A case for dressing outrageously to the grocery store

As a teenager, Tasnim Ahmed did not expect to own the Prada spring 2004 dress of her dreams. It was love at first sight when she chanced upon an image of it while riffling through old issues of Vogue at a tailor shop in Dhaka. “It was the most incredible 1950s-style dress in a drab brown and miserable forest green, with tie dye, three-quarter sleeves and a full skirt. It was modelled by Daria Werbowy for a campaign shot by Steven Meisel. I thought I would never be able to buy it so I fished out a similar fabric and pleaded with the tailor to try and replicate it. He found the design too complicated so I settled for a maxi silhouette instead, which I wore proudly and asked my mother to take several pictures on our digital camera,” she shares. In a stroke of serendipity, the original Prada dress popped up on The RealReal more than 15 years later and it was in her size. Now at 34, the fashion journalist owns two versions of that outfit, both equally special.

Fashion was not Ahmed’s original career choice. Her parents, originally from Bangladesh, nudged aside her aspirations to study literature in favour of Political Science at the University of Toronto. After moving to the US in 2014, she worked with a slew of immigration companies before choosing to pursue her love for writing. A decade in, her bylines have appeared in the likes of Vogue, Allure, and i-D where she writes on beauty, fashion, and culture.

Since moving to New York, Ahmed has painstakingly built an enviable wardrobe filled with archival designer pieces. There are more full-bodied skirts, so many adventurous retro prints, modest tea dresses from Dries Van Noten, jewel-toned silk blouses from Prada, an oddly shaped bag by Mugler—it’s a wonderful, whimsical mash-up of styles and eras.

Colour me rebellious

While the world is confronted with a new microtrend or -core each week, Ahmed’s manner of dressing seems to resist the cycle of fashion. Her style is by no means minimalist or even classic; in her own words, it’s “weird” and “kooky”, but it’s hard to put in a box. One thing that does define it is her love for colour. Think of a black Dries Van Noten coat that culminates into a patchwork of blood orange and teal tie dye. A mint gelato-hued JW Anderson dress that she calls her “Frankendress” for its ability to be both strange and beautiful. Or, on the rare occasion that she does opt for a new season design, a Grecian maxi by Antwerp-based label Bernadette in a shade of chartreuse that she describes as “primary colours on acid”.

For Ahmed, colour became a medium of rebellion. “There are so many stereotypes about South Asian people and bright colours. In Bangladesh, we’re unabashed in our love for it, but here it was often considered tacky and loud. Suddenly, in a workspace I was introduced to respectability politics; you were expected to wear a navy blazer to work and dress in a subdued way. I always felt I stuck out like a sore thumb because I was brown, but in muting myself, I began to feel very inauthentic and eventually realised it’s not really a ‘me’ problem, but a problem with western society. I slowly began reintroducing colour into my wardrobe and this became my way of pushing back.”

“I’ve never been cool so why try now?”

It’s clear that clothing is a medium of expression for Ahmed. “Comfort and practicality are prerequisites for whatever I buy, but so is humour,” she says. “I have this vintage YSL dress from the ’80s with big sleeves and coloured polka dots, which is equally nutty and classic. I keep my looks pared back, often minus accessories, so the clothes can speak for themselves. People might comment on what I’m wearing, but over time, I’ve learnt to not pay heed. I might walk into the grocery store wearing a crazy dress, but that’s my way of celebrating life. I’m not the biggest personality in the room so this is how I voice myself.”

Ahmed’s wardrobe is proof of how thrifting and buying vintage can rescue you from cookie-cutter choices and enable you to set your personal style. “Sometimes I wonder if maybe I need to wear something to fit in, but then I start questioning myself—do I actually like what everyone else is wearing? I have my days when I think I’m not cool, then I realise I’ve never been cool, I’ve always been weird, so why try now at 34?”

Fashionable history lessons

Growing up in Dhaka, Ahmed was a regular customer of her neighbourhood tailor and her adolescence was spent designing salwar-kameezes for friends and family members alongside school. Later, in the US, she got intrigued by the idea of thrifting, and the process of incorporating one-of-a-kind pieces into her wardrobe felt like a form of creative expression she could get behind.

Ahmed’s fascination for archival fashion began on an academic note. She spent hours voraciously reading runway reviews of shows from the ’80s and ’90s, peering microscopically at each look. Today, her knowledge of Miuccia Prada and Dries Van Noten collections is near encyclopaedic. “I am very intrigued by the foundation of everything, I’m drawn to the blueprint, understanding how fashion evolved, how we continue to reference. In order to understand what’s coming down the runway today, it’s important to look back and understand fashion from 20 years ago; collections were never created in isolation,” she explains.

After surfacing from her rabbit hole of studying these looks, she frequents resale websites like The RealReal, eBay, and Etsy, typing in a magic combination of search words to find the pieces she loves. She’s become a pro—her closet is now 80 per cent thrifted, and comprises preloved pieces from some pivotal designer collections. Her very first purchase, 12 years ago, was a yellow tweed jacket from Prada’s spring/summer 1996 line, which she discovered on eBay. “The jacket belongs to Ugly Chic—a controversial collection disliked by many editors back in the day. There’s a waif-like Kate Moss modelling it on the runway, and it has an old-lady grandma quality to it.” It’s just the kind of outfit that would leave even a teenage Ahmed thrilled.