on the map: lala on boston style

carving out a playful, colorful niche for herself against a storied backdrop

Perhaps a controversial statement: While New York is undoubtably the fashion epicenter of the US, Boston might be the gravitational core. I say gravitational intentionally here: In Boston, in the story it tells of itself, there is a pull toward the past. What I’ve long conceived of as the fashion is distilled, traditional (read: white) Americana. It’s thick knits and tweeds and scarves and Hunter boots. It’s college students rustling through leaf-filled campuses with their LL Bean totes. It is, in a film, Love Story, which my mom introduced me to when I was a teenager as something of a treatise on preppy style.

But man, do I ever love to have my perspective flipped. When Lala reached out to me to weigh in on her take on Boston style, I could not have said yes faster. In holding so fast to this idea of Boston in my mind, I ignored the obvious: that Boston has one of the highest densities of college students in the country! People—including Lala—move from all over the country and the world to study in Boston. Tempting as it may be to expect the pages of Ivy Style come to life, what you’ll find there is so much more complex, diverse, and subversive than the image you might hold in your mind. So set it to the side, and hear directly from

lala thaddeus

about her fascinating journey and style evolution against the leafy backdrop of Boston.

Tell me about yourself! What got you interested in style in the first place? Do you feel like you had a family connection to it, or were drawn to it through influences around you?

I’m Lala, I’m 28, and I started becoming more confident in my style in 2020, so I’m quite “young” in my style journey. I adored fashion from a young age but didn’t have the pathways to emulate what I saw. I would say I’ve had a contentious relationship with clothing my entire life — growing up as a heavy kid meant that finding clothing that fit (let alone clothes that I liked) was always a challenge.

Since I couldn’t find clothes that fit me I drew the fantastical wardrobe of my dreams instead. I started drawing fashion figures and outfits in the 4th grade: I would sit down everyday to watch Totally Spies and draw each girl’s unique outfit that they wore from that episode. I hand sewed clothes for my Barbies and continued drawing daily through high school.

Outside my drawings, I was your typical pre-glowup teen wearing poor fitting low rise jeans, the weird graphic tees of the 2000s, and a hoodie around my waist at all times. I felt I was getting the same message all the time, from parents to aunts to magazines to tv shows: fat girls shouldn’t call attention to themselves. Wear dark, slimming clothing. Avoid standing out at all costs. Don’t show skin, no one wants to see yours. It was somewhat painful, to see the gulf between what I imagined and wanted to wear versus what I had access to wear on a daily basis.

What brought you to Boston, and what other places have shaped your relationship to style?

I was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and my family moved to Yerevan, Armenia when I was 12, in 2008. I only came to Boston for college in 2014 and have been here for the last ten years. I can’t speak much to Baghdad’s style since I haven’t been there since we left, but Yerevan’s has shifted so much in the 10 years since I’ve been gone. When I lived there, the capital city (and the country as a whole) was much more conservative, socially and stylistically. People typically wore only black clothing, all the time, no matter the season or weather.

When I came to Boston, my style diversified, but when I’d prepare to go visit family over school breaks, I would only pack “Armenia appropriate” clothing, meaning minimal color and clothing that covered me up. But everything’s changed since 2020. These days when I visit, I’m seeing women’s bare midriffs and shorter shorts (which would have been unimaginable in 2008!), lots of color, and lots of Western and specifically Gen Z influence in younger people’s outfits.

I think the shift can be explained by the way Armenia’s politics have become more progressive over the years and the country has opened up to the world in general, especially in terms of building up infrastructure to receive shipping from abroad. This wasn’t possible when I lived there. Back then, no one, including giants like Amazon, shipped merchandise to Armenia. Now, there’s malls, there’s lots of European brands like Mango, Bershka, etc. whereas before, you’d get your clothes from little shops that curated brandless clothing.

I don’t want to conflate “progress” with this Western idea of women getting to show more skin in public, but it is progress that women in Yerevan seem to be wearing what they want without being ogled by men or getting disapproving stares from other women, which is how things were when I still lived there.

