Fishnets

This essay is part of Fashion in Isolation, a special issue on the intimate, contradictory, and ultimately inescapable relationship we have to what we wear.

When I left Jamaica at five years old, the fashion my mother laid out for my older brother and I had one goal: to make feeding us enough, but we still wore loose-fitting t-shirts and supplemented our diets with protein shakes. Shorts were rare, and sometimes we’d wear tights—and even sweatpants—under our jeans to make us “look full.”