And So We Meet…
Hi, I’m Scout!
Named after Scout Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird, I am fiercely passionate about using my life experience to reshape the fashion industry into a more honest, inclusive space where style is taught rather than something you buy.
Solidity in Style is a blog that explores personal style with a level of sensitivity and compassion the fashion industry is in desperate need of.
With each post, I hope to provoke a different type of conversation in the industry where fashion is marketed as a remedy rather than a zero-sum competition, and people are encouraged to build a closet that makes them feel empowered regardless of the current trends. While this may seem like a big ask, I’m starting this blog because even if the fashion industry remains the same, I want other people in my position to know you can have a career in fashion without having to sell your soul to the industry. People like me aren’t publicized a lot, but we do exist.
But, if there is one thing you must know about me before we embark on this journey, it is that my story is unlike one you’ll hear from most 22 year old women, and I am here to use my life experience as an accelerant of change within the fashion industry. Aside from discussing changes in the fashion industry, the art of style, my personal life, as well as tips and tricks for building your dream closet, I will also write extensively about my experience with chronic illness, as my diagnosis in January 2018 permanently altered my present and my future.
Toward the end of 2017, I hit my stride and found my happiness. After finally finding a school where I felt appreciated and valued, I was living the life I had always dreamed of for myself. Throughout high school I was able to deliver a TEDx Talk that now has over 100k views, teach myself guitar, fall in love with myself, preform in a spoken word poetry troupe, conduct a year-long study on the impact of historical trauma on indigenous communities, and build a network of friendships I still cherish to this day.
So, when I received an acceptance to the Gallatin School at NYU, I felt like I got the confirmation that this life I was building for myself was going to last beyond high school and follow me through my college career. I committed to NYU and decided to move to New York, take on a full course load, and learn from some of the best professors in the world, all while building a new identity in a new city.
As you can probably guess, life didn’t exactly pan out this way.
My journey has been filled with grief, unboundless joy, and a deep sense of suffering very few people experience in the first half of their lives. Less than a month after commiting to NYU and turning 18, I went on an oral contraceptive to try and mitigate the premenstrual cramps and acne I was developing.
What I didn’t know was that it would only take five doses of this medication for my life to completely change.
On my fifth day of taking this medication, I woke up in a hospital bed with a neck brace on, clueless to the fact my life had just been changed forever. What I didn’t know was that I had an incurable brain condition called Hydrocephalus, and I was about to face a major brain surgery that would (hopefully) save my life. In a way this surgery did, but also in a way it killed the life I had devoted my whole self to creating.
At the end of the day, seeing the onset of Hydrocephalus in an 18 year old girl, not a newborn baby or elderly person, was almost medically unheard of. To this day, my insurance code is under “Hydrocephalus, Unspecified Type” because they still have no clue how this condition appeared in a perfectly healthy young woman. According to my team at John’s Hopkins, the first sign of my Hydrocephalus was when I started visiting my pediatrician at age 10 complaining of pressure headaches, and right around this time I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety.
Assuming these headaches were from the new onset of anxiety, I continued on with my life normally until I took my first dose of oral contraceptives several years later. My doctors explained that taking oral contraceptives gave me a very rare neurological side effect called pseudotumor cerebri, which causes one’s intracranial pressure to spike due to the false detection of a brain tumor. When I took the pill, the intracranial pressure spike from the pseudotumor cerebri accelerated the onset of my Hydrocephalus from five years to five days, suddenly stopping my life dead in its tracks.
At this point in my life, you cannot know me without knowing my Hydrocephalus. After 4 years of illness, two surgeries, and another brain surgery in 3 weeks, I wear my Hydrocephalus as a badge of honor. I am not the same person I was before I became ill, therefore my Hydrocephalus is an essential piece to my very confusing, vast life story. Of course, you will hear more of my life story as we embark on this journey together, but for now, I want you to know this for certain: Solidity in Style will go deep.
When I embark on a creative endeavor like this, there is no room for inauthenticity or glazing over facts. The hard conversations are the ones I feel are worth while, and personally, I feel like the fashion industry is in dire need of depth.
While most fashion bloggers post outfits of the week or clothing hauls, on this blog you’ll see a deeper version of this content, where I explore the reasons why I wore a dress on Monday but a t-shirt and jeans on Thursday, as everything I do (and wear) has a deeper meaning than what meets the eye. At the end of the day, fashion is simply a visible form of social psychology, and the things we wear influence how we feel… Like, a lot.
When you look at fashion from a psychological lens, you start to see the implications behind different pieces of apparel, and this lens will eventually help you form a better sense of style and a deeper understanding of society. I hope to discuss the meaning behind clothing while also providing a vessel of inspiration and authenticity that’s been harder to find in this digital world.
If you align with anything I have just written, I ask that you write down the name of this blog, Solidity in Style, and check back up on it every once in awhile. By doing so, you will help facilitate the transition to a more conscious and thoughtful fashion industry.
Thank you for taking the time to get to know me a little better. I hope that in the future I can provide content that will inspire, reassure, and provoke every reader, showing that fashion does not have to be restrictive and exclusive to be “in style.” At the end of the day, we all deserve to have a closet that makes us feel good, whether that means incorporating more of your “happy” color (mine is pale blue) or replacing impulse buy items with silhouettes and shapes that will still make you feel comfortable five years from now.
We all deserve to have a closet we feel good about, and I’m here to help you get there.
I can’t wait to build this community with you.
Talk soon :) x