Styled by Music

Music is differentiated by a wide variety of genres each song is classified as and you can further distinguish an artist by their own personal stylistic expression. In our society today, it is more acceptable than it was in the past for musicians to use their sense of fashion to embed new ideals in their songs. Music lovers are the people most inspired by their favorite artist’s style since they focus on the little details of the musician’s outfits. Throughout my lifetime, I have been inspired by a multitude of artist’s styles to help influence my own personal style. I want to focus more on the evolution of my own personal style next week, but today I want to share how some of my favorite musicians have impacted my sense of fashion.

For as long as I can remember, music has been a massive part of my life and who I am today. I’ve danced since I was 3 and whenever I was in elementary school, I would spend hours basically everyday coming up with a new dance routine in my room listening to a collective CD collection of miscellaneous 2000s pop stars and iconic Disney legends. As you all know, Miley Cyrus has been one of my idols since I watched the first episode of Hannah Montana. I distinctly remember my elementary style and how we were forced to wear our school uniforms and I would literally cry if my mom made me wear a skirt instead of a skort. Major difference in case you don’t know because one has shorts!! There were a few times I would try to wear makeup to school, which now that I think about it is really dumb. What type of 8-year-old needs to be wearing bright blue eyeshadow to match their school T-shirt?? To this day, I’m not even sure if my parents knew I wore eyeshadow to school somedays because I would literally hide doing it in the backseat before they dropped me off. Simply living the life of a scammer since I was a young bean. 

Middle school was the time in my life where music was one of the most important things to me and I spent so much of my free time on my little iPod touch, searching through YouTube and trying to discover new musicians that I could vibe too. Sixth grade, also known as the era where my life was changed forever. This was the time whenever I became obsessed with One Direction and fell into the coming of age cycle of being obsessed with boybands. At the time, I did not realize how much music really did influence my life, but all of my inspiration and ideals came from new music concepts and artists that I just recently discovered. I finally began to have a deeper desire to learn more about music and to discover old music that was clearly new to me. Sixth grade was also the time where I discovered more about the types of music I like to listen to, I love heavy rock music, but I also love soft indie songs. I feel like I always had a sense of who the Beatles were because my parents and sister listened to them, but once I started focusing on their music and listening to songs I had never heard before my life was changed. Since my life was heavily focused on the Beatles in middle school, I was never super into pop or rap music. I remember clearly not knowing some popular songs, because I didn’t really listen to the radio that much and people thought I was kind of strange for not listening to Katy Perry and blasting John Lennon instead. 

My style in middle school was still heavily influenced by CCISD and the restrictive guidelines of our everyday clothes. This is whenever I became more about accessorizing my outfits since I was not able to fully express myself through my clothes. I wore a variety of bracelets on my wrists with rings on more than 5 fingers. The one and only Stevie Nicks really inspired by boho style and made me want to wear flowy kimonos over my basic outfits, while also making each outfit original to me by adding accessories that made me smile. My family critiques my choice of accessories a lot because I do express myself through the little details of each of my outfits, sometimes I tend to over style a particular fit by adding too much.

Since I listen to a wide range of music, I was influenced by many different decades and did a lot of research on musicians and their clothing choices in that particular era. My earliest memories of 90s music is my dad blasting it throughout my house at 5 am, before he learned and invested in some Bluetooth headphones. I quickly learned the words and my mom would get so mad that I was in 3^rd grade knowing all the words to Boyz-N-The-Hood and was dropping the F word as if I knew what it meant. Last year, my style was focused on revitalizing old trends and styling vintage clothing to be more modernized. I wore more casual styles of clothing and had a more street style aesthetic. I was influenced by Tyler the Creator, Brockhampton, and Lizzo. This was the relative beginning years of my college experience, so I was lazy with my style and considered my casual loungewear, considerably cool streetwear. Honestly, I was going through a little bit of a depressive state at this time, so I went back to listening to my 90s grunge playlists that I made in 8^th grade. That is when I was on my upmost level of gothic energy, my best friend Zerique and I constantly had Nirvana blasting. I lowkey discovered a few screamo bands and would just lay on the ground listening to crazy rock. This was the major turning point in my life because 90s grunge is one of my favorite genres of music and this was the time whenever I started to discover more bands like the Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden.

Currently, I would say my style is the most influenced by 90s and early 2000s right now. Sometimes I also feel like I express my gothic, grunge aesthetic by wearing a variety of chains and industrial style textiles. If you know me, you know that I am always pairing my Doc Martens with any type of outfit. I’ve recently tried to incorporate simpler monochromatic looks with more precise lines and dramatic accessories into my everyday style. I’m seeing a change in my style to grown more into expressing silhouettes and trends from the early 2000s. Whenever I was 7 or 8, I distinctly remember my mom picking outfits out for me and I really did not like some of the styles from then, but now my perspective has changed. I’m wearing more bedazzled things, shoulder bags and slip on mule heels. I feel inspired from singers like Doja Cat, Miley Cyrus and Harry Styles. My style has shifted to be more feminine while also mixing in certain masculine accents. This week in particular, I was completely mesmerized by Harry Style’s Watermelon Sugar music video and all of the summer stylistic details they included. Vibrant shades of yellow and blue along with vintage styled silhouettes such as halter tops and high waisted swim shorts. His songs Watermelon Sugar and Cherry have also helped spark a revolution where fruit has been used as an accessory and a uplifting print on certain garments. The current impact that Harry Styles has on fashion is his ability to master the mix of masculine and feminine styles paired together. He has influenced many men to also be more gender fluid in their everyday outfits which has opened up doors for a new world of androgynous fashion. 

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