Welcome to the inaugural post of The Dressed Aesthetic, a vintage style blog where I plan to cover wardrobe planning and daily outfit adventures, vintage shopping and modernization styling tips, my designing and sewing undertakings, and life as a marine biologist. To answer your first question: Yes, I wear a dress to the lab pretty much every single day.
So, why did I carve out a corner of the internet?
This blog has probably been brewing for many years. The first inkling came when someone asked me if I was “sure I was a scientist,” as they gawked at my floral vintage dress (cause apparently scientists aren’t supposed to be feminine). “Yep.” I said, brow furrowed. “Pretty sure.”
And it got me thinking – how many of us are out there self-censoring ourselves because of what we’re “supposed” to be wearing to fit within the confines of the stereotypes that come with our profession/relationship/circle of friends/gender identity/fill-in-the-blank?
When we’re little girls, I think we’re sent a constant, quiet message – that we can either be pretty or smart. I think that when I was young I accepted my path as the ‘smart girl’. My first love was (and still is) science and it took me a very long time for the confidence I had in myself catch up to the confidence I had in my career. And truthfully, I’m not sure when the change happened. I used to walk past shop windows and see a beautiful dress and, like many of us, walk away thinking “I have nowhere to wear that.” I’d succumb to the notion that there was clothing I would wear only when I lost 5 pounds, focus on the parts of me that I thought were imperfect, and listened the subtle message that, to succeed in science, I would need to defer to a more masculine identity.
Then one day I wore a pretty dress. I bought the sparkly heels and then MADE an event to wear them to. And the rhinestone necklace that was sitting in my drawer collecting dust because I was ‘saving it for a special occasion’ – I wore it on a Tuesday. And then I did it the next day. Not only did it make me happy, it made me BETTER. I felt more powerful and more myself in a dress and heels than I ever had in jeans. I had more confidence, created more opportunities for myself, and walked into rooms looking people in the eye.
So, I started this blog to give a voice to all of the fashionable nerds out there. To acknowledge that we can be pretty AND smart and anything else we want to be. To knock back some of the gendered stereotypes that exist in science (and every workplace)….and share a whole lot of beautiful vintage.
So, here goes. The daily adventures of a professional vintage huntress, arbiter of good coffee, and total science nerd.
The Pretty AND Smart Revolution. Who’s with me?!
xoxo
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