My Favourite Outfit: Kayleigh
In this series, I ask the contributor to share an image of their favourite outfit – maybe a pair of pants they wore every day, maybe a special party dress – and write about where they were in their life and why this outfit has such significance. Today we welcome Kayleigh. She and I were undergrad music students together and Kayleigh was always fabulously dressed. A few (just a few…) years later we’ve both moved on to different things, but she’s still brilliantly stylish. This is her favourite outfit.
I am so pleased Elise asked me to write about my favourite outfit because it gave me a chance to do two things. First, it has been stiflingly hot here in Victoria, BC, and I was so pleased to take the opportunity to break the summer-wear monotony for even a few fleeting moments. Second, it gave me an excuse to briefly escape studying for my second-year law school exams, the material for which has overtaken the remainder of my home office you see pictured above.
Which brings me to my favourite outfit. You know those short periods in your life that are incredibly transformative, but you don’t realize just how many things were changing until you look back later? For me, the biggie is spring/summer, 2012. I had just completed my Master’s degree in Opera Performance at UBC, and had moved back to hometown Saskatoon with my husband, Ryan. I was burnt out from performing in productions and auditioning for companies, and was happy to just hang out with family and work a minimum wage 9–5 retail job. However, I had also won a scholarship to go study music in Salzburg, Austria for the summer, so my time in Saskatoon was brief before shipping out again.
Salzburg was many things. I was already questioning whether I wanted to continue performing, and it pushed me right over the edge toward a big ol’ Nope. However, I look back on my time there with enormous fondness. Yoga every morning. Singing all day. Lavish concerts every night. Aperol… Campari…
… and that H&M blazer.
You see, I said that Salzburg was many things, and one of those things was Cold. Shockingly cold for summer. So cold that, on the second day there, I made a frantic trip to H&M and bought said blazer and a pair of black jeans. And wouldn’t you know it, I still wear them all the time.
Back to the story. At 3:00am one morning, Salzburg time, Ryan called me from Victoria, BC to tell me he had just won the audition for principal trumpet in the Victoria Symphony. That meant that we were packing our bags and heading back out to the west coast as soon as I returned from Europe. When we got to Victoria, Ryan took up his new position with vigour, and I was in full-on quarter-life crisis mode. Then I realized that, all through music school, I had been making jokes about going to law school because I actually wanted to go to law school. It was so obvious to me, and I immediately knew that was my path. Plus, I was really fired up (read: pissed off) about all the crappy treatment of musicians I saw in the news and my own personal experience, and I figured artists need lawyers too, right?
So, I (joyfully/nerdily) buckled down, wrote the LSAT and the GMAT (because why not do a dual degree JD/MBA if it’s offered, right?), got in to law school and the MBA program at UVic, and now here I am. The reason I love this outfit so much (other than the fact that it’s endlessly practical) is that it captures all aspects of me. The scarf and flashy earrings (both daily staples in some variety or another) are reminders of my singing days, the boyfriend-cut white button down is a law school essential, and the black jeans and beloved blazer – well, they are something else. They remind me of the power of choice, transformation, and the fact that we are all more than any one aspect of our story.