“I like the hat,” Cate Blanchett’s Carol character whispers to a smitten Rooney Mara, as the two would-be lovers lock eyes in a serious staring contest across a bustling department store in the seminal scenes of Todd Haynes’s film, opening Friday. It’s 1950s New York, the two heroines are most likely falling in love, and somehow the conversation has come back to . . . well, fashion. It seems appropriate enough: While exploring one’s sexuality, a girl may start to experiment with and re-examine her wardrobe. And while fashion can hardly determine personal identity, it can certainly help us play with its construction, no? Look at the runways of Hood By Air and J.W.Anderson or films Blue Is the Warmest Color and Set It Off as proof that redressing gender expectations can be damn freeing.
Now your options are truly your own. You can keep it Dietrich cool in an all-black, no-frills ensemble of J Brand skinny jeans, a Saint Laurent button-up with a sleek tee layered underneath, and Christian Louboutin ankle boots to prepare you for the unexpected. Or lean heavily on menswear classics: Carhartt’s wool scully, a Helmut Lang structured denim jacket, a pair of traditional Red Wing boots. And if your wardrobe isn’t necessarily going through a huge shift, simply wear your heart on your chest with Andrea Fohrman’s Technicolor rainbow pendant necklace, or stitch a cheeky Itchy Scratchy Patchy embroidered patch onto an otherwise unadorned T by Alexander Wang tee. It’s the bold declaration that we’ve all been waiting for.
