I’m Sticking With You from g steg on Vimeo.

During a recent visit from her home in Alberta, regular contributor Hailey Siracky not only joined the WORN team in Toronto for an all-staff meeting, but very graciously agreed to unburden WORN’s managing editor of a few things that were clogging up her dresser.

To completely misquote Aristotle, friendship is a single soul dwelling in two closets.

Ha.

How did you dress in high school?
I polled my parents on this one and they both said, “Pretty regular.” High school was when I first really started thrifting and had the desire to experiment, although it was all sort of tentative. I was really drawn to coloured tights and interesting scarves, and developed a small collection of secretary blouses that I wore often. I had a pair of big, clunky, construction-worker-y boots that I insisted on wearing all the time, too.

Who would you rather be trapped in a broken elevator with — Karl Lagerfeld, Tyra Banks, or Lady Gaga?
I’m going to go with Lady Gaga. I am only just beginning to discover the huge volume of outrageous and entertaining things she has been putting out there (sometimes I am embarrassingly slow at keeping up with the world), but I find her pretty fascinating – a little crazy, but also really smart. I wouldn’t be able to resist asking her questions – about music or clothing or her favourite kind of tea or whether she preferred wearing Kermit or Hello Kitty. I feel like even if we were trapped for days, I definitely wouldn’t be bored.

If you could dress like your favourite food what would it be?
I would be an Earl Grey cupcake with lemon buttercream frosting. In my head it’s the perfect mix of seriousness and frivolity, in that I always associate Earl Grey tea with activities like reading musty, hardcover novels in big leather chairs or sitting at an enormous, fancy desk and writing very important things (which I don’t always do but often dream about) - but in cupcake form and with some sugary yellow icing, I would be equally ready for a tea party.

Last fashion-related book or article you read. Was it good or bad?
This article from New York Magazine about people only wearing clothing in one colour was really intriguing. I can’t imagine that kind of dedication and commitment to a colour. Since reading it, I’ve been on the lookout for any other writing about the same subject, but haven’t had much luck. I’ve also been wondering what colour I would choose if I ever had to pick only one, and I absolutely cannot decide.

What fashion blog do you think is underrated?
I stumbled upon What I Wore Drawings a few weeks ago and was shocked that I hadn’t heard of it sooner. Instead of photos of their daily outfits, contributors post drawings. With such a variety in illustration styles and commentary, the whole thing is completely adorable and interesting.
The blog was started by illustrator Gemma Correll, and I think came out of postings in a flickr group. Looking at it makes me itch to pick up a sketchbook.

What fictional character has the best style?
Lately, I feel like everything I wear is inspired by either Amélie Poulain or Angela Chase. I love Amélie for her mix of delicate and utilitarian (and her Zorro mask and polka-dot umbrella), and Angela for her amazing red hair, oversized everything, and plaid.

What do you think about the relationship between fashion and conspicuous consumption?
One of my favourite things about the huge variety of fashion and street style blogs out there is that I feel like they’ve helped make fashion less about cost and brand and label and more about actual style. Suddenly, all over the internet there are pictures of people looking amazing in outfits that are entirely secondhand, people who are dressed head-to-toe in designer clothing, people who can creatively imitate expensive pieces for considerably less money and people who fall somewhere in the middle, and they all seem to be valued equally, and valued for their confidence and creativity rather than their supply of cash. I love that.

What movie’s costumes/clothes were better than their plot?
Marie Antoinette, although I actually fell asleep halfway through it and so can’t really comment on the plot. But I feel like sleeping through the movie – especially such a visually interesting one - is pretty good indication of how engaged I was in the story. Maybe I should give it another chance.

What are your thoughts about this quote? “On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.” – Thomas Jefferson (3rd American President)
I disagree! I think you can stand like a rock on matters of style, too. I admire the dedication of people who are committed to a particular kind of personal style – those who wear only one colour, for instance - because I feel like my own style is so all over the place sometimes. But even if you aren’t so obsessively dedicated, you can (and maybe should) stand like a rock when it comes to wearing what you love – whatever that is – without apology.

Finish this sentence: There are two kinds of people in this world…
…and they’re probably both very nice.

In my earliest memory of having my hair braided, I am maybe four or five, sitting in the living room in a tiny pink kiddie chair. I am getting ready for a Ukrainian dance performance, two very tight French braids being the necessary hairstyle for that sort of thing. My mom kneels behind me, getting organized, and although she hasn’t touched me yet her methodical movements send a shiver of uneasy anticipation up my neck. She picks up a spray bottle full of water and wets my hair, and then draws the tail of a comb slowly and carefully down the centre of my scalp, parting my hair in half. Her long fingernails separate first the teeniest, tiniest hairs at my temples. A chill runs down my spine as I feel the first tug of what I know will be a long, torturous series of hair pulls. I am terrified. My lip quivers. Braiding time inevitably becomes crying time.

