Google search “fashion” and the first web link that will probably pop up will send you to the Elle Magazine website, front page displaying something about the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Google search “what is fashion” and you might get something else. The first thing that pops up is one of those handy-dandy embedded definition boxes. Fashion: a popular trend, especially in styles of dress and ornament or manners of behavior. When you think about it, in a way, that’s all that fashion REALLY is. Maybe this piece does not need to be written at all. But at the heart of fashion is our individual and collective interpretation of a trend.

Quite a few people associate fashion with what is on the runways, but that is definitely not at the heart of it. Haute couture, as essentially a form of visual art, oftentimes gets the same reactions as the weirdly abstract modern art you probably vaguely remember seeing on a boring art field trip in the 7th grade: “I could do that!” or “What the [redacted] is that?” What many don’t understand is that is the point. High fashion has become part artistic expression to part mass culture. This is why shows like Project Runway exist, for us to binge watch the process that goes into designing the clothes that we wear or we could only aspire to wear. But what exactly defines fashion for us individually?

My own personal style is influenced by a number of factors, some more embarrassing than the other. This includes whatever my mom was wearing as sleepwear in the late 90s, outfits from A Different World, street-style blogs covering exotic locales like Stockholm, and the Charlotte Russe/Forever 21 clearance racks. This combination got me a lot of grief for the first few years of high school, but as times change, I feel like I have grown into my own look.

Looking back on what has been in trend for teenagers in the past few years, I look back on UGG boots, Sanuks, Hollister jeans, Vans, Sperry boat shoes, Vineyard Vines (I saved a cringe for this), khakis, and Converse. A lot of these items fell in and out of fashion but many of them have remained mainstays in the closets of suburban adolescents for the 6 years I’ve been in secondary school. Funnily enough, in the course of time that I started writing this story, my friend and I got into a conversation about selling old clothes. She listed off a bevy of clothing items that she was planning to sell on eBay: multiple pairs of the aforementioned UGGs, hot pink low-top Vans, Lilly Pulitzer pullovers: items that we mutually agreed that we would personally never get caught dead in because, that is not us and that is not cool. Not cool at least for us. It is all about personal perception.

To be quite honest, when I think about fashion, I think about the sociology and geography of the entire industry. While I am scanning the social media accounts of locals, I think about their outfits in comparison to what the peers of my friends that live in New York City, England, or California might be wearing. In general, Bel Air kids seem to catch on a little slower than the rest of the worldwide trend. The fashion capitals of the world are big cities, and everything trickles down eventually. But trends are not all that matter in what you wear.

Fashion is important to me to this day. As I wrote this story, I probably had Asos, Urban Outfitters, Foot Locker, or Amazon open in another tab, looking for exact knockoffs for House of Holland sunglasses or adding five hundred coats I would never wear to my wishlist. It is all about self-expression to me. As cheesy as it sounds, fashion adds a flavor to our lives that is universally understood by everyone. Yes, some people might not understand why one would decide to wear Birkenstocks with mélange socks or something similar, but the intent is there: that is them. That is their look. Fashion, in a way, is a definition of who we are.