bohemianandrogyny

[bohemianandrogyny]

Androgyny In Autumn

It’s the first day of autumn, which means more than the changing of the leaves, pumpkin spice everything and countless memes about cuddling and bonfires. For me it means two very important things; the amount of money I spend on hair products is going to significantly decrease and sweaters. Sweaters and scarves. Sweaters, scarves and boots. Sweaters, scarves, boots and jackets. Sweaters, scarves, boots, jackets and flannels. Fall fucking fashion. This is my time to shine. There are few tools quite as useful as the veil of layers in the illusion of gender fluidity. In the great balancing act that is androgyny, it’s all about highlighting and showcasing the best of both your masculine and feminine qualities. This task can be a little difficult to achieve when your tits or hips are a little on the prominent side. And that, my gender-fucking friends, is why the good lord made the greatest season of all, autumn. Fall fashion is classic. After winter, everyone is so excited to ditch the mits and knits that spring and summer fashion are usually full of new color schemes and changes. Where in relation to my knees are my shorts supposed to sit this year?  Are tank tops, muscle tees, a-shirts, sleeveless t-shirts, or some new variation of the sleeveless tee going to be the a la mode method of showing off my arms this year? Wayfarer, aviator, squared, rounded, or frameless? But autumn leaves (pun not intended) little room for improvement. Fall fashion is the perfect combination of form and function. Autumn will always bring sweaters. Autumn will always invite layering. Autumn is unique in that the shades of the season are the main event and we’re dressing to accessorize it.

Denim

The Canadian Tuxedo has always been a polarizing topic of debate, and I’m here to state for the record: I’m really fucking into it. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as too much denim. As with everything, the devil is in the details. It’s really easy to mess this look up. The wrong wash, the wrong color, the wrong cut can very quickly turn this sharp, casual look into a costume from a choir pageant in the nineties. I personally wouldn’t match the wash of the denim that closely, I prefer a lighter wash or a chambray on the top half and a darker wash on the bottom, which gives you color and texture contrast. It’s a great casual look that can be dressed a dozen different ways. Tuck in your shirt, button your top button with a dark skinny tie and a pair of boots and belt and it’s truly a Canadian Tuxedo. Leave a few buttons unbuttoned enough to expose a solid colored shirt underneath, a pair of suspenders and a pair of casual sneakers for a more relaxed yet still put together look. You can dress the same article of denim a hundred different ways, so you only need a few solid pieces to augment your autumn wardrobe.

Sweaters

Fit is the most common foe of the androgynous among us. Autumn is the easiest time of year to find clothes that fit and don’t cling or sag in the women’s section. This year especially, with androgyny being trendy, it’s especially easy to find clothes that fit your style without looking like your grandmother made your sweater a size too big so that you can grow into it in order to stretch the life of her handiwork. These patterned, shapeless sweaters are essential pieces for your fall wardrobe. They’re perfect accent pieces that you can wear to make a statement spoken in an indoor voice without making a scene. Because of the lack of contouring, each sweater is going to sit differently on each person, so unfortunately, you’re going to have to weed through a lot of misses before you find the one that fits right. But, when you find one that drapes the right way it immediately makes your look more deliberate without coming off as forced.

Street Wear

A nice jacket can turn jeans and a t-shirt into an outfit without any effort. It’s like a suit for the supermarket. I’ve always been a huge fan of bomber and varsity jackets because they are traditionally men’s style but are readily accessible in women’s sizes.

Blazers

As anyone who knows me will tell you the things I love most in this world are: 1. My mother. 2. America 3. A nice button-up. I never feel as sharp as I do when I’m in a nicely tailored button-up shirt. I can’t help it. The fall is truly my favorite because it turns my love for the suit into a matter of function. I don’t ever mind being the most over dressed person in the bar, but wearing a nice button-up and blazer in the summer invites inquiry. “Where are you coming from dressed so nice?” Umm.. my house? “What do you do for a living?” I’m a fucking bartender. I just like the way I look in a tie. But during the fall it’s just a way to stay warm and a step above casual.

Scarves

I’m not usually into dramatic fashion statements. I’m 6’1 (6’5 if you include my hair) and I feel like I already attract enough attention, so to make some ostentatious fashion choice just comes across as obnoxious and goes against my contrived effortlessness. But, I absolutely love these oversized scarves. They’re the perfect accent piece. You can wear jeans and a plain v-neck with this scarf and look like a fashion god.. Plus, I’m inclined to do just about anything Lenny Kravitz does.

