Just to show you all how incredibly fickle I can be when it comes to my sources of inspiration, I will transition from the senior-citizen inspired post I wrote last month to something considerably more childish…Charlie Brown.

Peanuts has been my favourite comic strip and cartoon for as long as I can remember. I think there is something about the sarcastic, sad and sort of morbid way that Charlie Brown talks that always just made me feel like I could relate to him a little. Whatever the reason, Mr. Schulz has put out some of my very favourite holiday specials from Halloween to Christmas and Thanksgiving too. It wasn’t until this year when I was desperate for some form of inspiration in the middle of dreary uninspired January that I actually saw myself looking to Lucy’s and Charlie’s little sisters, even to Peppermint Patty’s wardrobes, and noticing a characteristic style I could latch on to.

Now I’m sure that I’m beginning to appear a little desperate, looking to cartoons for wardrobe inspiration, and maybe that’s true to a certain extent. Every January I wind up suffering from a serious case of “closet full of clothes but nothing to wear”, and this January was far from the exception. The excitement of layering wore off after Christmas and all the wonderful Spring collections are starting to rub their pretty floral prints and sweet flouncy pastel dresses in my face, but I know there are still several months of boots and tripled tights and scarves and hats before I can bust out my dainty little oxfords and prance around without worrying about falling down and breaking my hip on the icy sidewalk! So I guess seeing the young ladies in C. Brown walking around in cute little saddle shoes and easy-to-slip-on long sleeved frocks with their hair all done up made me at least a little bit excited to get dressed in the morning again!

Now I’ve got my eyes peeled for the perfect pair of black and white saddle shoes and have been caught by my boyfriend on several occasions making my little dog dance like Snoopy to the signature Charlie Brown theme song music. And I’ve got lots of ideas for a perfect couples costume for Mike and I to put together for next Halloween! Although my mind will have changed 100 times by then I’m sure…
- Meaghan Kelly

Mary Lennox, played by Kate Maberly in the 1993 film version of The Secret Garden, is one feisty girl. She is determined, strong, and fearless, and refuses to let anyone boss her around. She breaks all the rules and doesn’t think twice about it. She is curious and intelligent, though intolerably ignorant. Mary is all of those things, and if that’s not enough, she is also extremely well-dressed, thanks to her (stereotypical) country bumpkin of a servant, Martha.

The first time I saw The Secret Garden, I fell madly in love with Mary’s wardrobe. Everything she wears, from the beginning to the end of the film, is classically beautiful. What I want to know is, why am I not Mary? I did go through a childhood dress phase…

The opening scene shows Mary being dressed by servants who wait on her hand and foot, until the earthquake that hits her home in India and leaves her orphaned.

When Mary first arrives in England after the death of her parents and a boat ride from her home in India, her outfits are entirely black, and would be rather suited to, say, Wednesday Addams. Mary can pull off the “girl in mourning” look just as nicely as Wednesday, though without the pasty skin.

“What would you like to wear?” asks Martha, “black, black, or black?”
“Are you blind?” snaps Mary, pointing at three identical dresses. “They’re all black.”

Mary’s style seems to grow and change as time passes. After some time spent settling into her uncle’s castle-like home, Mary’s consistent choice of a black, lacy dress and a permanent scowl wanes. As excitement in Mary’s life rises, so does the excitement that her wardrobe brings me. New textures (ruffles, knits, and pleats) and patterns (plaids and florals) are added, as is some beautiful winter clothing — which is one of my favourite parts of Mary’s wardrobe.

On her first visit to the secret garden, Mary opts for a pea coat, a floppy red hat, and two perfect braids. This is a look I plan on copying, shamelessly, when “new coat time” comes next fall.

Dresses like this one replace Mary’s funeral garb rather quickly. This ruffled, plaid frock is feminine and fun. It shows Mary’s true personality at a time when she finally learns to embrace it.

Even Mary’s nightgown, worn on many secret trips to see her cousin at night, is pretty. It matches the rest of her wardrobe perfectly with its pure white lace and pleats.

When Mary finally takes her cousin out of quarantine for a romp in the garden, she wears this white, frilly, lacy, ribbon-belted tea-party dress with white tights. She has come full circle from the “black, black, or black” dresses she wore upon her reluctant arrival at Misselthwaite Manor.

Mary Lennox will forever be held in my mind as a style icon. She is so much more than a fictional character to me. I’m sure that years from now, I’ll still find myself searching for screen-shots of her always adorable and immaculate outfits, and wonder why I never opted to wear plaid ruffles or braids with matching bows.

