The Evolution of Identity
As a teenager, the clothes I wore represented the character in life that I was trying to portray, almost like putting a label on myself to show which team I was on, who I represented. I remember rocking up at yet another school in my late teenage years, desperately looking for acceptance, to make new friends, and I guess to be identified with.
I was always curious and a little mystified why a proportion of the students dressed like they were going to commit a street robbery when they were attending an expensive cramming school in central London. They were usually hunched up in small groups smoking Marlboro lights, blowing smoke rings with their hoods up. That was their identity, though, and I was naïve to judge, as I was exactly the same, just wearing different armour.
To have an identity, especially as an adolescent seemed like the most important thing in the world, to be accepted, to find a home where one can set their emotions free was needed rather than wanting to, through the trial and error of adopting personas that emerged like tsunami waves before dissipating into the pieces of pastime, vanishing but never forgotten, as the next persona was created.
There were the sloaney types, the group I should have probably identified with the most, as I’d had short spells in posh boarding schools. They usually appeared in Ralph Lauren jumpers, designer jeans, the boys in brown suede loafers, the girls in trendy Ugg boots. A few goths and punk rocker types represented a tiny minority. The rude boy, wannabe rapper group, which consisted mostly of white ethnicity, was the largest majority and also on the surface the most intimidating — it shouldn’t have been though, as most of them lived in Chelsea and Hampstead, drove fancy cars and enunciated black lingo intertwined with white-middle class estuary chat that could be rather confusing.
I’m not sure who I represented, but I was taken under the wing by two fellows wearing leather jackets, ripped jeans and knackered Converse. Overnight, I was transformed from my preppy Pringle jumper to a Libertine-esque leather jacket, torn drain pipe jeans and Converse shoes.
I had found a home, a gang, if you like, where I could be an angry teenager. I migrated from UK hip hop to full-blown Indie pop, where the fantasy of smoking heroin in some dingy bedsit for some reason appealed to me. Pete Doherty, cigarettes, drugs and music were my fuel. It was definitely a destructive persona, but I threw myself at it with all my might.
I’ve been a chameleon throughout the years, have been through various identities and different characters, never really knowing which tribe I belonged to. I guess we’re all trying to attach ourselves to the idea of how to be. Can one just be without pretence?
Nowadays, I am who I am, without the gravitational pull of acceptance into any kind of tribe. I am, though, subconsciously seeking identity in a different way, not through the way I dress or trend, but through work and hobbies. Coming of age continues through adolescence to adulthood as becoming something, or someone, is human nature.