[bohemianandrogyny]

I don't think that's me, but I'm not really sure.

more so than a cucumber

[bohemianandrogyny]

Rule #1

The greatest downfall of every would-be “neo-dandy” (holy shit, do I hate that phrase) falls on fit. I see so many instances of near success, so many close attempts, so many outfits that I’m sure looked great on the person originally wearing it on Instagram. But, just because something looks great on the hanger at the store doesn’t mean that it’s going to look great on you. I may not fall into the category of “hyper-feminine female” and I’ll never need to know what shoes to pair with the essential LBD (that’s little black dress, you homo) but there are certain rules of dress that apply to everyone, no matter where you fall on the ever sliding scale of gender expression. Rule #1: Dress your strengths.

For cisgender women, this usually means highlighting your more feminine qualities. If you’ve got legs, show ‘em. If you’ve been blessed in the chest region, push those babies up and take away people’s ability to make eye contact. If your backyard is well manicured, wrap it in something that makes it impossible for anyone around you to hold a conversation that doesn’t revolve around that beautiful backside. Androgyny doesn’t mean trying to look like the opposite gender to me. Androgyny by definition is “the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics”. Androgyny isn’t about wiping away any trace of evidence of my chromosomal make-up. Androgyny isn’t an expression of displeasure with the body I was born into. Androgyny is about celebrating the ambiguity that is gender identity. Androgyny is showcasing my feminine qualities and highlighting my masculine ones. For those of us who reside in the grey area in between, rule #1 remains true, but we have to work double time.

Wherever there are more than twenty lesbians, you can always find a few examples chic gone completely wrong.

There’s the “human mannequin”. The girl wearing an exact replica of an outfit they saw on the model in the window dressing of whatever store they were shopping at. All of the pieces are separately adequate, there’s nothing wrong with the outfit per say, but there’s something about it that looks like they’re wearing a costume. These clothes do not belong to them, and that’s because they don’t. Your style should be a depiction of your personality, your attitude, your unique you-ness. Trends aren’t put in place to adhere to blindly. They’re there to enhance. Trends are meant to offer new options that you may have not ever have considered. They’re seasonings that change seasonally. Use them to spice up your style. Otherwise your look is as palatable as eating a spoonful of Lawry’s seasoning salt.  

Then there’s the “over-achiever”. For me, my number one objective is to present the appearance of effortlessness. As with most things, subtlety is the key. I spend a disproportionate amount of energy and effort into making my look like it just happened organically. As any of my friends will be glad to tell you, there is nothing facile about my style.

“Did you just change from one white button-up into another white button-up?” Yes. Yes the fuck I did.

“How many white-button-ups does one person need?”

I don’t know. I have eight and I need every single fucking one of them.

You can be poorly dressed in two hundred dollar jeans. It doesn’t matter what label in on the inside of your shirt. Looking good has less to do with what you’re wearing and more with how you’re wearing it. The “over-achiever” is like a person who can sing very well technically, but does so with too much vibrato and not enough soul.

Give me Otis Redding over Michael Bublé all day, everyday.

The last, but certainly most unfortunate, is the poor misguided individual we’ll just call “Junior”. This is the girl we all know, we’ve all seen, some of us have even been, who looks like she’s wearing her dad’s clothes.

I understand the struggle, Junior. We’ve all been there.

I am not a man. I am not built like a man. My shoulders are a little wider than the average American female, sure. I’m a little on the taller side (that’s an understatement). My chest is, well, a chest. The tit fairy missed my house during puberty. But, I am not a man.

Dressing your body type is more than half of the battle. Dressing your body type is the last battle you have to fight before winning the war.

The most beautiful article of clothing you’ve ever seen means nothing if it doesn’t fit. Fashion is not one size fits all, but there is a size for everyone. Know your strengths, know your shortcomings, know your size.

I don’t want to be dapper; I want to be debonair.

I don’t want to wear something that doesn’t look like it was made for me. I’m not wearing the clothes that I wear to showcase Banana Republic’s unparalleled craftsmanship and material strength. I’m not wearing the clothes I wear as an ostentatious show of my financial standings. I’m wearing the clothes I wear because the law says that I have to, firstly, and secondly to accentuate my strengths and express myself in a way that makes me feel confident.

