How PCOS f***ed up my style (and how I'm taking it back)

TLDR: I realized I didn't really have any, and finally started the work of actually developing it.

Before we get into it all…

I’m writing this on a whim. I suspect this is the last thing you should admit on this site, because everything in the onboarding is SCREAMING at me that I need to get to my first 100 subscribers. I actually have no idea if I’ll keep posting anything on here; so, subscribe if and only if you can accept that as a possibility. Love you already if you do. <3

Who am I? Really wish there was an easy answer to that. My name is Jenamarie, but almost everyone in my life calls me JM now. (My mom started this, my friend Ryan adopted it from her, and then it pervaded my personal and professional life from there lol. I’m genuinely not mad about it.)

Proof that I did in fact earn a BFA.

I got an insanely expensive fashion education at Parsons. I worked in fashion and beauty for a while; and fell sooooooo far out of love with it I had to get a Master’s degree (in Library Science). I worked for a while in publishing and art history writing. And now, I work as a UX Researcher at a tech company.

Basically, I’m thoroughly indecisive, easily disillusioned, and embarrassingly overeducated. You should definitely listen to my opinions!

Me to every gynecologist on Earth: just listen to me!!!

I gained 60 pounds in the course of 2 months. I had changed nothing about my lifestyle. I exercised regularly. I ate a balanced meal twice a day (I HATE eating breakfast, and I don’t care if you think it’s weird). I had the same amount of stress in my job (some, but not an overwhelming amount). I watched this weight gain centralize in my lower abdomen, my thighs, and my underarms. I noticed darker and darker hair growing on me in a “male” pattern (read: my stomach, the side of my face, and down my thighs). And I thought, “great, something else that they’ll dismiss as totally normal that I get to deal with.”

From 13 - 27 years old; I had struggled with the exact opposite issue (couldn’t keep weight on, always fatigued, anxious to the point of physical symptoms) and I had insisted to every gynecologist I visited that it must have something to do with the irregular, debilitating periods I had. Each and every one of them (all 9) told me that these were fundamentally unrelated. 2 of them added that “most girls my age would be thrilled that they could eat whatever they wanted without fear of gaining weight.” Cool. Thanks y’all.

Me, circa 2013, looking very sartorially confused.

Through extensive teenage Tumblr-sleuthing, I had already self-diagnosed myself with PCOS or endometriosis or something akin to them from my first period. I knew that there was no way it was “normal” for me to feel a series of sharp knives pushing at the outer edge of my abdomen every other month; as if someone was inside my body, determined to escape through a strategic assault on my inner-muscular walls akin to the siege of Rome. Vomiting from the pain, having days I couldn’t hold solid food down. None of it sounding very normal to me! These were, unsurprising to anyone who knows about the way this disease can present, cysts—a common-ish accompanying symptom of PCOS or endometriosis — which were rupturing with regularity until after I started my sophomore year of college.

After my body “grew out of” (BIG air quotes on this phrase, but I have no explanation since no doctor bothered to document this at all) the regular cystic phase, I had a relative lull of symptoms. The occasional painful period, but nothing on the scope of what I felt before. I also had abysmal health insurance coverage and deep medical distrust, so I stopped trying to convince the doctors I had PCOS and just focused on making sure I didn’t have cervical cancer…

That is until, this new phase: the rapid, unexplained weight gain and hair growth. I thought, surely, I can use this to convince someone.

I went to a regular medical doctor first; thinking that “there’s at least some chance this is thyroid related” and seeking some kind of test to rule that out. He—naturally for any doctor treating a woman with a weight concern—insisted that I was “just aging and probably couldn’t count on my teenage metabolism anymore” and “should probably think about adjusting my outlook to reflect less on my looks.” Cool. Thanks bro.

Fortunately, as my appointment with this piece of human refuse doctor ended, a nurse who had been helping him with data entry in the room came back to visit with me before I left. “You almost certainly have PCOS,” she said. “Here’s a doctor I recommend to people. She actually listens.” It is not at all an understatement to say that this woman saved me from absolute despair. She is a hero, and one of my biggest regrets in life is not asking her name.

No more leaning on skinny.

So, I went to the doctor this nurse recommended. She did listen. It took 1 appointment for her to diagnose me, 1 ultrasound for her to verify her diagnosis and rule out a thyroid issue, and 1 blood test to determine what dosage of Spironolactone to put me on. I did some laser hair removal. I lost 30 of the 60 pounds by changing absolutely nothing about my life. I liked the way my body looked throughout this process (which I appreciate is rare, privileged, and a factor of being “skinny” to begin with and “average” by the time I gained the weight). I had no interest in losing the rest of the 30 pounds; but it left with me a conundrum: “WTF am I going to do about my clothes?”

