When I was in my late teens going into early adulthood, black was the go-to non-color.


It was hip wearing plain black shirts or the ones with rebellious statements like 'You Suck', 'Lawbreaker' or just plain 'Stussy' slapped across.

The word 'fashion' didn't even exist in the vocabulary of my life then. People wore clothes obviously for practical reasons but the kind of trend they followed didn't register.

I didn't know if they were into bright colors or loud patterns. IF they did wear patterns, I'd immediately thought they were strange and completely uncool.

This was the 90s and it wasn't that long time ago. High school during the time for me was pretty much about passing my examinations and daydreaming at home when I wasn't too absorbed in reading or scribbling heart-breaking poetry.

Oh wait, no. I'm mixing things up.

When I was in high school, I rocked bold dizzying patterned pants. I was that strange uncool person that you'd see working that baggy cotton printed pants with a short top when everyone else was sporting denim jeans and tees.

The first school bag that I used on my first day of high school was in neon purple with neon orange zipper lines. Feisty neon shades on a shy awkward teen, how bizarre, I know.

Apparently, it was a sight and fashion-aware folks kept their mouths shut and didn't bother to share their secrets. Not that I knew there were fashion secrets to be shared.

This was during the Backstreet Boys golden era. Schoolgirls were swooning over Nick Carter and his middle part silky blond mane. I was obsessed with Brian or was it Kevin. Nobody cared if my bright purple bag was a serious fashion crime. In a way, it was great to live in a time where denim and sneakers were the next best thing.

The black trend only started when I left the cocoon of home and all things public school related like morning assemblies, nosy prefects, sports and ugly school uniforms.

I'm not foolish to think that it was some kind of a fresh new trend because who are we to kid, almost anyone at that age thought black was the new trick in town. Except girly girls.

Teens, especially the angsty ones just had to be donned up in black as a subtle way of sticking it up to the man, who or whatever the man happens to be. My brother's all-black wardrobe influenced me to pick up more shirts in black. The design of the shirt didn't matter, I just wanted everything with v-necks, no fancy collars, no ruffles. Just plain practical cotton shirts.

Around this time, we were officially posers but not that we noticed it then. We thought we were especially cool wearing black and that everyone must have wanted to be us.

Now, fast-forward to the present year, the whole family isn't color-allergic. Including my younger sister who got into the black trend a little later because she was too busy loving the color red.

We're no fashionistas but here are the top parts of what we'd worn for dinner last Monday. Yup, just the top parts. haha!

The youth of every generation thinks and acts like they're new stuff. It's the gift of living intensely in the moment and being delusional, I guess.

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