By Ella Norton
For Caleb Byrnes, a junior at UO, fashion is a way to express how they feel inwardly to the external world. From tailored pants and quilted Halloween skirts to mesh football jerseys, Byrnes has recently started experimenting with their style, describing it as a laid-back cottage core vibe.
“You can subvert expectations; you can reinforce certain aspects that you really like,” Byrnes said. “There's clothing that can reinforce those parts, which I think is really cool. It can send a message; it's kind of like coding in a way.”
UO freshman Quinn Connell also expressed how dressing in gender-nonconforming clothing can send a message to others around them.
“The message of which gender someone is based on their clothes, that is a message dictated by societal standards, and you can play with that,” Connell said. “It's a construct, but it's a construct you can play with. You can observe, an experiment from different angles.”
Connell’s personal style is androgynous, leaning masculine. He said he just recently began dressing that way, so he doesn’t have too many pieces. Connell said they really look up to people like Lil Nas X and Dorian Electra.
“All of these people, they're not fashion designers or models exclusively,” Connell said. “They're brands, and they market an identity of themselves, but they use fashion to do that in a not-so-superficial way a lot of the time.”
Byrnes said they made lots of mistakes when they first started trying to find their style, but they drew inspiration from the media around them, like “Freaks and Geeks” or “Little Women.”
“I was really into the style of ‘Freaks and Geeks’ because I liked how androgynous all the clothing was,” Byrnes said. “Certain clothing that looks androgynous on certain people doesn't have that effect on me because so much clothing that I deem androgynous is men's clothing on people who are not socialized as men or have different body types.”
When Byrnes does find gender-nonconforming clothes that fit, they enjoy using it to undermine people’s expectations.
“It can sometimes backfire because I'll be like, ‘Oh wow I feel like a mess,’” Byrnes said. “But, in other ways, it can be really successful and bring out parts of me I didn't know were there because I'm used to seeing really masculine traits.”
However, Byrnes said they’re also working to enjoy their style inwardly, regardless of how other people see them.
“That’s been hard for me to let go, that I don't always have to subvert expectations in order to feel validated or dignified,” Byrnes said. “It's like, unless you go all out and show how queer you are with makeup and stuff, people are like, ‘Oh you are a blank in clothing that is not for you.’ Unless you make it undeniably queer, there’s like this bar, and I often set that bar for myself based on the assumptions of what I think other people think.”
UO junior Luka Allen also said they don’t dress for anyone but themselves.
“I don’t really try to express my gender to anyone through my fashion,” Allen said. “It’s kind of just that I like to decorate myself, and this is what I want to decorate myself with.”
Allen would describe their style as historically masculine, modern-day feminine. Their closet has pieces such as a French Revolution reenactment coat, Elizabethan ruffles and a battle vest. Allen said they’re inspired by romantic goth and look at the visual K movement in Japan for inspiration.
“I typically just combine a lot of modernly feminine, historically masculine clothing,” Allen said. “But honestly, anything I wear is androgynous for the most part just because I myself am an androgynous person.”
UO sophomore Codi Farmer also tries to use fashion as a way to be more comfortable, both physically and aesthetically.
“For a really long time, I wore stuff that made me feel more comfortable with the people I was around,” Farmer said. “I never really liked that, and it was very much dressing for the male gaze kind of thing.”
The farmer would describe her style as gay granola hippy, with a focus on color coordination. She described gendered clothes as “overrated” and said they can cause negative effects in society.
“It also reinforces the idea that men and women are super different,” Farmer said. “And more people are realizing they are nonbinary and having that separation between men and women's fashion can be really toxic for their mental health and can cause tons of gender dysphoria.”
Allen also spoke about the continual existence of gender norms in society, but explained they believe that clothing is a good place to start.
“We're working towards getting rid of a clear divide,” Allen said. “Here’s my issue with that. Some people like to look gendered, it's very affirming and that's a good thing from that point of view. The issue is using that presentation to hold leverage over other people.”
Farmer said she typically tends to dress more androgynously when she wants to be more comfortable, which she sees as an interesting paradigm.
“It took me a really long time to get comfortable wearing dresses in high school and college,” Farmer said. “And so now, when I reflect back on it, thinking I'm more comfortable when I dress like a dude than whenever I dress like a girl. It's such a weird thing to think about.”
Byrnes believes they used to have an internally problematic way of viewing androgynous fashion and is still working through trying to shed it.
“I think androgyny should be defined by the person who has it,” Byrnes said. “It’s striving to have an outward expression that matches the inward feelings.”
Byrnes said dressing androgynously just for fashion can be a slippery slope because it’s easy to slip from normalizing to capitalizing. Going forward, they would like to see more representation from the queer communities, particularly queer people of color.
“So much of what we have comes from communities,” Byrnes said. “Just seeing those people highlighted when it is their lived experiences, it can’t just be a PR thing.”
Allen also spoke about the importance of representation in fashion and said they would like to see more personal expression from representatives of brands while still playing into the brand’s image. However, most importantly Allen said they wished people didn’t make assumptions about those who dress androgynously.
“I know I only get gendered correctly because people can't tell my assigned gendered birth because of my voice,” Allen said. “That's the only reason I get gendered correctly in public. Androgyny is your own interpretation of things so having people assume their own interpretation of androgyny onto you. That's what I hope is going to change in society soon.”
While Connell wouldn’t consider himself an expert on fashion, he believes cultural and gender intersectionality is getting blended into modern-day fashion, which he finds really exciting.
“The perception that I'm getting is this radical explosion in diversity of thought, mainly due to how fashion is communicated beyond the real world, like social media and popular media,” Connell said. “There's a lot more ideas being borrowed and shared across lines of gender, but also across lines of class and society and culture.”