a couple weeks ago I logged into my facebook account and was met with a barrage of very old and very embarrassing family photos that my mom and my aunts started posting, possibly while drunk. (There were some of me too, but I don’t think I’m ready to share my terrible Sears ad from 1984 just yet.) While the family matriarchs were making fun of 70s flip hair cuts and 80s sweater patterns, I found myself both remembering and defending most of the outfits. I have a very clear recollection of the night from photo above, my mother and her teased, permed, perfumed, and very glamorous friends getting ready for a night out. The kid in the turquoise dress is me - I somehow wrangled myself permission to wear a heavily sequined and shoulder-padded bridesmaid dress for the night. Maybe youth rose-coloured my glasses, but I thought we looked pretty amazing. I still do.

I remember a conversation I had with a friend way back when I was in my late teens and my Spice Girl Shoes Japanese Fashion Magazine phase. He said I was going to be one of those people who looked back at photos from my teen years and laugh. He didn’t mean it as an insult, and I didn’t take it that way because I knew that though that is true for some folks, it wasn’t for me. I knew that I always had an appreciation for fashion outside of trend. Does it look weird because it is weird, or because you’re just not used to it anymore? And really, what’s so wrong with weird?

xoxo,
Serah-Marie

Looking at my family’s photo albums from the nineties is always a happy hour or two spent each time I visit my parents. So, of course, my Christmas vacation has to start the same way. On one of my first nights home, I curl up with an over-stuffed album, and there’s no turning back.

After seeing dozens of photographs of myself, my parents, my cousins, and my brother, I begin to wonder: Are these trips down Memory Lane a search for nostalgia of a relatively peaceful childhood in a yellow-brick bungalow? Maybe. For memories of events that happened when I was too little to keep track? Perhaps. Or, for my dress phase (which seems to be returning, more than a decade and a half later), the Halloween costumes my mom made for my brother every year, and my multiple multi-coloured-bear-patterned outfits? That sounds more like it.

My fashion choices as a child, or the choices my mother made for me, never cease to amaze me. They fill me with a desire to throw out all that I own now and start fresh, with adult-sized replicas of everything I wore before I hit ten.

Instead, to maintain my bank account and some semblance of sanity, I’ll settle for swooning over these photographs - again, and again, and again…

Here I am, sitting pretty with my grandparents’ stuffed cat on their
“spinny chair,” both of which are still in their house. Look at the dress.
Gorgeous, right? I’m not biased. It’s not me that makes the photo cute…

Here’s me again, on my third birthday, according to the candles on the cake.
Again, I’m wearing a frilly, puffy, little-girl equivalent of a ball gown.

Until recently, I would look at these photos and think nothing of the dresses. Now, I want to know exactly what’s up with the heaps of photos of me in beautiful, fancy dresses. How many formal occasions did I attend at age three? Not many. According to my mom, these designer dresses - handed down by one of her friends’ daughters - were all I would put on for at least a couple years of my life.

Moving on to Halloween, which was apparently a big event at our house. Photos of me in costume are, sadly, hard to come by. My brother, on the other hand, seemed to only wear Halloween costumes in his early years. All three are home-made by our mom; all three make me laugh out loud when I see pictures of them; and all three make it clear that my brother was a great costume model. Check out the poses.

Here, we have a sleepy clown - probably the best and least creepy kind of clown,
and certainly the only kind welcome to sleep on our kitchen table.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! The fake muscles tie the whole thing together, and everything else is pretty self-explanatory. I mean… Those muscles aren’t fake!

Last but not least of the best costumes of all time is the lobster. I can’t believe my mom made it! Who’s that off to the right, imitating the lobster pose? Definitely not me.

And finally… The hand-made rainbow-bear-patterned outfits. How many pieces of clothing my mom made for me out of this fabric and why there was such a large supply of it, I have no idea. But, you have to admit, it’s adorable and clearly very flattering.

Here I am, rocking the print in a shorts and t-shirt combo,
complete with a matching red hat, winter boots, and a blank stare.

And look, here I am again, next to a fellow with a killer mullet,
in some pants and a hair-bow of the same material. Thanks, Mom.

What I’ve come to realize by exploring these albums in so much depth over the years is not that the self who I was in the photos is gone, but rather that she shaped my style into what it is today. My love of strange patterns, my appreciation for thoughtful Halloween costumes and my preference for dresses over pants are all results of my childhood wardrobe. An underrated inspiration, perhaps? I think so.

- Stephanie Fereiro

Harriet M. Welsch.

Writer.

Spy.

Fashionista?

While anything “-ista” may not belong in Harriet’s lexicon, her undeniable flair for mixing basic nineties pieces with a mean middle part, spying accessories, and a penchant for primary colours made her one of my childhood style icons.