At the same time, it makes me wonder if this trend of “globalized fashion,” and consumption of trends mainly through the internet, the Tiktokification of trends, means that cities will lose their distinctive style and just become flattened, where everyone around the world kind of dresses the same despite culture and weather and history.

How has your personal style evolved since arriving in Boston? What would you say your style is now, and what do you like to express through what you wear?

I think I’ve only recently found my style now that I’m 28!

Growing up in Yerevan as a plus-size kid was rough. My wardrobe was full of things I had to settle for, never pieces I’d chosen on purpose. Basically, if a store carried a pair of jeans in my size, then that would be the pair I walked out with — doesn’t matter if I hated the wash, cut, fit, etc, because it was the only option available. My wardrobe leaned matronly, since any larger sizes I could get my hands on were typically items geared towards middle aged, heavier women. I didn’t feel that I had a style, but more that I was putting up with the few options I had. There were malls and foreign stores slowly opening up in Yerevan, but simply no one was carrying clothing for US size 16 women.

Once I came out to Boston for college, I had a ton more options. It was like I was let loose at a buffet and I was starving: I bought everything I could get my hands on, which as you can imagine, didn’t translate into a cohesive personal style at all!

My wardrobe slowly started coming together, of all times, during the pandemic. I think like most of us, I was online shopping like crazy thanks to the stimulus cash, and I was becoming more discerning with what I was buying, more aware of the colors I loved and the cuts that looked good on me, and, maybe it was my age, but I was finally feeling confident enough in my body to stop covering myself up all the time.

My clothing now leans colorful, playful, put-together, and feminine, all of which are parts of my identity that I just wasn’t able or allowed to express as a child.

Boston is fascinating to me—and, I imagine, a lot of people who don't live there—because it's a place that has such a large mythology in the US. It's at the center of a lot of the history we learn, it's filled with so many recognizable colleges, and it features prominently in a lot of cultural touchstones (The Departed, Good Will Hunting, Legally Blonde—fully admit to conflating Boston with Cambridge on some of these). In a way, it feels like a city we understand through caricature, not nuance. How would you describe your experience of Boston? What do you want people to know about it that they might not otherwise?

LOL I actually do live in Cambridge, specifically, but I always say I live in Boston. I learned about this city through my high school English Literature class so it loomed large in terms of literary figures (Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, etc), and when I finally got my driver’s license and drove out to Walden Pond this year and saw the water, I fully burst out in tears in front of the pond. It had been my dream to see it for 15 years.

Bostonians have this reputation of being gruff, cold, unfriendly, but I’ve met the kindest people here. It’s that “East Coast is kind but not nice, West Coast is nice but not kind” thing. It’s a safe and beautiful place to live, people here have that East Coast hustle and rush to them that I like, and the weather is terrible most of the year but I think all of us stick around just to watch the leaves change color in the fall. That’s when you see the best outfits, from August through mid-November, because everyone’s out looking at the trees and enjoying the last bits of socializing in public before the winter.

It is worth noting that Boston is, unfortunately, a deeply segregated city, so you have to make an effort to leave your bubble. The parts of Boston that we see in media (like Good Will Hunting and Legally Blonde) are always the overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, so even if you think you are getting to know the city through how it’s portrayed, that’s just one specific view of it.

5. When it comes to style, how would you describe Boston? What factors and influences do you think shape the city's style?

I think a lot of people view Boston as an unstylish city but I think they might not be paying attention to what’s going on here. We don’t have New York’s street style, but Boston is a city with deep international, artistic, and academic influences, and it shows up in how people around here dress!

Yes, of course, you’ll see the most boring fits of your life if you hang out around the wealthy lab/finance/tech neighborhoods. Aritzia and Lululemon have a chokehold on young women strolling along Newbury Street (our main shopping street) and the South End. The clean girl aesthetic unfortunately just won’t go away. But beyond that, you’ll see a lot of people experimenting. If you spend any time around Allston, Jamaica Plain, Somerville (basically any artsy and/or grungy neighborhood), you’ll see a lot more people taking risks with their personal style.