I looked at all the clothes that didn’t fit me anymore (a lot) and thought “I don’t even know what I WANT to buy to replace this stuff.” And I realized 90% of my personal style had revolved around the fact that I was thin, I could wear whatever was in style at a given time, and I had accumulated so much clothing to the point of farce as a result.

Just walking around with little regard for what I wanted my outfit to say. Don’t hate the look! Just very of-the-time.

Time to stop leaning on skinny! First step—realize you have a problem—is done. Now, let me figure out what the hell I like…

Using that 6 figure design degree.

An old sketch from college. Proof I can draw lol.

One of the first things you learn at Parsons (well, maybe not first, but a big fundamental) is how to communicate your design philosophy. You learn how to develop a “way of working” and thinking about fashion design that can guide your professional development. I distilled mine in the following (probably deeply pretentious sounding, but true) statement:

Jenamarie believes that movement celebrates the universe’s fundamental tendency toward unpredictability. Her textiles, inspired by her material experiments and personal embrace of entropy, often consist of bold, colorful, and sculptural designs. Garments exist as emergent properties of the system Jenamarie imposes on herself through her design process. Final silhouettes and materials are the result of the interactions of smaller experiments and the confluence of these interactions. Only through constant play and tinkering can decisions ultimately present themselves. 

From my senior thesis collection.

There was always a big disconnect between my designs and my personal style at the time. I dressed like a cartoon character most of the time; repeating the same grey or black outfits or wearing random trendy pieces. (Note: you shouldn’t be concerned, honestly, if your style revolves around trends as a young person or someone new to “fashion.” Experiment and have fun—don’t let granny JM’s reflections on her outfits make you worry about yours.)

I’m not mad about this look; but it’s pretty divorced from what I’m attracted to for myself moving forward.

So I returned to my design statement: “bold, colorful, and sculptural designs.” I can work with that. (Conveniently three words, which seems to be the “find your style” strategy du jour. My mind.)

The closet audit.

It was honestly quite easy to do a first pass of my closet: get anything that doesn’t fit me out of the rotation. I do not want to look at anything that doesn’t fit me. I do not want to “keep it around just in case I lose more weight.” I do not need to have some kind of weird ghost-self trying to shame me into fitting back into them. So there was an initial, very easy, metric to use when I decided what I kept or tossed.

And when I say “tossed”—I either re-homed the item to my mom, who had shopped with me for most of the stuff to begin with, re-homed the item to a close friend, sold it on ThredUp, or donated it to a local organization.

Once I tried literally every item on and took out anything that didn’t fit, I had to face the larger challenge: WTF do I like and what do I have left that fits either my bold, colorful, or sculptural “goal.” There was still an overwhelming amount of clothing that remained; so I made piles. This is hardly revolutionary technique, but you don’t need to reinvent shit all the time.

Pile 1: I like the way this looks on me and I already wear it a lot.

Pile 2: I like the way this looks on me and I want to wear it more.

Pile 3: I do not like the way this looks on me.

Emergent Pile 4: Regardless of how I feel about this, I need it right now for work.

I worked for a little while for an orthodontist office, and had to wear scrubs. Props to FIGS for how comfy these were honestly.

You’ll notice there’s no pile for “things that I don’t like on, but feel I should wear to look on-trend” nor “things that people gifted me that I feel bad getting rid of” nor “things other people tell me I look good in.” The sole focus in this stage is MY feeling of how it looks on me and whether or not I have actually worn it in the last month.

Piles 1 and 4 were automatic keeps. If I’m gravitating towards these pieces, they fit me well, and I wear them regularly, they’ll almost inevitably be things that fit somewhere in my “style”. If I need the item to maintain gainful employment, that’s an obvious keep too.

Pile 3 was an instant “toss,” unless the item was something I knew I needed to layer with until I could afford to replace it. More on that process later in “Strategic items”.

Pile 2 was where I spent the most attention and things moved from Pile 2 veeeeery quickly to Pile 3. I asked myself “why do you like how this looks on? and why do you want to wear it more?”

Here are the answers that moved something from Pile 2 to Pile 3:

• I never wore this and I feel stupid for that.

• It reminds me of something [person xyz I like] would wear.

Here are the answers that I allowed for keeping the item:

• It is somehow bold, colorful, and/or sculptural and I want to experiment with how it fits into my life.

• It is something I neglected because it wasn’t trendy.

• It is something I neglected because people did not effusively compliment me on it.

There was no magic method to how I determined the answer. I just asked myself the question, did a quick mental checklist, and moved it to the subsequent pile if it needed to move. If there’s any secret that might’ve been at play: I was exhausted by the volume, so it was easy to let that make for quicker decisions that were way less sentimental.

These are feeling more related: the sketch vibe is matching the outfit vibe.

With most of Pile 3 out of the way, and strong conviction for the other ones, I had room to start experimenting and thinking about my style.

Strategic items.

