Seeking Inspirato with Sadie in Portland, Maine

Photo by Maddison, 📸 edits by the wonderful Jessica Webb.

Who is She?

Name: Sadie (@sadiexgrant)
Age: 22
Job/lifestyle: Social Worker in training

Institutions of higher learning are supposed to challenge our existing habits and expose us to new ideas. For Sadie, Oberlin College wasn’t only a site for intellectual inquiry, but one for emergent and experimental style as well. Oberlin’s normcore aesthetic coupled with a progressive campus ethos of reusing and decommodifying fashion allowed Sadie to sharpen her Dynamic Personal Style into what it is today.

Sadie’s style is all about reclaiming the old, “ugly” pieces from the bottom of the bargain bin and making them modern and fresh. She gives truth to the lie that the 90s and 00s were a “bad” time for fashion. Sadie absolutely stuns in this aesthetic — particularly set against the backdrop of old school Portland, Maine. I met up with Sadie in the Deering Center neighborhood where she grew up, and we discussed favorite local thrift and vintage spots (Goodwill, Little Ghost, and Weekend Vintage) and her personal journey to achieving Clothing Confidence.

Copycat

High school is so efficient in its ability to mold individuals to conform that it has become something of a refrain in these Seeking Inspirato features. It seems that peer pressure doesn’t merely work to make us act the same, but for many of us, peer pressure also works to make us dress the same. Sadie spent high school dressing to blend in, wearing leggings, flannels and Uggs to fit the look around her.

It is in college when we get away from home and are exposed to new people, trends, and lifeways that we actually figure out who we are. As Sadie so eloquently put it:

“Being in [the college environment] got me ... thinking about what I was wearing more and how I wanted to show up. This was a parallel process with my own process of … differentiation as a person. When you're an adolescent and a child, you kind of want to fit in… and then in college I kind of wanted to figure out, ‘who am I?’ So I started to get more interested in fashion.”

Early in her college career, before she had fine-tuned her Dynamic Personal Style, there was a moment when an acquaintance mentioned that she knew Sadie as the “leggings girl” on campus. Being called out for a thing you didn’t realize you were known for can feel, well, invasive.

Sadie hadn’t thought of herself as this before, but came to realize that yes, she had worn leggings because they flattered her body best and she did feel Clothing Confident in them. However, this comment made her realize that perhaps she’s more than leggings. Perhaps she wants khakis, courderys, jeans, and other fabrics in her life.

This meditation on one of our 4C’s (Cloth!) kickstarted a reevaluation of Sadie’s look, a move towards individuality and personal expression that broke the high school mold she had gotten so comfortable in. Oberlin was the perfect place to experiment.

“While I was in college, I was always just trying to acquire more clothing. I still felt like coming to Oberlin, and meeting certain fashionable people, that I was kinda behind and needed to catch up.”

When we have that moment of self-discovery, we have to consume lots of garments to figure out what we like, what works on our bodies, what colors complement us and which don’t.

Sadie encourages us to experiment with outfit combinations and play mix-and-match by decade to learn our personal style.

“I put things together that you wouldn’t immediately assume go together … like this skirt and this 2000s cheetah print top … I love mixing decades ... although I am definitely, I think, stuck in the 90s and 2000s. It’s like reclaiming the ugly days as something beautiful.”

Scrounging 101

Oberlin students are notorious for their progressive attitudes, and they are no different when it comes to fashion.

“Oberlin was a really good place to test out different styles because everyone on that campus is really experimental with fashion … It was really a good chance to try on different outfits and see how they made me feel.”

Clothing itself is treated as something of a progressive policy on campus with “free bins” appearing in the dorms at the end of each semester. Clothing becomes an act of giving, a mode of recycling, and a resource for students with less disposable incomes.

“In every dorm, there would just be a bin where I could leave one piece of clothing and pick up another. Then at the end of the semester, people would pick up the boxes and bring them to what they called 'The Big Swap". You would go and it was just this giant hall of clothes … Then the things people [didn’t] take [went] to what they call ‘The Free Store’ ... it’s especially helpful for low income [students].”

An entire utopian structure was in place for people to share, reuse, and try new styles without the investment of actual dollars. Sadie nicknamed this act of digging through free bins for new looks:

I call it “scrounging.” I would just scrounge around ... Like, these shoes are scrounged … I love them. I wear them every day in the winter.”