Dress for you. Dress like you’re trying to impress yourself.

[bohemianandrogyny]

Details with @thetailorynyc

Catch me tonight (6-9pm) celebrating #NYFW with @thetailorynyc @shesagent @levitatestyle @aliciama16 and @dag_images

126 W. 25th St. New York

#ADapperChick #TheTailoryNYC 📷: @dag_images

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Calvin Klein Jeans Fall/Winter 2015 Campaign

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Green. Suede. Chukkas.

#ADapperChick 📷: @dag_images (at ADapperChick.com)

[bohemianandrogyny]

I'm in a New York state of mind.

[bohemianandrogyny]

These boots are life.

J.FitzPatrick Button Boots

[bohemianandrogyny]

Get Out Of Those Fucking Sweatpants.

In life, in love, in most things, the most important factor is timing.

The course of your life can turn on a dime just by standing in front of the right tea house at the right time and the right drunk girl can come up and push you and the most perfect girl you’ve ever met into a conversation that can forever change the course of your life.

Timing can also be the greatest distance between two people.

Even if their bodies are pressed together, as close as two people in two separate skins can be, all it takes is a hand on your face to realize that you’re light years away from one another.

Timing is a motherfucker.

I’m trying to think of a way to relate the importance of timing in love to the importance of fit in clothes, but I’m at a loss.

Truthfully, my heart is currently in a state of complete disarray and it’s making the required participation in my days unbearable.

I’m writing because I don’t know what else to do.

I’m writing this right now not because it’s making me feel better, I’m writing this because it’s making me feel okay to feel.

And, fuck me, am I full of the fucking feels right now.

I’m doing the typical nonsensical, stream-of-consciousness, sickeningly sentimental journaling. Pouring all of my discomfort and pain into poorly constructed sentences and phrases. I’m writing the letters filled with pleas and reasoning and proclamations of my undying affection and unbearable agony to her that will never make it into any mailbox or inbox, but will forever reside in a folder on my desktop titled “Her”.

I can’t sleep.

I can’t eat.

The usual clichéd bullshit.

I’m typing this right now in my underwear and a souvenir t-shirt, my mess of hair pulled back into some semblance of a ponytail while Billie Holiday croons away, making our mutual heartbreak sound pretty.

If you put on Billie Holiday’s “Lady Sings The Blues” and listen to the music without listening to the words, you’d never have any idea that she’s singing about a heartbreak that would put a tub of ice cream between sweatpantsed knees and a an explosion of crumpled Kleenex at the feet of a mortal human.

I started my day with “Good Morning Heartache”, a seemingly lighthearted love song personifying the storm that roars in my chest, in my head, in my very being. The heartache has taken the place of the person for whom she’s pining. I don’t get to touch her. I don’t get to hear her voice. I don’t get to see her sheepishly smile at me from some set table at some restaurant where we ignore the fact that we’re the last two patrons there, too caught up in the bubble of us to care.

Instead, I share my bed with the snoring creature that is Heartache, who radiates heat and hogs the covers. I get to spend my days with it’s constant chatter of her, asking me a million questions that I don’t know the answer to, questions that fill me with doubt and fear and insecurity, pointing out every place that holds some memory of her.

“Might as well get used to you hanging around, Good morning heartache, sit down”

This song is the only reason I’m putting on pants today.

As instinctual and right as it feels to sit here chain smoking in my underwear, unshowered and unkempt and unabashedly distraught as I am, it doesn’t make me feel better. Truthfully, nothing but time will make me feel better, that’s an unfortunate fact. But, as Lady Day has taught me, this ugly passenger of mine isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. This heartache is my travel companion for the foreseeable future.

If I’ve got to roll through the day with this motherfucker, it may as well dress well.

I’ve said it before, and it’s one of my truths, everything feels better when the person you present to the world is a person you can proud of.  The dude in my head is currently in a dirty pair of boxers, a stained undershirt, carrying bags under their eyes big enough to pack for a seven day trip to the city  (which, sadly, isn’t far from reality right now), but presenting that image further compounds the saddness that I have to carry with me anyway.

The only good thing that happens in sweatpants is lapdances.

Over the last couple days I have felt as shitty as I’ve ever felt. I’ve avoided people as much as possible out of fear. I feel like the bleakness I’m feeling radiates out of me and it evokes the empathy of strangers and loved ones alike. I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Actually, I carry her heart on my sleeve, but that’s another story.