I hated braids first because, being little and a wimp, they hurt my head. But dancing required that I endure the torture of French braids often enough that eventually I learned to keep my loathing to myself. Later still, I had to learn to braid my own hair, which was another kind of tragedy entirely because, when you’re 10, French braiding your own hair is hard. Your arms get tired and your braids get lumpy in funny places and nothing ever looks as smooth and neat as it did when your mom was doing it for you. Braids went from frightening to frustrating, and I didn’t much like either.

Even when braiding my own hair got easier, I didn’t ever do it unless dancing required it. The idea of wearing them for fun, because they looked nice, did not occur to me - I had no love for them at all.

Then, one evening about four years ago, I came across the 1949 version of Little Women on television. Throughout the movie, Meg (played by Janet Leigh), wears half of her hair in a thick braid wrapped around her head like a headband. The rest of her hair hangs in loose curls at her shoulders. To me it looked so elegant, and so unlike the tight-enough-to-give-you-a-facelift French braids I have always known and mostly hated. Braids could be pretty. The next day I fought with my hair until I had a Meg March hairstyle of my own.

I’ve loved braids ever since. Meg March, it turns out, was just the first in a long line of characters that wearing braids allowed me to pretend to be. Braiding my hair has become my own secret game of dress-up, allowing me to feel like someone else when I am otherwise bored with regular old me. I can be Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I can be Heidi, or one of Pride and Prejudice’s Bennet sisters, or any number of romantic and princess-like characters from centuries past. I’m not sure what it is about braids that make them feel so transformative. It might be that their first job in my life was as part of a performance, or that they seem to pull so strongly from history, appearing over and over again in different ways from century to century.

It’s true that in the past few years, braids of all styles have become very popular, and maybe even trendy – but I am okay with that. To me they seem timeless, and are so versatile that it is hard for me to find them boring. Maybe they are especially “in style” lately, but I don’t know if they’ve ever really been out – and either way, despite our troubled past, we have managed to become very good friends.

-Hailey Siracky

Of all of nature’s gifts, snow is the one I want to take back to the store and exchange for something else. Winter is pretty, but very uncomfortable, and I much prefer sundresses and sandals to being bundled up in long johns and scarves and ten pairs of wool socks. So when the snow finally fell this year I was, as usual, in the depths of despair. After the requisite amount of pouting, I did the thing I always do when the snow falls for the first time: I pulled out my Really Giant Boots.

My Really Giant Boots are not what I would call the height of fashion. I got them for a highschool trip, where we did wilderness-y things like snowshoeing and hiking. They kept my feet warm and dry, and their gargantuan size, thick, heavy soles and general construction-worker aesthetic made me feel secretly tough — like I could kick down a door or fight off a bad guy should the need ever arise. After that weekend, I wore them every single day.

I had a teacher who used to shake his head, bewildered, every time my boots and I clomped into the classroom. “Hailey,” he would say, “those boots are just so curious.“ He explained that they reminded him of a girl he knew in university who was fearless and outspoken, and while I am none of these things – I’ve always been a shy and quiet kid – wearing the boots make me feel like maybe I could be. I’ve worn them every winter since. The last time I wore them home, my mom took a look at them and said, “I’m glad you still wear those. They look like old friends.”

Pulling out my boots this year, I wondered if others had this same attachment to comforting winter clothing — and as it turns out, I’m not the only one. My friends Meaghan and Katherine, harbour a similar love for certain key pieces, all having been imbued with a deeper significance.

Meaghan:

Nearly every time I see my friend Meaghan, she is wearing this scarf. A reminder of a Christmas she spent in Morocco, its geometric pattern and beautiful browns and blues always make me a little envious.

“I got it from a market in Marrakesh, on Boxing Day. I had seen it a week earlier and fell in love with the colours and the pattern -it has these big circles all over it, and I’m a huge fan of polka dots. In the winter I wear it all the time - it goes with everything. It’s one of my favourite things that I own. And I can’t believe it’s lasted this long… I don’t know if I’ve ever washed it.“

Katherine

Katherine got her red and white polka-dotted mittens on a family trip to Disneyland three years ago.

“My sister bought the mittens first. She’s a pianist, and she’s really protective of her hands. After the trip, she wasn’t going to take them back with her and I hated the thought of them sitting all lonely and unused, so I kept them. They’re definitely my favourite piece of winter clothing. I use them as a topic of conversation all the time. People will say, ‘I like your mittens,” and then I can tell them about my sister [who goes to school in Montreal], and that’s one of the reasons they’re special to me. I wear them everywhere. I’m going to take them to Italy with me [in January], even though Italy is fashion central, and they probably won’t fit in.”

Do you have a favourite piece of winter clothing?

-Hailey Siracky