12 may 2026
I had a friend on Facebook post about their clothing journey, and wanted to hear about other people's clothing choices and process. Here's a rough timeline, and some thoughts about my journey at each point. A lot of it is personal and won't make a whole lot of sense without knowing about my journey, but it felt good to write it down.
Teenager
I went to school at a Catholic High School - so, dress code. White or blue collared shirt, slacks. Every day except certain Fridays, and then that was a uniform of a different kind. We didn't have any money, so my clothing came from the thrift store most of the time. I got teased and bullied because I didn't know anything about fashion brands (Girbaud? Never heard of him.) There was a terrible irony in my senior year that suddenly shopping from thrift stores and finding really great things for cheap was itself fashionable.
College I
Sweats, because I could. University of Utah apparel because I worked at the bookstore and got a discount. Very utilitarian.
Freddies
Day-to-day, another dress code. A uniform. But I never got my sizing quite right. I got sent to a Mr. Mac's by a store director once and gifted three pairs of tailored slacks. First piece of tailored clothing I had ever owned.
Outside of Freddies, Hawaiian shirts (that's a trend for pre-transition transfem folks, fwiw). And a nice fitting little black velvet dress once a year every year.
And the pin jacket. A jacket that was given to me by a former friend that I wanted to re-purpose. I got a lot of pins and buttons from various queer shops, organizations, and trips, and covered the whole thing with it. I still have it.
College II
Theatrical uniform - black shirts, black pants. Outside of that Hawaiian shirts over t-shirt and pants. I've never really liked jeans, but cargo pants were good.
Early Parenthood
At one point I had a massive (100+) collection of t-shirts of various kinds. They got mostly ruined by a flood while we were living in Holliday.
The eventual parenting uniform -- hard wearing cargo/cargo-ish pants, several pants in different colors, and a t-shirt. The teaching uniform - collared shirt and slacks.
Early transition
I struggled early on to figure out what would work for me. Lots of trips to Iconoclad, bringing home things that... well, I've gone back to recently and are just now starting to wear. That's been a new thing for me from transition to now -- I've occasionally squirreled away something that I thought I'd like but didn't have the courage to wear at the time, then picked that back out at a later point. The stories were about hope and eventual freedom that I didn't have yet but know was around the corner. Getting dressed up en femme on the weekends was a massive escape from having to perform masculinity during the week, and the first time in my life I ever felt like dressing up for myself. Getting glammed up for a trip to go do the laundry felt great. Shoes came from clearance sales from Long Tall Sally and Nordstrom Rack. Figuring out underwear was 10 for $30 sales from Aerie.
The great chuck-out
Then, one day, nearly all masculine clothes went out. I've got a few pieces of clothing that survived either because it's a pithy t-shirt, or something with a lot of memories, or something that still works as a part of a more androgynous presentation.
Today
My day-to-day work uniform is still some kind of pants or skirt and a t-shirt. More femme cuts overall. I have a good rotation of skirts that includes some more vintage-looking, and a few that were custom-made. Several colorful sundresses. A new little black dress with pockets, and a few friends of the same cut that are different kinds of black-and-white stripe. Big stompy boots (my Fluevogs are my armor).
The big change right now is that it's not often that new things enter the rotation. I have enough clothes that I really like that I can rotate them seasonally and suddenly have "new" and exciting things to wear for the season.
I've also had a terrible relationship with style magazines. They don't depict anyone with a body type like mine, they don't have clothing that is actually affordable -- just not for me, and I've yet to find anything that actually is. It might not exist.