TAILORED @ Reuse on the Runway
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Hey y'all! I hope this message finds you well.
I love challenging myself on how I can make a traditional style my own.
While flipping through The Style Thesaurus, I found myself enamored with tailoring. It's a style that's so familiar it’s easy to overlook just how much history exists within its seams. The suit, in particular, has spent centuries communicating everything from wealth and respectability to rebellion and liberation. Its evolution has routinely been shaped by class, gender, politics, and the people who dared to wear it differently. And of course, I'm all for the rebels that dared.
TAILORED
What interests me most about tailoring is how something so structured has managed to become such a versatile form of expression. The blazer. The waistcoat. The trousers. The carefully constructed shoulder. The precision of a well-fitted garment. But the pieces we’ve come to associate with professionalism and sophistication have histories far more complicated than their appearance suggests. In the nineteenth century, figures like Beau Brummell helped popularize a more restrained approach to men’s fashion, favoring precise tailoring over the elaborate extravagance of earlier European dress. Eventually, the suit became a recognizable symbol of masculine respectability and professional authority.
But much like myself, fashion has never been particularly good at staying within the boundaries society creates for it.
Women began challenging those conventions long before the modern pantsuit became a wardrobe staple. From the riding styles of earlier centuries to the tailored silhouettes embraced by Coco Chanel and the unapologetic androgyny of Marlene Dietrich, tailoring became another way to question who was permitted to wear what. And of course, the history isn’t without resistance. During the 1940s, the oversized zoot suit became an expression of cultural identity among Black and Mexican American communities, even as its wearers faced discrimination and violence. Unfortunately, the same garment communicated conformity in one setting, but defiance in another. Clothing doesn’t exist outside the social world. We give it meaning, and sometimes we challenge the meanings it already carries. Today, tailoring can be masculine, feminine, androgynous, oversized, fitted, traditional, or experimental. It can communicate authority without surrendering sensuality, or elegance without subscribing to convention. And that’s where I'm loving interpretation rather than recreation. Style Notes has become an opportunity to learn the language of fashion and decide which parts of it I want to speak.
REUSE ON THE RUNWAY
The destination for the style was Austin Creative Reuse’s Reuse on the Runway, returning for its fifth year this past October 17 at Branch Park Pavilion.
The community fashion show brought together local makers and designers for an evening centered on fashion, cosplay, drag, and creative reuse. Every runway look incorporated reused materials or techniques, asking designers to reconsider what something discarded, secondhand, or overlooked might become with their unique perspective. And there was plenty happening beyond the runway. This year’s event featured more than 70 looks from over 45 local designers, alongside a live artist demonstration, DIY charm station, DJ, photobooth, and opportunities to see the garments up close after the show and hear from designers about their processes. And that last part especially excited me. I love the finished thing, obviously; a beautiful outfit, a finished book, a polished photograph, a completed piece of art. But I’ve become increasingly interested in how people make things — the experimenting, repurposing, editing, failing, trying again, and seeing possibility where somebody else might not. Creative reuse introduces another layer to that process. A discarded object becomes a design material. An old garment becomes the foundation for something entirely different. The things we might ordinarily overlook are reconsidered through the imagination of someone who sees more than their original purpose.
And I think there’s something especially exciting about witnessing that transformation on a runway. Fashion shows are often associated with what’s next: the newest collection; the latest trend; the next thing we’re supposed to want. Reuse on the Runway offers another perspective: what can be created from what’s already here? A point I also explored in my personal essay, Give it Another Life-What My Closet Taught Me About Creativity, Clutter & Resale; an exploration in how we can audit, recreate, and purge our closets each season in ways that best align for us.
As someone who continues to build a life around literature, fashion, and cultural storytelling, I appreciate opportunities to experience art beyond my own disciplines. Because inspiration often derives from seeing what someone else has imagined within their own unique eye.
THE KEESH EDIT
I’ve always appreciated a beautiful finished product, but there’s something equally fascinating about the process behind it. The experimentation, unexpected discoveries, and creative decisions that transform an idea into something tangible.
Reuse on the Runway was a reminder that the journey of making something can be just as compelling as the finished work itself. The most interesting part of creativity isn’t always just what someone imagined, but how they brought it to life.
THE LOOK
SHOP THE NOTE
Style: Tailoring
Key references: Structured blazers, waistcoats, trousers, suiting fabrics, defined shoulders, lapels, and precise silhouettes.
The approach: Exploring the structure and versatility of tailoring while leaving room for my own interpretation of its traditionally masculine and feminine elements.
FROM MY BOOKSHELF TO YOURS
The Psychology of Fashion by Carolyn Mair
What do our clothes communicate before we ever say a word? In The Psychology of Fashion, psychologist Carolyn Mair explores the relationship between clothing, identity, behavior, and the way we perceive ourselves and others. The book examines why fashion extends beyond aesthetics and into the psychology of everyday life. For this Style Note, I’m particularly interested in how tailoring has historically communicated authority, professionalism, gender, and social status. A suit may be considered conventional on one person and revolutionary on another. And perhaps that’s one of fashion’s most interesting qualities: clothing may come with a history, but we still get to decide what it says about us.
BEFORE YOU GO
My closet has always been another place where I experiment — styling pieces differently, giving older things another life, and eventually letting go of what no longer belongs there.
Through Keesh A La' Mode, I curate clothing and accessories with the belief that personal style doesn’t always require starting from scratch. Sometimes it’s about rediscovering what already exists or allowing a piece to find a new home. You can explore my curated closets on Poshmark and Depop, where pieces from my wardrobe get the opportunity to become part of someone else’s.
Until next time.
