then

While I was home last week at my mom’s house in Halifax, I came across a goldmine of a photo album of me between the ages of 8 and 12.

It’s an odd window. Before then, most of my clothes arrived in a housefort-sized cardboard box that would come in the mail twice a year from my bubbie and zaidie (mostly my bubbie) in Toronto. The box would be packed to the flaps with toys and department store clothes that always formed the basis for my back-to-school outfits. Every possible nook was filled with pickled herring, mixed nuts, crumbled kosher cookies, and trays of smoked salmon. My brothers and I would joke that we needed to shake out all our clothes before wearing them in case one last can of tuna was hiding in the pockets.

During that time, my family had a string of live-in nannies who, being in their late twenties and early thirties, had themselves been teenagers in the 80s, and all shared a love of its music, hairstyles, and fashion. At the start of the photo album, I’m still being dressed by my nannies in bubbie’s care package clothing. There are strong 80s currents in my top and bottom sets of clashing florals and layered prints. One of my nannies introduced me to wearing tshirts over turtlenecks, which quickly became a staple of my elementary school wardrobe.

By the end of the album, I’m starting to dress myself. That marked the beginning of my new consumerism, my headlong dive into nineties trendiness and mall culture, and my (relatively short-lived) obsession with shopping. Here came the baby tees, the ballchain chokers and friendship necklaces, the sparkly plastic rings, and the 120 bottles-strong nail polish collection.

Since then, I’ve left behind the Disney franchise, Delia’s catalogs, and posing with my stuffed animals. I’ve moved from a pre-braces, pre-puberty, pre-dressing-for-a-bodyshape me to some sort of adult who not only dresses herself, but sometimes even considers outfits in advance of wearing them. Yet, flipping through the old album, I was struck by how similar my style is today. Sure, “The 90s are back!” But even more than individual items, it seems like it’s the way I dress that’s stayed pretty much the same.

now

Back then, I had my flower-printed Blossom hat, Curious George tshirt, and patterned canvas shoes with fabric paint doodles that I wore with everything. These days, it might be a forest green wool scarf, a faded band tshirt, or a pair of velvet sunglasses, and it’ll probably be different stuff a year from now. But I’m always rotating a few main pieces, grabbing some loud, ugly accessories, and putting it all together with the colours and patterns mashing up against each other. Having the evidence in front of me in these photos, it’s easy to see how much that early environment affected my style.

By high school, it was a new millennium and my clothes had gone off in a different direction. I don’t know if I’m ready to go back there yet. Maybe next time I visit my mom I’ll come across photos from that period and it’ll be far enough in the past for me to remember.

- Tessa Smith

It wasn’t until I caught myself telling people (on multiple occasions), “I don’t buy summer clothes,” that I realized why autumn is my favourite season. I thought it was the changing leaves, the fleeting excitement of starting new classes, or the ability to order a hot cup of coffee without being asked, “would you like that iced?” Then, in late July, as I found myself wearing dresses from three summers ago and not wanting to spend money on summer clothing (even though I needed it), I realized that my love for fall stems from one thing: clothing.

What I love most about fall clothing isn’t so practical a reason as being able to wear the same pieces throughout the year, but with less layers. It’s the layering itself that really gets me going. Forget jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie. No, no. I’d rather wear tights, frilly socks, boots, a skirt, a t-shirt, an oversized cardigan, a scarf, a hat, and - well, you see where this is going. In the summer heat, “putting an outfit together” in the morning feels like “finding the outfit I’ll sweat least in.” I dread it. In the fall, though, getting dressed in the chilly morning feels like baking a layer-cake of textures and colours that will keep me warm, comforted, all day long. Who doesn’t like cake?

So, I ask you two things:

What season do you love getting dressed in, and why? And does anyone know of a country where the temperature rests permanently around 15 degrees celsius? I’d like to move there.

Words by Stephanie Fereiro
Photos by Samantha Walton

My Grandma and my Step-Grandpa Ralph, an American who was in the Navy during WWII and loved our cottage for the endless opportunities to build things, bought a pair of red, plaid Mark’s Work Warehouse-style jackets in Kensington Market the first year we went up to Lake Simcoe. They have since become staples of our cottage wardrobes, recognizable in a myriad of summertime photographs scotch-taped on the cabin walls. Worried that we might misplace or ruin the originals, and wanting to keep the flannel tradition alive, I bought a blue plaid jacket at Value Village to add to the collection. My brother Tom promptly stole it, taking it back to university and, as I ruefully described it shaking my fist, turned it “into fashion.”

Then a funny thing happened: Tom spotted similar jackets all over campus. Plaid flannel jackets, so gawky, so nerdy, so clichéd Canadian, were not supposed to be a trend! No longer separating him from the crowd, he folded the jacket up and brought it back up to the lake.

The circle completed, as practicality begat anti-fashion begat fashion begat practicality, the plaid flannel jackets are once again worn for their comfort and warmth when trudging down to the beach in the early morning, curled up admiring the sunset and laying on the dock, listening to the black waves and watching the stars.

- Max Mosher

I have a serious case of born-in-the-wrong-generation. While I know that life in 2010 has its perks, there is a part of me that has always longed for things like handwritten letters, dances on weekends, and long drives in cars without seatbelts. This longing is never more evident than during the visits I have with my grandmother. Although I don’t see her as frequently now that I spend most of the year away at school, I try to visit as often as I can. My favourite conversations are the ones about what her life was like when she was my age.

One particular evening, we were talking about hair – specifically, the things we do to curl it.

“We used to stick a six-inch nail right in the fire!” she said, holding her hands up to show me how long the nail was. Later, she told me about how her mother used to make rollers for my grandma and her sisters out of paper: “If you twist and twist and twist,” she said, making the motions with her fingers, “the paper gets stiff, and you can wrap your hair around it.”


“We used to wear rag curls, too. Do you know what those are?”

I smiled. I am very familiar with rag curls. I spent many evenings with my mom standing over me, wrapping my hair around strips of old towel or t-shirt until I had knots of fabric dangling all over my head. I always began with the hope that afterwards, I would look a little more glamorous and grown up – but the process inevitably ended with my looking like a poorly groomed poodle instead.

In photos of my grandma as a young woman, though, she always looks enviably classy and composed – all soft smiles and mysterious eyes and the kind of grace that refuses to suffer the indignity of unkempt hair. After I left her house that evening, I was determined to give rag curls another chance. If she could do it, so could I.

All I needed, really, was a little patience. Rag curls involve wrapping sections of hair around a long piece of fabric, and tying that fabric in a knot to keep the curl in place. The end result is usually very tight ringlets. I’ve found, however, that putting your hair in curls when it’s dry, rather than wet, keeps them from being too crazy. It also helps to give yourself a lot of time for the curls to loosen. Instead of poodle hair (which I’m sure has its moments as well), I’ve started to end up with soft and lasting curls.

Rag rolls appeal not only to the part of me that wishes my hopelessly straight hair would stay curled for longer than five minutes, but also to the part that wishes I could have gone to dances every weekend and waited for letters in a mailbox instead of my inbox. I know that the past has flaws, but my grandmother’s generation is one that I still long to understand. My evening visits help me feel closer to my grandmother, and being able to relate to her stories about curls connects me, in the smallest way, to the girl she was before I knew her.

- Hailey Siracky