No More Boho

I wouldn't even call myself Bohemian Bourgeoisie, or "BoBo."

Back in college, in my pfouffy English literature major days, I was really into olde school, delicate Regency, Victorian, "Eras of Elegance" stuff. I liked embroidered and beaded things, and even learned how to do it myself (pretty well!). I pined for a real cameo pin. I got all this rhinestone-encrusted stuff. I was pretty blinged out. I even pinned fake flowers to things and had an entire collection of brooches. This dates back to the 1950s' phase in high school, when I liked to wear sheath dressed, twinsets with full skirts, and pins. I think I went from 90's grunge to 40's retro swing, to '50s cuteness, and bypassed the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Anyway, as you can surmise, I looked pretty ridiculous all throughout high school and college.

But college was my one brush with more flower-child bohemianism--every quarter at UC Irvine, they had a vendor's fair. For some reason, my friends and I called it The Bazaar, although no one else did. Handmade jewelry! Lots of beads! Peasant blouses that were for some reason all the rage from 2000-2001! Long, broomstick skirts! Ethereal looking dresses with handkerchief hems! I swear, we looked like Stevie Nicks impersonators. But we were reading the literature of romance and decadance, and we were given to reciting Marvell in public, the shepherd to his shepherdess: come live with me and be my love/and we shall all the pleasures prove. It's not a huge jump from Victorian baubles to '60s looking belled sleeves; the elevation of the romantic pastoral as an ideal is a seriously twisted thing to do in the modern age.

Now I dress a lot sharper, age-appopriate (as in, to my 26 years and to this modern age), and business casual professional. Even if it isn't demanded of me by the lax grad student environment, class is sufficiently an occasion that I like to dress for it and be serious, not sloppy. There is no more bling. There are no more baubles, embroidery, pneuma. It is all pretty boring, and it all comes from Banana Republic. The true test was today, when I passed by a four-block street fair and jazz festival in Liberal College City, and didn't stop at any of the stands of shiny magpie-attracting handmade jewelry, woven dip-dyed scarves, cutesy embroidered cloth purses and handbags, or anthroplogy professor-like tunics.

It is a strange (and slightly sad) feeling of change and "growing up," to realize you're more business casual than bohemian, and that you no longer recite Marvel and Wordsworth in public with your fellow lit major dreamer friends. To walk by a street fair, and feel more street than fair.