If only we could all be trapped in childhood forever, with a wardrobe like Mary’s and a secret garden to play in with our best friends. Our clothes would never get dirty, and we would always have fresh flowers to put in our hair.

- Stephanie Fereiro

It is a little known fact, even among my close friends, that I was once a member of a sorority. In 1991, Delta Psi Delta was pretty new. They had big dreams of someday being absorbed by the national “Tri Delts” (immortalized on SNL with the phrase, “Delta Delta Delta, can I help ya help ya help ya?”) but, like a small magazine looking for a grant, they still had to prove themselves worthy. That year I was just cresting my Androgynous Grunge Angst period and hardly a candidate for sorority life, but I suspect they were sort of desperate for rushes (applicants). Every girl that showed up at our first meeting had been personally invited. I had reservations, but I figured my chances of ever again experiencing this particular slice of life were slim; I thought what the hell? When I walked in wearing a plaid flannel shirt and army boots, no one batted an eye.

Over the next eight months I attended charity events and made friends with our “Greek brothers” in the Acadia fraternity – boys who, when I ran out of money at the holidays, personally set up a driver relay to get me home for free. I decided popular depictions of sororities as petty, fascist dictatorships were overly harsh.

Here is a six page list, forwarded by the president of the Pi Phi sorority at Cornell to all new rushes outlining what dress will be considered acceptable for sorority events. (No “plastic shizzz” please.)

I think I stand corrected.

- g.

When we first meet Clementine Kruczynski (played by Kate Winslet) in Michel Gondry’s 2004 film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, she has blue hair. Introducing herself on a bus to Jim Carrey’s Joel Barish, she explains her reasoning behind the dye job. “It changes colour a lot,” she says. “It’s called Blue Ruin…this company makes a whole bunch of colours with equally snappy names. I apply my personality in a paste.” In watching this movie for the first time I may or may not have yelled at my TV screen, “Geez Clementine, why don’t you just wear a sign around your neck that says ‘tra la la, I’m so quirky!’” (I might have a problem with contrived one-dimensional “offbeat” film characters – yeah, I’m looking at you, Natalie Portman in Garden State). Of course, to the film’s credit, Clementine turns out to be a well-developed character and the movie escapes many typical clichés, earning Oscar nods for both Winslet and the screenplay. The reasons behind its success are evident - but since we are on a fashion blog, I will be focusing solely on Clementine’s hair.

As the film unfolds in a non-linear fashion (hey, it worked hard for that best original screenplay Oscar!), Clementine’s hair colour changes from blue to orange to red to green. While I gotta love any movie that treats a personal styling choice as a plot device – the hair colour helps keep track of the movie’s constantly shifting timeline – more appealing still is the way that it is unapologetically treated as a realistic artistic outlet. Clementine isn’t the first film character to express herself via hair colour; honourable mentions go to My So Called Life’s Angela Chase, Ghost World’s Enid Coleslaw and Whip It’s Bliss Cavendar. However, there’s something to be said for a woman who is more than a couple of years past teenager-dom willing to repeatedly experiment with crayola-coloured hair.

My own adventures with hair dye start a bit younger; going to summer camp in the ’90s, hair mascara was all the rage. The smelly, sparkly, purple-y goop joined Bonnebelle lip smackers and Caboodles nail polish as the must-have beauty products for the preteen girl set. Once I got to middle school, I was met with a strict dress code that deemed any unnatural or dramatic hair colours to be an “academic distraction.” My mother used to take me to her hair salon to get blonde highlights (occasionally I would be able to sneak by with a little bit of red in there). I made it through the eighth grade with the secret knowledge that at the back of my closet hid a bottle of L’Oreal do-it-yourself hair colouring in Purest Black.


From the first day (on the dot) after my eighth grade graduation throughout the bulk of high school, all I would need to change my hair colour was a quick trip to Shoppers Drug Mart and 45 minutes crouched over the bathroom sink with an applicator brush in hand. While black was my go-to shade of choice, I would occasionally experiment with the worlds of burgundy, plum, or other teen-angst-approved colours. Granted, I never went as artificially bright in my picks as Ms. Kruzcynski over here, but I could appreciate her need to express herself (and mark major changes in her life) with the help of some pigmented cream.

Unlike Clementine, I’ve somewhat outgrown my home-colouring ways. Purple locks aren’t as fun when it comes time to hunt for a job, and at-home hair treatments become a bit trickier when you live in a dorm and share a bathroom sink with 40 other people. Still, whenever I’m in the drugstore, I always make a point to stop at the aisle that carries all the shades of Manic Panic, tempted to give in to the little voice in my head (that sounds suspiciously like Kate Winslet with an American accent) saying, “do it! do it!”

-Anna Fitz