I firmly believe that you can fake it until you make it.  I can act my way into different thinking. There are some realities that aren’t worth indulging. The reality of my situation is less than desirable and there is no reason to make my outsides match my insides right now.

As much as I dislike children, I don’t want to frighten them as I walk down the street.

They say to “dress for the job you want”. The world’s reaction to you is based on how you appear, as any of us who have ever gone out in public in last night’s clothes and last night’s eyeliner can tell you. I’m fucking down right now, so I’m dressing for the rest of the world. I’m dressing as to not arouse suspicion. I’m dressing as to not evoke empathy. I’m dressing so that I look okay and in turn everyone will treat me okay, and then maybe I can have an okay day.

I can not afford to pacify this feeling. I can not make it comfortable and give it a space in my home. Don’t take your fucking shoes off, Heartache. You can crash on my couch, but you do not get a key.

Today I will dress like a fucking rockstar, I will act like a fucking rockstar, and the world will treat me like a fucking rockstar.

Today I will dress like a fucking rockstar, I will act like a fucking rockstar, and the world will treat me like a fucking rockstar.

[bohemianandrogyny]

Labor Day is my least favorite day of the year because it means that its the last time I can wear white until next summer.

Shirt: Banana Republic

Pants: Gap

[bohemianandrogyny]

Even if you know that you're going to get naked at your destination, you should still come correct. Shirt: Banana Republic Jeans: Express Boots: Type Z Roy

[bohemianandrogyny]

I spend a good amount of time living in my own head, wondering about a myriad of issues and concerns and hypothetical nonsense that only exist in the confines of my mind.

Do I make the people in my life as happy as they make me?

Is there such thing as “the one”? And will I ever find her? Or have I already and I lost the opportunity because of my own hardhead obstinance or bad timing? Will I know when I meet her? Will she feel the same way about me?

Is everything preordained and therefore I’m right in not fretting almost anything? Or is everything in the world happening at random and unless I make my own waves, which goes against my very nature, will I end up drowning in the sea of human activity?

What am I going to do when I grow up? And why do I need to grow up?

What were the odds of my parents meeting, subsequently banging, and at the time of conception, the egg that would become my source of existence, be fertilized by the sperm cell that would eventually become me, giving me all of the genetic qualities and shortcomings I carry from both of my parents? What if I had been conceived a month earlier, what would that person look like? What if they hadn’t named me “Jade”? What if I were a “Stephanie” or a “Christina”? Would my life look substantially different than it does now?

Why, after all of the close calls, bad decisions and careless incidents have I survived?

All of these musings have been and can be silenced by the one overbearing query that can run through my head at any given point in my day without any reasoning or warning:

What the fuck am I going to wear today?

We’re raised to believe that “looks don’t matter” and “it’s what’s on the inside that counts,” and I don’t disagree entirely. Looks aren’t everything, and the person who lives inside of your brain and how that person interacts with the world matters substantially more so than the condition of your skin and the way your bones are situated under it, for sure. But, in my experience, making my outsides match my insides has brought about a harmony that bleeds into every other facet of my life.

Confidence is the key to everything.

I stand at a jaunting six feet one inches, which as an adult has been a blessing, but being three inches taller than the average American man as a thirteen-year-old girl makes for an interesting pubescent experience. As if all of the other changes and chemical swings weren’t enough to make me feel the full gravity of the insanity my body was going through. Not only could I go from anger so consuming that I would lose the ability to hear anything but the ringing in my skull straight into a fit of tears that was the greatest ab workout ever created (no wonder I was so skinny) without any warning and certainly without just cause, but add to that the acne, the changes in the shape of my body (or lack there of) and coat it all in that patented teenaged inferiority that makes you want to just jump out of your own skin and hide from all peering eyes. But, being taller than every single girl, boy, and ninety eight percent of the staff of my middle school made blending in a little…difficult.

I am and always will be The Jolly Jade Giant.

But, my what seemed to be tortured and angst ridden existence is where I first learned to practice the action which is the source of all of my happiness today; acceptance.

I can remember thinking, “well, I have two options. I can hate the fact that I’m tall and be tall, or I can learn to deal with the fact that I’m tall and be tall. Either way I’m tall, and I don’t see that shit changing anytime soon.” So, years before I would ever hear the words spoken, I was granted the serenity to accept the things that I can’t change. The courage to change the things I can came next and took a lot of years of wearing ill fitting clothes, thrift store ties, and skinny jeans so tight my feet would swell before I landed where I am today.

