“It’s funny to me that we have never lived in a more intense state of Mexican hating America, but Mexican fashion is at an all time high.”
To be honest, most days I try to ignore the fact that I’m Mexican. Not that I’m ashamed or anything like that, but as someone who is only 1/4 (the other 3/4 are white and other hispanic descents) and as someone who lives in America, some days its just easier to turn a blind eye to the hate of a culture that I’m not really in touch with. However, today that was a little difficult.
I was invited to go shopping with my home friend and her college soccer teammate who was visiting from Arizona. Being from a different state, she was really interested in the high trend chi chi Dallas boutiques that usually Dallasites try to avoid because of high mark ups. Her top choice was LF Dallas, an Uptown boutique I had actually never been to, but had heard about from girls I knew who had worked there at one point, and girls who could afford to buy their extremely expensive clothes. I was curious, since the store had done so well despite the insane markups + lack of quality.
The store was what I expected; conveniently trendy clothing priced inconveniently high. However, I got a kick out of the seemingly most populated trend in the store: Mexican inspired style.
Now, this isn’t new. In fact, its very old. I’ve seen the classic embroidered Mexican styled dress from J.Crew, to Madewell, to Free People. Mexican woven bracelets have always been worn in bulk, and even my dad tells stories of when he used to bring back hordes of Mexican dresses back to college from his El Paso hometown. I chuckled to myself at the hispanic style patterns on clutches, the bracelets identical to the ones I had bought in Cancún years ago, and the sandals looking like they came right from the Mexican coast. However, after that, I forgot about it.
It wasn’t until later when shopping in Madewell when I got a text from a friend. It was a photo from Instagram, of a boy I went to high school with. He was smiling with a pretty girl in a bikini. So what, right? Then I looked closer at the photo. He was wearing a Trump shirt. Ok. I always knew this boy was really conservative. Still, not really bothered by that.
Then I saw the caption.
“Just two friends trying to build a wall”
What? Like the wall Trump is trying to build to keep the “scum” of Mexico out of America? That wall? I scoffed and showed it to my friend, who agreed it was gross, and then we laughed and continued to shop. But something was eating at me. People hate on Mexicans all the time, and even more now since Trump. Why did this bother me so much?
Then I remembered. The Mexican inspired clothing in LF Dallas. This pretentiously expensive boutique in Uptown Dallas, Texas was selling Mexican styled clothing literally as the newest trend. So were all clothing companies trying to keep in “trend”.
I know I’m only 1/4 Mexican, and I know I’m not in touch with the culture like I should be. But maybe its my love for clothing and fashion that made this day really get to me. It’s funny to me that we have never lived in a more intense state of Mexican hating America, but Mexican fashion is at an all time high. So, what? Our clothes are cool but our existence isn’t? Maybe it wasn’t worth writing a whole article about,
but I just can’t get over the irony that most of the girls buying this stuff at LF Dallas, will no doubt be voting for Trump in the coming election.
I hope you rock the clothing better than I ever could, ladies. Lets be honest, I can’t afford that boutique anyway.
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