Now, let’s get one thing straight… I am referring mainly to the film adaptation of Louise Fitzhugh’s famous novel Harriet the Spy, starring a young and untainted Michelle Trachtenberg as the titular character and Rosie O’Donnell as Ole Golly. Harriet the Spy was one of those movies that made you kindred spirits with other kids who liked it. Not only did it come on a neon orange VHS tape(!!), but it was filmed in Toronto, making aspirations of similar sleuthing adventures seem fully plausible. Normally I am a total book over movie girl, but Harriet the movie was just… better. Feel free to contest this, but I have met several folks who agree and I think part of this owes to the spectacular styling in the film. The character of Harriet remains childlike but mature and she never becomes a caricature as is the case in so many children’s films.

So with this in mind, my pal and fellow Harriet fan Geneva and I set out to explore the alleyways of Bloor West Village Harriet-styles, taking photos as we went! (Of course we began our night with a viewing of the movie to get us into Harriet mode.)

Although Geneva and I didn’t end up on any roofs or trapped in rich ladies’ dumbwaiters, we did get kicked out of a laundromat and had a generally hilarious night.

For all other Harriet fans, here’s a list of top Harriet trends we noticed and tried to mimic; we were pleasantly surprised by how many of the pieces we already had in our closets:

1. Primary colours! (This contrasts interestingly with Harriet’s pals Sport and Janie, who tend to wear more purples and greens.)

2. Stripes, stripes, and more stripes!

3. The classic layered tee over long sleeves look (capitalize on this by mixing stripes and solid primary colours).

4. Converse.

5. Bulky hoodies.

6. Wide-legged red trousers. Sadly we couldn’t source any, but the real Harriet aficionado knows they are a key element to her look!

7. All sorts of spying accessories… think safety goggles, a classic black or black and white notebook, flashlight, compact, rope, binoculars, you name it!

8. A long yellow coat (see Geneva in my knee-length yellow mackintosh).

9. Wide black headbands.

10. Hair always parted in the middle and styled either in one long braid, a ponytail, or straight and down.

But the most important tip of all: maintain curiosity and poise under pressure! Like Harriet’s hero Mata Hari — circa the film with Greta Garbo, of course — Harriet proves any girl can be elegant under pressure.

Esmé Hogeveen

I recently flew across the country, paying approximately one arm, one leg, and fifty cents, to visit home. In many ways, I hope that a certain portion of my childhood is preserved in the home in which I grew up, that somehow it remains intact and untouched by change. Driving into my old neighbourhood it’s clear that much has been modified; my old high school is now a strange colour of evergreen rather than the original boring blue, and entirely new streets have been built and named. Even at my parents’ house I notice small things, modern differences, like olive oil hand soap in the bathrooms and shiny new saucepans. These changes are small, but when added together, substantial enough to rattle me.

As a creature of habit, I have a tendency to look through old photographs to restore and affirm the history I have memorized. I find it consoling to return to these small 4X6 records of time, in part because they will never change.

I would love to share with all of you perfect family snapshots and candid moments of picnics and past pets – but alas, I have uncovered some deep and dark secrets about my childhood. The photos I’m about to share with you reveal something so shocking and absurd that all I can do now is shake my head.

Mom, why did you dress us kiddies only in stripes?

Without further ado, the evidence:

Here I am at about 3 years old in my backyard. Sure, I am clearly excited about something (probably the attention of a camera lens), and every piece of my clothing (save for the shoes) is striped. Obviously, I myself have taken the liberty of putting on the hat I’m wearing, hence the asymmetrical hair did. In defense of my mother, I will say that she was trying to teach me my ABC’s through fashion, but this is only the beginning of my case materials.

Same hat, another day, another striped shirt. Sigh. What you see here is the very complicated baby bottle pose where one has to drink the milk with no hands. Not everyone can master this but I was particularly adept. Again, the tee-shirt is actually quite cute, puffed sleeves and all, but what about florals? Or solids? Maybe even an offensive fluorescent? Honourable mentions in this photo go to my bunchy diaper peeking out of my shorts, and the somewhat embarrassing fact that I am much too old to be drinking from a bottle.

Oh look, here I am on another day, this time impossibly even more decked out in striped gear. Honestly, this outfit almost makes me blind with the stripes going in every direction. It’s sort of like when Forrest Gump describes all the types of rain he experienced in Nam. My bangs and pigtails do look awesome, and luckily I didn’t do those myself.

To show some range, here is my brother wearing… you guessed it: stripes. He too is quite excited, as apparently we were all camera hams. Perhaps he was screaming: “MOM, CAN’T YOU DRESS US IN SOMETHING ELSE?!”

This one is of my sister outside our front door. With her blonde hair and twiggy body she almost looks adopted, but it’s not like my brother and I ever told her that… repeatedly. Admittedly, her crop top and matching shorts are adorable, but this does not excuse my mother’s blatant love of godforsaken stripes.

This last one is subtle and almost crept by me unnoticed, but the hard facts are there. Nestled into my mother’s leg I am most certainly wearing a pink and white striped skirt. Busted again, Mom!

Fast forward to the present day, and somehow, mysteriously, I am drawn to striped anything. Could this penchant for parallel lines be indicative of childhood trauma? Unfortunately the evidence is all here; the signs point to yes.

Sure, they say stripes are slimming, but be careful folks – they can engulf your childhood.

-Carmen Vicente