Ay, “fashion” you may call it.
I’m standing in a dressing room
At a trendy vintage clothing shop.
My mother found this spot somehow,
I don’t know how – there wasn’t an internet then –
But we’ve come to the big city and we have come
To explore the vintage clothes. To buy them, too.
I am currently wearing a yellow ruffled gown sort of thing.
I’m 14 but this makes me feel like I’m twenty.
The guy who runs the register has given me a free bit of make-up (orange eye shadow)
And I feel amazing. I’m not going to buy this dress.
I have no occasion for it. We’re looking for
Something for me to wear to the theatre, to Broadway
And even I know that this yellow ruffled affair that makes me look like a Southern Belle princess would be too much – even for Broadway, which I’ve been dreaming of for years.
I try on other things. Things I bought, I’m sure.
Some Army issue pants, some funky neckties, a dressing coat perhaps?
At this age, clothes mean so much to me.
I am sure that every single thing I put on explains everything about me.
I don’t look like anyone else I know.
I walk into school wearing hats I adore but I resent that I must remove them due
To dress codes (The 40s style small ones give me serious hathead.)
I am fully committed to my look.
I hate gym class. Mostly because of gym
But partly because I have to wear a t-shirt and shorts
(I try to find funky urban t’s to make up for it.)
I am happy with this image in the mirror,
In this yellow-white gown with my orange eye shadow
That’s made a grown-up man flirt with me for the first time (that I know of)
And this bit of style, of all the crazy things I wore in the subsequent four years
Is the thing I remember with the most fondness.
The Hamlet Project 