can be somewhat difficult, and I imagine having a sibling
older or younger can sometimes have the same effect.
With having a sister, brother or twin people always tend
to look at you as a ‘pair’, and expect you to be alike in
way, expressing yourself can sometimes be hard, and you
can sometimes end up following in your siblings
footsteps - whether this be in terms of fashion or
personality.
When I reached the age of 7, it became quite apparent
that my twin and me were quite different from one
another; we both shared an interest in fashion, but
shared different likes and dislikes on certain types of
clothing and trends. My sister was always into quite
simple, dark clothing, where as I really enjoyed
experimenting with colour and trying out different
outfit choices. We would forever be looking through
fashion magazines, recognizing new trends and stores, we
would always show each other things that we liked, but
they would always be quite different. My twin and I
really appreciated each others styles, but it was
amazing to finally recognize ourselves as two different
people, instead of the ‘pair’ that people forever saw us
as.
Regular shopping trips with our mother were always
interesting, we would be pulling her between different
stores, catering to both of our likes and dislikes, you
can only imagine how exhausted she would get.
I mean, having two twins that were in-fact quite
different from each other, was always going to be a
challenge, and 3-hour shopping trips that actually turned
out to be 6 hours, wasn’t an idea of ‘fun’ for our mum.
There was one particular shopping trip that I vividly
remember, it was a spontaneous one that occurred on a
random insect day that we had at our school. Mum had to
take the day off from work, as she became to realize
that leaving two twins with child-minders that had never
tackled twins before weren’t quite cut out to the job
of looking after us. We took the long drive into
Nottingham city center, a city full of different fashions
and personalities, I recognized styles that I had never
came across before.
I remember spotting a girl aged around 19 years old, she
had a thick, black, leather biker jacket, black tight skinny
jeans (that almost looked like they’d been spray painted
on) and a tatty pair of what I thought were ‘old boots’.
I seemed to really take interest in her style, and all I
could think about for the rest of the day was her boots.
They just looked so worn, like they’d walked around and
visited so many places, seen so many things - I think
this is what I enjoyed about them the most.
When we arrived back home after a non-successful shopping trip, my father thought it would be an idea to show
my sister and I some old photographs of him and his
friends back in the 70s.