts. (pic. 6)

However, they are not always in suits and vests. Tya wears basketball shorts and cut off shirts when she goes to work out everyday. While she wears sports bras, everything else is bought in the men’s section. Though she did bring up the fact that she does not wear boxers, instead buying her underwear from Victoria’s Secret. For her, wearing boxers (a common act by women who choose to dress more masculine) is uncomfortable and unnecessary.

An also buys clothes in the men’s section, though she tends to have more clothes from the women’s section then Tya. An’s dressed down look mainly entails of yoga pants in part because her girlfriend likes how An looks in them. (pic. 7)

Changing their sense of style for their girlfriend was something both An and Tya admitted to doing. Both of them had had a girlfriend who preferred them to look more feminine, as Tya put it “She wanted to still feel like she had a girlfriend.” An had a girlfriend who wanted her to wear dresses, but in the end they broke up, and now, An has none of those dresses left. Both An and Tya frequently spoke of being able to “do their own thing” when it comes to clothing and personal presentation.

Yet this journey to forming their own sartorial style was not an easy one. Tya vividly remembers a day in boarding school when she and a friend both wore the same white v-cut tee shirt but Tya wore it with a black vest and her friend wore it with a scarf. Tya was told she was breaking dress code and had to change; her friend was deemed fine. While An did not have a completely similar experience, she did mention a time when she “toned down the gay,” because she was meeting her girlfriend’s mom and didn’t want to come on too strong. When asked what that meant, An replied, “it meant not wearing my bowties or vests, more just jeans and a tee.” (pic. 8)

While Tya did keep some of her clothes given to her by her mother, who hasn’t accepted yet her daughter’s different style, (tellingly this Bin of Clothes is under her bed) An did not bring anything she did not like with her. For both An and Tya, college seems to have allowed them to be completely themselves, in terms of fashion and identity. They both seemed very confident in their own skin, perhaps because their outside appearance finally matches they feel inside. Almost as well as their ties match their shirts.

Link to document with the pictures: https://docs.google.com/a/wellesley.edu/document/d/1J6R7abJJE7EoNC5OyzpY-N6fP7Y-584tOhqQr-aOUNI/edit