I am never going to look like the picture of demure femininity. I do not possess the feminine charms of what is considered the traditionally attractive woman in America. I don’t know where the beauty myth came from, and I don’t know what it’s purpose is aside from instilling a feeling of inadequacy in generations of our young women, but I, for one, say fuck that shit. Some one-size-should-fit-all ideal of what women should look like in order to be what we as a society consider beautiful is asinine and dangerous. Most women will never achieve it, and the ones who do are genetically predisposed to do so. They’re not better, they’re not worse, they’re just designed in a way that fits a certain mold that I can not fit all seventy-three inches of my body into. I can only play the cards I have and I’m one of the lucky people whose mental picture of what I should look like is designed and based on the cards I was dealt.

Call it vanity. Call it compensation for some inner shortcoming that I refuse to address and instead decide to dress up. Call it a frivolous waste of time. If it truly didn’t matter there wouldn’t be a billion dollar industry dedicated to the adoration, acquisitions and artistry in our adornments.

For me, my what could be called borderline obsession in my style is about feeling like I am achieving my own ideal of personal beauty. It’s about feeling as if I’m honoring the vessel in which I get to spend my life. It’s about feeling sexy. It’s about asserting my independence and my vision for myself and not adopting restrictions that don’t work for me.

Fashion is all about me.

[bohemianandrogyny]

Leave your clothes and your hos with me. I'll take good care of them.

[bohemianandrogyny]

I spend a disproportionate amount of effort

trying to look effortless.

Shoes: Steve Madden

Jeans: Gap

Shirt: CottonOn

[bohemianandrogyny]

Introduction

I do not wish that I was born a man. 


That is one of the first questions I get asked when I encounter someone who is baffled by my less than femme fashion choices paired with my sexuality. 
I am quite pleased with the body I was born in.That is a fact I feel very fortunate for. I can not imagine having to live a life in a body that doesn’t feel like home and I have the utmost sympathy for those who have to fight that battle every day. But, that is not my experience, that is not my story, therefore I can’t write about it. 


I do, however, know what it’s like growing up in a society where there’s a certain set of standards imposed upon me because of the “Y” I carry in my chromosomal makeup. I am familiar with the feeling of extreme discomfort associated with trying to fit into prefabricated boxes that never quite fit. I also know how terrifying and liberating it is to stop trying to find your place and instead make one of your own. I know what it’s like to have your organic personhood be a constant source of philosophical conversation about gender and sexuality and society and a bunch of bullshit that, as far as I’m concerned, has nothing to do with the fact that I feel more comfortable in a well tailored button-up than an A-line dress. I know what it’s like to wish that every store carried a men’s extra-small.


I’ve been what I learned very early on is considered a “tomboy” my entire life. One of my earliest childhood memories is the white knuckle want I had for this suit donned by the toddler sized mannequin at K-mart. 


Church would be so much more tolerable in a cummerbund. 


I don’t know why I’ve always been more comfortable in a suit than a skirt. I’ve spent countless hours in therapy discussing thousands of things far more pressing than why the tag in my pants reads “32x32” instead of “8”. I was blessed to be born into a family where it didn’t matter much. The “beauty myth” was not a part of my upbringing. I was never taught that there are things that “little girls do” and therefore I never felt as if I was being a girl the wrong way. 


I am Jade. I am a girl. I like boxing and football, therefore, they must be girl things. 


So, I was quite unprepared for the things that would happen to me and my peers during puberty. I was mostly surprised at the things that didn’t happen to me during puberty; I never developed an interest in boys and I never got boobs. I was surprised at how “other” I felt around my contemporaries who were taking on their new forms and gender roles so seamlessly. 
My tomboy cohorts suddenly appeared in belly shirts and painted faces, while I still wore my JNCOs and oversized t-shirts (forgive me, it was the early 2000s). 


But, here I stand today. Tall (literally and figuratively) and comfortable in who I am and how I present myself to the world. 
I started this blog not to make any statement but rather to celebrate “female masculinity” (whatever the fuck that means), androgynous beauty and fashion.

Plus, it’s a whole new medium on which I can post some of the absurd amount of selfies I take in a day.

Finding your look is a daunting task that may seem frivolous to some, but making the dude in my head match the dude I present to the world has changed my life. 


Find your dude.