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I hate the fucking summer. Fuck that "yay, summer: let's all be sweaty nudists!" bullshit. I almost certainly resemble Fred Whatshisface's character from the "goths at the beach with Danzig" sketch on Portlandia. There is no such thing as comfortable summer clothing for awkward-ass gender-malcontent misanthropes who despise sexual harassment and hate exposing their bodies in any way, ever.
The closest thing I have come to "summer comfort" is wearing a metric fuck-ton of double-dyed, deepest black linen. Linen everything; layers and layers of linen. A Victorian level of linen. The nice thing is that wind goes right through it, so you are reasonably cool, but completely covered and tailored. Basically, I am just replicating a deep winter wardrobe, but in a new material.
To top it off -- when I have to go out to an actual beach or park in the daytime or some sunburney bullshit like that, the best thing to wear is a huge black-brimmed Puritan preacher hat with (and this is important) a veil -- so sunblock is not required. A general bummer about hats is that most of them are highly gendered, and I wanted something ambiguous. However, a 17th century Puritan hat is creepy-anachronistic enough that it's rounds the corner to "eh, could go either way." (I believe the hat in question was actually worn at the time by both genders, come to think of it).
Here is a capotain hat.
(I choose to think of this person as a very stylish 17th century butch woman <3)
The problem is the pants. Even in stretch linen on very hot days, the skinny jeans that I religiously wear are going to be sweaty as fuck. Let's also face it -- sadly, black skiny jeans look stupid in any other fabric than black stretch denim... so I still haven't figured that one out.
Actually clothing design is a good example of how having an internal struggle leads to some sort of creativity. If I hadn't ever struggled with my gender, and (or because of) sexism, and had a complicated relationship with my physical body, I doubt I would have ever cared about clothing, initially. It's an attempt to mitigate a problem, and wade through historic backlogs of meaning and symbol in search of something that feels comfortable.
The closest thing I have come to "summer comfort" is wearing a metric fuck-ton of double-dyed, deepest black linen. Linen everything; layers and layers of linen. A Victorian level of linen. The nice thing is that wind goes right through it, so you are reasonably cool, but completely covered and tailored. Basically, I am just replicating a deep winter wardrobe, but in a new material.
To top it off -- when I have to go out to an actual beach or park in the daytime or some sunburney bullshit like that, the best thing to wear is a huge black-brimmed Puritan preacher hat with (and this is important) a veil -- so sunblock is not required. A general bummer about hats is that most of them are highly gendered, and I wanted something ambiguous. However, a 17th century Puritan hat is creepy-anachronistic enough that it's rounds the corner to "eh, could go either way." (I believe the hat in question was actually worn at the time by both genders, come to think of it).
Here is a capotain hat.
(I choose to think of this person as a very stylish 17th century butch woman <3)
The problem is the pants. Even in stretch linen on very hot days, the skinny jeans that I religiously wear are going to be sweaty as fuck. Let's also face it -- sadly, black skiny jeans look stupid in any other fabric than black stretch denim... so I still haven't figured that one out.
Actually clothing design is a good example of how having an internal struggle leads to some sort of creativity. If I hadn't ever struggled with my gender, and (or because of) sexism, and had a complicated relationship with my physical body, I doubt I would have ever cared about clothing, initially. It's an attempt to mitigate a problem, and wade through historic backlogs of meaning and symbol in search of something that feels comfortable.