It’s a new season of movement for us &tosters – moving into our fourth and final year of academia, moving into a wood frame house; moving back, up, around, moving on, generally. Gogo and I are finally reunited after what feels like eighteen years of living in different time zones, and we’ve been busy setting up our fabulous sanctuary, checking in on Ssense FW ‘24 while we watch Sex and the City. What started as two scrawny freshmen year girls eagerly trying to please the masses ended up as two girls who can decide exactly what Gimagaus dress to put on for a night out, their closet catalogs burned into their brains so much so that the tangible items aren't inherently necessary for putting together a great outfit.
Yet being back in a school setting at the top of the food chain with all of the other seniors is weirdly isolating. In a way, my tiny campus has turned into what feels more like NYC - I can be relatively anonymous again, staying afloat amongst a sea of unfamiliar underclassmen. I still have a home with my four person family, it has just transferred an hour and a half outside of the city.
Looking at the cult of freshmen making their way up the many hills around campus reminds me of the little girl who entered school three years ago wearing a vintage band tee and - hold your breath - Nike shorts. My freshman year tagline is my “year of ugly,” where I wore bright sweaters and black jeans and sported Reeboks on my nights out. I cut my bangs with gold chrome scissors in my single dorm room, my hair reflecting how choppy everything felt. If I could go back in time, though, I wouldn't change anything, not even for a "supermodel semester," because I ended up learning exactly what I liked and didn’t like. Everyone needs a year of ugly, and you can quote me on that!
Sophomore year felt like cold exposure where I got shocked into finally emerging from my year of ugly and entering into fashion stability via the quintessential liberal arts indie aesthetic. I spent the summer living in Paris and came back with a sense of personal style that blended seamlessly with what those around me were wearing. It wasn’t the most exciting dressing period, but it was perfect for the time and felt exactly like what I should be doing in the wake of my freshman year style crash course to instigate my sophomore self resurrection. To address the elephant in the room, the bangs had finally grown out and, yes, I discovered the slick back bun. Life changing.
And junior year? That was the year. I lived in Madrid, finally self-identifying as an &toster and living my fashionista life to the fullest. I came back to the United States with exciting new clothes and the best of friends to wear them for. Back at school, getting ready gave me the butterflies in a way I had never quite experienced before: I tried new styles and fashioned intimate pieces discovered during my time abroad, and while I felt so secure in what I was wearing and how I was wearing them, the butterflies came from an excitement to exist outside of my closet, showing the world what I was wearing, even writing about it. Getting dressed felt like Spring – warmth and light and longer days and all encompassing love – and the people around me the greatest accessories of all. The reason why I got dressed in the first place.
Clearly I’m in a spell of reminiscing, and while this article might not have the lighthearted tone of “Corporate Girl Summer,” I think there’s value to be gained in getting lost in the past to wake up and feel as though finally you’ve grown up and are starting to enter an “adult” phase. All of my years at college are clocked by such specific aesthetic markers that indicate who exactly I was trying to be, becoming, or was.
Nostalgia has always been such a slippery slope for me. Doom scrolling on Instagram for your average 21 year old is translated into camera roll doom scrolling in the brain of Lila King, searching for visual indicators that I have lived through certain moments and wishing for them to exist again, over and over outside of just my memory. While so much has changed, luckily, so much has also stayed the same. I still wear the band tee I wore on move-in day frequently and cherish all of its holes and tears.
I won’t be as “year of ugly” as my freshman year self; I won’t be as indie as my sophomore year self; I can’t be as carefree or bright-eyed as my junior year self. Right now, I am clearly trying to find my senior year catchphrase, and maybe that’s the issue in and of itself. I am trying to latch onto how senior year should “look,” when right now the reality of it is dirty dishes, movie nights, and an overall difficulty of getting dressed to feel like myself during a period of transition.
So, dear reader, whoever you may be. Here is my promise to you: I won’t let the speed of the year get away from me, and I will try to not live in the nostalgia of my college lives, wishing for the younger, better days (my one slip up was this article, ok??) I’ll take each day as it comes, one pair of ballet flats at a time. I so dearly miss the past, yet I’m so curious about my senior year. Maybe I’m no longer the party girl who goes out at every chance she gets in a vintage Pucci. Maybe I’m replacing canvas totes with big-girl leather. Maybe fewer aesthetic visuals will define my passage of time. Maybe instead of having a catchphrase I’ll make playlists on Spotify instead like every other person on the planet. Maybe I already am.
As Gogo told me when I got to school, people can do hard things. Like throwing out a perfect, white t-shirt that has defined your last year, half a year, or month. Maybe it felt perfect back then and was just the base you needed to fashion your ideal outfit. But now, it might have pit stains, or it might not fit, and as much as you try to salvage what once was, it’s no longer your perfect white tee, at least not right now. Maybe pit stains will come into fashion.
So here’s to senior year and throwing out shirts that don’t work anymore and not thinking too far in the past or in advance and to &tost and to you and to my past selves and to mom and dad and my sister because I miss you and to you because I love you.
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