Imagine if you could just forage outside your home and unearth a pair of leather ankle boots that go with everything and cost you $0 dollars! Talk about ideal conditions for developing your Dynamic Personal Style!

High end leather boots Sadie “scrounged” for free. Photo by Maddison, 📸 edits by the wonderful Jessica Webb. — High end leather boots Sadie “scrounged” *for free.* Photo by Maddison, 📸 edits by the wonderful Jessica Webb.

Thrifting Class: It’s All About the Touch

Sadie doesn’t believe that good style should break the bank, so if you don’t have any magical free bins appearing outside your door, thrifting is the next best thing.

“Some of my best items were free or five dollars.”

Sadie’s college friends from the coasts exposed her to new vistas of fashion that she hadn’t encountered back home in Portland. They also, though, exposed her to a way of thinking about how to make fashion accessible to a wider audience:

"At Oberlin, my friends from places like New York and L.A. would talk about how when you live in a big city, you experience a lot of cultural and fashion exposure. But just because you're from a city and you're fashionable doesn't mean you're wealthy. So many of those super fashionable city-dwellers are also thrifters. They're just around that culture and that fashion.”

When Sadie first ventured into the land of thrifting, it was a little overwhelming. She could look for hours at a Goodwill and come up with maybe one or two good items. An Oberlin friend seasoned in thrifting gave her some pointers:

“My friend Megan [from L.A.] really helped me [with thrifting]. Her strategy is just go based on the fabric. Don’t waste your time with anything ... She did the ‘feel thing.’ It’s a game changer… It’s way more efficient ... You’re choosing something that’s more of a treasure.”

An uncurated thrift store can stun even an eager shopper into a state of torpor. The “feel thing” has you focus on one of the 4C’s — Cloth — while you move efficiently through the racks. Look for cotton or silk, fabrics that are breathable and high-end respectively. Avoid polyester and other synthetic fabrics that simultaneously make you sweat and trap odors. There are always exceptions of course. Sometimes that polyester print is just too irresistible to pass up!

After feeling the need to “catch up” to her fashion-forward friends, Sadie had become a competent thrifter and a deft scrounger. She now had more pieces than she knew what to do with!

“I just brought my clothing back from Oberlin and it got to meet my clothing from home, and I did a huge closet cleanout ... I probably shouldn’t go shopping for a while.”

While having many pieces to choose from can be an exciting way to experiment, it can also constrict us because we can’t even see all that is in our closets, let alone wear it all. If this sounds like a familiar problem, make like Sadie and do a closet cleanout!

Beyond College and Into the Workforce

Sadie aspires to become a clinical social worker and spends her days working with people in recovery from eating disorders. This has made her more conscious about the contexts she dresses for, what health means, and how to dress for a body that is subject to change. In fact, Sadie has had her own struggles with distorted perceptions of body and weight. In her journey towards becoming who she is today, Sadie shares how to select clothing in a healthy way:

“I just wanted to be open to ... if my body was going to change, I didn’t want to be trying to fit into smaller clothing. That was another part of the journey — overcoming disordered eating and choosing clothes for the sake of the clothing items more than choosing something that would force me to try to eat a certain way to try to be a certain size.”

To combat unhealthy modes of viewing your body, Sadie shares a few resources:

Follow Redefining Wellness on Instagram for affirming, body positive content.
Listen to the “Beautiful Lies” podcast by Code Switch for a critique of beauty ideals.
Read The F*ck It Diet by Caroline Dooner for a funny, down-to-earth analysis of what dieting does to our bodies.

A Sight in Shining Armor

One of the most insightful moments from my conversation with Sadie came from her meditations on clothing as metaphorical armor. Sadie found that clothing became protective. It was a way of showing up as her fullest self, a way of saying “yes - this is me, no excuses or pandering needed.”

“I feel like clothing can be really protective … I feel like I could walk into a space where I may have once felt more vulnerable, a little more socially anxious — something about having a look feels almost like a shield. I felt like I could go confidently somewhere and not have … social anxiety … Somehow when I have a look, I feel protected. That enabled me to make more connections and not feel like some part of myself was gonna be vulnerable.”

Arriving on the scene armed with an intentional outfit communicates a fearlessness without you having to even open your mouth. It is a shorthand for confidence that people can read on you when you enter the room.

“If you wear something that’s a little daring, it’s showing that you're confident, and you’re making the choice to be bold. And that’s protective.”

♥️♥️♥️ Thanks, Sadie! ♥️♥️♥️