What My Wardrobe Carried Until I Could

I never wanted to dress like the other girls.

It wasn’t rebellion.

It wasn’t even discomfort.

It was something quieter — a kind of resistance I didn’t yet have words for.

I just knew I didn’t belong in pink dresses and glittery shoes lined up like stage props.

They looked like invitations to a performance I had no interest in auditioning for.

I wasn’t against femininity.

I just didn’t like the version they were selling — pastel, performative, brittle.

I didn’t know yet what I wanted instead.

But I knew it had to be real.

So I asked my grandmother — a seamstress — to make me a coat.

It took her some time to work out what I was really asking for.

I didn’t know the proper name.

A trench coat.

Not a child’s coat.

A proper one.

The kind I’d seen in old films — worn by women who moved like they meant it, their heels echoing off polished streets.

I was too young for heels.

But a trench coat?

That I could wear.

The heels would come later.

My mum still tells the story.

How I stood there, small but certain,

asking for something sharp, structured, and not remotely appropriate for my age.

Even then, I knew:

if I was going to wear something,

it had to mean something.

There were other signals too.

Like the way I lined new shoes beside my bed,

so they'd be the first thing I saw when I woke.

Weapons, in my mind — even the quiet ones.

Or how I'd parade around the house in my mum’s and aunt’s heels,

narrating little worlds where power didn’t have to ask permission.

When my nan made me something new — something I had only half-imagined — I couldn’t sleep the night before wearing it to school.

We didn’t wear uniforms.

Which helped.

Until we did — in high school, in bartending jobs, in places that needed you flattened to fit.

Uniforms made me feel like I didn’t exist.

So I found ways to resist.

A scarf. A cardigan. Accessories tucked in like quiet rebellion.

Small enough to slip under the radar.

Sharp enough to still be seen.

There was a stretch of time where I stopped dressing for myself altogether.

Not to blend in.

But to refuse expectation.

Baggy jeans. Hoodies. Trainers that said nothing.

I wasn’t dressing like a boy.

I was dressing in refusal.

It worked.

Mostly.

But it also meant disappearing differently.

It took years to feel comfortable in my body.

Longer still to feel safe enough to re-enter the world of colour, of shape, of silhouette.

But when I did, I didn’t return to femininity.

I rebuilt it.

Structured dresses.

Statement heels.

Saturated colour.

Not to be looked at — but to anchor myself.

Not decoration — but architecture.

I don’t dress how I feel.

I dress how I want to feel.

That’s the part most people miss.

If I’m wearing something bold, it’s not because I’m confident.

It’s because I’m reaching for clarity.

Because I’m trying to stay visible to myself.

When the outfits start slipping —

when the colour drains, when the lines loosen —

that’s when I know I’m spiralling.

Not because I want to disappear.

But because I’ve stopped fighting it.

I remember things in outfits.

Not just the extraordinary moments — the ordinary ones too.

The coat I wore when I made a hard decision.

The dress I had on when someone saw me differently.

Even the top I wore when I realised I'd stopped apologising.

Clothes don’t just mark time for me.

They hold it.

They map it.

And colour —

colour is the signal I didn’t realise I was sending all along.

When I’m happy, I see it more vividly.

I wear it more easily.

When colour starts fading from my wardrobe,

it’s already fading from me.

There was a time I couldn’t wear pink.

Not because I hated it.

Because it felt like a costume for someone I didn’t recognise.

Too soft.

Too compliant.

Too expected.

Now?

It’s everywhere.

In my home.

On my heels.

In the details I used to flatten out.

I don’t wear it to feel like a girl.

I wear it because it no longer threatens who I’ve become.

No Fit Found.

But it came in pink.

Image by Craig Adderley, via Pexels