In a place like Middlebury, it can be hard to sift through the flannels, jeans and hiking boots that serve as the state’s style monopoly — not that there’s anything wrong with embracing the maple. Still, every once in a while, a splash of something different draws attention amongst the waves of plaid. For me, one of those splashes has been the fashion of Abeera Riaz ’27.
The sophomore’s colorful yet muted aesthetic caught my eye when I met her a year ago; Her consistency of bright-on-dark outfits (I have called her the inventor of Pop Rocks-core), complemented by her love for accessories, prompted me to base this debut installment of The Closet Report on her.
Riaz began the fit check right at the top.
“I have three piercings on one ear and five on the other,” she said. She found her silver moon and star earrings at one of Middlebury’s own thrift stores, Round Robin.
“I chose them partly because they remind me of the Pakistani flag, so it’s like a piece of heritage that I can carry around with me. Plus, they’re cute,” Riaz said. While a Brooklynite from very early childhood, Pakistan is her home country.
From her neck dangle not one, not two, but three necklaces, their charms resting neatly equidistant from one another. She revealed that the shortest — a round-edged star ostensibly made from rose quartz — is not the real thing. Riaz’s next two necklaces are both silver, the middle-hanging one the most recent find: a flat pendant from a metalworks market stand in Wisconsin during the Strawberry Festival last summer. It is carved with a design of a woman and some music notes. The third is a chunky mermaid “probably from Justice.”
Despite this abundance of silver, Riaz actually feels that gold suits her more due to her facial features and her gold-colored nostril ring. However, she prefers wearing silver because of its variety, compared with the often simplistic selection of gold jewelry.
“Bracelets are definitely a staple for me,” Riaz said. Not just bracelets, either, but a lot of bracelets, normally three on each wrist. “They’re also good to fidget with,” she added.The bands just above her hands are mostly beaded, multicolored and add a lot to her color-maximalist style. The seaweed-colored pebble bracelet was a gift from her sister. She’s had the white one since it was brown, she made the multicolored one out of her own beads, and she crafted the dark teal circlet from beads that came with some of her mother’s Desi clothes.
Riaz makes a lot of accessories herself. When asked if she had bracelet-making supplies, she pulled two kits from her desk drawer. Both are filled with various beads — “Hella beads,” she remarked — all organized, as well as string, and pliers for when she works with metal.
Over the summer, as she and I both call Brooklyn home, I attended a jewelry-making workshop Riaz was helping to run. It was hosted by Jam + Rico, a Caribbean jewelry company she interned with. While she doesn’t see her career taking her in this especially artistic direction, one of her two majors is Art History, and she sees accessory-making as a fun hobby.
Now, the clothes themselves: From a structural standpoint, her top is just a normal t-shirt. With black as a base color, it is dashed with pinks and purples that are supported by blue accents. The design spotlights a ghostly pink butterfly, a bushel of flowers, and the non-word “Jahreschwesche,” just one “L” off from “Jahreswechsel,” the German equivalent of “Happy New Year.” The letters bling with plastic rhinestones. It was a Depop find. “What drew me to it were the colors,” she said.
“I wear a lot of jewel tones,” Riaz shared. Jewel tones are just as they sound: colors inspired by jewels and gemstones. “Even my room has a lot of jewel tones in it, like this, she said, gesturing to a print-out of a 1913 painting, “The Virgin” (also called “The Maiden”) by Gustav Klimt; it’s a feminine, Art Nouveau piece full of rich, swirling amethyst violets, chalky sunstone yellows, and emerald greens. “I think they suit me the most,” she said. “I love wearing them.” It’s evident. Riaz often pairs those rich, popping jewel tones that appear literally in her accessories as well as in the hues of her clothing accents with darker shades, like the black base of her shirt, her gray camo cargo pants and black Dr. Martens.
In this outfit, her thrifted cargos are baggy and hang low over her Docs, the pants slightly more masculine in design compared to her top. She likes the laid-back silhouette that cargos give her. They evoke the hip-hop-stewed youth culture of New York City, specifically Brooklyn.
“Maybe it’s a little cliché, but really, my city inspires my style,” she said. “Dressing like this back home, I look totally normal. Here, I think I stand out a little more. It’s hard not to start changing your clothes to melt in with the crowd, though. I have to work to maintain my style.”
There is always a sense of balance in Abeera Riaz’s outfits, a cohesion that comes from her love of thrifting, the jewel tones and her passion for accessories. According to her, her staple bracelets and necklaces don’t necessarily dictate her clothing choices, and it’s a coincidence that she loves both things. That they happen to go together so well can be attributed to the potency of her personal interests, which mesh to form these colorful, eye-catching yet unpretentious ensembles each day.