I mentioned a caveat to Pile 3—“unless the item was something I knew I needed to layer with until I could afford to replace it”—and I want to expand on that, since it could easily be a way I copped out and just kept stuff I didn’t need.

There is no world where I could afford to replace my entire wardrobe in one go, and this meant some strategic compromises while I worked to replace them.

Here are some examples:

• all of my short and long sleeve pullover knit shirts still “fit” me in that they were long enough to tuck in, but I did not like how they fit me in the underarm, across my stomach, nor the fact that the long sleeve underarm fit constantly pulled them up to an awkward almost 3/4 length sleeve length on my arm.

  • But! I was not about to run to a fast fashion giant and replace all of these shirts at once. I’m still working on replacing them, and I look OK to myself with them on under jackets or sweaters.

• all of my denim shorts and pants with high elastane content still “fit” enough to button, and allowed me to bend easily enough.

  • I did not love the cuts I had left (so much skinny fit…) but I knew my lifestyle suited having denim in my outfits and buying quality denim to replace these shorts and pants would take me time to save. These made the cut because they were in 90% of my outfit rotations, would get me by, and I didn’t feel abysmal in them. Definitely still don’t like the way they look on me on the whole though!

• all of my underwear and socks. Several of the styles aren’t my favorite anymore, but I need these basics to get by and they’re not something I have to see myself in that long during the day.

So, in all, I had quite a few items that I documented I wanted to replace, but made use of in the interim. And that felt OK—it felt appropriate and responsible not to be doing something just so I could spend a ton of money all at once. Now, for the replacement math!

Deliberate Spending.

Here’s my rule moving forward with myself having done my item audit, but not my outfit audit:

• if I’m replacing an item from Pile 3: it’s one in, one out. The item I kept “until I replaced it” gets tossed when I do, in fact, replace it.

• if I’m adding something entirely new: it’s one in, two out. The priority of what gets tossed here is what two items akin to it can I reasonably toss that I won’t wear because I wear this new thing.

Here’s a for-instance: I bought an older Yohji Yamamoto blazer (look 11). I know this piece suits my style (it’s a sculptural layering piece!) and I know there’s blazers from Pile 2 that I no longer want to wear anymore with this in my rotation. They gotta go!

In the event I am placing in an entirely new item type, I have to drop two items from an oversaturated category. How do I determine what those categories are? Great question…

Where it all is now and how I’m tracking it.

I am very skeptical of app solutions to anything. (But you work in tech!!! Yeah, and that’s why, bro.) There were numerous ways I could track what I’m wearing, how I’m wearing it, and hold myself accountable to how I’m styling it that do not involve a phone.

• I could organize my closet in such a way that it’s divided by worn vs. not worn—as things are worn (and washed, don’t worry) they get put back up in the the worn area, most recent at the front. At the end of some arbitrary period (a week, a month, a season), I can look back on what wasn’t worn and decide if it’s worth keeping or strategize on how I’ll use it.

• I could organize a series of outfits for the week, hang them up, wear them, and reflect on them in a journal entry. Ones that I don’t enjoy wearing get re-evaluated, outfits I enjoy get repeated, and each subsequent week has me styling different pieces not yet worn.

• I could literally just designate hangers and tally the wears on the hanger tags. I could do that all year and re-evaluate based on the usage.

I say all this because I do not want to suggest that you should “absolutely use this app I’m going to mention, it changed my life, it’s so good, etc.”—if you want to do anything like this, just a method you actually stick to and do whatever’s easiest for you.

I ended up using an app called Indyx. I tried several other of these so-called “closet organizer” apps (which shall remain nameless, despite my desire to review bomb them because they’re so bad) and Indyx was the only one that was reasonably good. I have a lot of thoughts on how it could be better (email me, Indyx team) but it was actually useful. (So rare in the year of our lord 2024.) One of the best features is the “Composition” filter; which allows you to evaluate your use per-item type very easily. This is how I hunt for oversaturated categories; what’s getting worn in them and what isn’t.

Sample of Indyx's features.

I’ve been adding outfits to my calendar view in the app since March. I have 198 items (not including jewelry—which I’ve been meaning to add—underwear, or socks, but everything else). I have worn 45% of my wardrobe since I started to log the items; which is pretty good, given I’ve only covered 2 seasons.

Now I’m due for a series of outfit evaluations. What’s working. What isn’t. I need to audit not just the individual pieces but how I’ve been (or haven’t been) putting them together. And I have a lot of hot takes on the abysmal style advice I see across the internet sooooooooo…

What comes next.

I kind of lied when I said I wouldn’t post here again. Or, well, I lied about how strong of an intention I have to post here again. I might still never touch this, but I mean to update you on where this all goes next. I probably should’ve led with that, but I wanted the strong of you to survive all the way down here.

More soon. Teehee.

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