The beginning of the school year in September always injects a youthful influence into the city, because then you’re seeing these college kids wearing their hometown’s influence, whether that hometown is Kansas City, Kansas, or Taiwan. Walking near the lively campuses is a great place to get style inspiration.

What I love most about living here is that people look how they naturally look (lol sorry LA) and their style is relatively low-maintenance (sorry NYC). As in, plastic surgery and manicured perfection have thankfully not taken a hold of people here, yet, which I’ve always been extremely thankful for. Part of it is that Boston is still an East Coast city — we’re busy, we’re on the go, and our weather is ass like 10.5 months of the year. So in the summer it doesn’t make sense to do a full face of makeup and a blowout because the humidity with wreck your hard work instantly, and in the winter none of that makes sense because you’re covering up with a hat and enormous scarf anyway.

This is also a city where we walk a ton. Boston is small and has an only-sometimes-functioning public transit system and lots of ancient, cobblestone roads, so you don’t see heels or particularly challenging-to-maintain outfits here, unless someone is willing to Uber everywhere all day. People for the most part wear functional clothing, and some of it happens to be super boring and influenced by a typical corporate aesthetic but some of it is very expressive.

6. Do you feel like you fit in, style-wise, in Boston, or do you feel like an outlier? How do you relate to the style in the city? Does people-watching influence the way you dress at all?

This question has had me in a tailspin all week because I never thought about how much I stick out! I don’t wear office clothes anymore since I freelance but I also don’t wear the muted quiet-luxury or minimalist pieces that have become so popular around here. I stick out particularly in the wealthier neighborhoods of the city (Beacon Hill, the North End, the Seaport, Back Bay) but feel like I fit right in (and receive so many compliments) whenever I’m outside these particular areas. I’ve been people watching a lot in the North End, which is making me want to tone down how I dress, so I’m trying to purposefully avert my gaze for now and look for the artsier influences of people around Somerville.

7. What have been some favorite style details or looks that you've noticed around the city recently? What did you like about them?

Gen Z trends have been taking the city by storm. I’m seeing lots of maxi skirts and decorative triangular headscarves. I love the youthfulness of these outfits and if I’m being honest, anything that strays from the quiet luxury/clean girl aesthetic is so exciting and refreshing to me. I’m seeing a return to flowy, floral, bright dresses too, and I love how these looks stray from the severity of minimalism.

Boston’s queer community is always on the forefront of these daring, personal looks. I feel some fashion FOMO sometimes not living in NYC so I’ll go people watching around Boston’s skateparks, art schools (like MassArt), or go out at night in Somerville and that usually hits the spot. A lot of the looks I see are thrifted, sometimes DIYed, so they’re always just so unique to the people that wear them — it’s not Tiktok style, NYC street style, or even “Boston style,” it’s just that one person’s individual expression of themselves and it’s so beautiful!

8. Something I love about Boston is its architecture and the feel of the city. It's so beautiful and iconic! Do you feel like that shapes the style at all? Does it influence how you dress?

Absolutely! The city comes alive in the early spring and especially the fall, when the trees change color and the brownstone homes in Back Bay and Beacon Hill look magical. I’ve definitely tried to match my brunch and errands outfits to the brownstones in the city, they’re such an iconic backdrop!

Our proximity to the ocean doesn’t shape people’s style quite as much as you’d expect, but you definitely see a lot of coastal vibes once you leave the city to visit beach town along the north or south shores.

Lately we’ve been experiencing so much summer rain that everything is looking lush and almost jungle like, so I’ve been loving dressing in greens and bright but naturally occurring colors to match the outdoors.

How do you like to fill your time in Boston? Does what you do influence how you dress?

I actually JUST quit my job to freelance :) I’m currently freelancing as a writer and completing a UX bootcamp, so I’m in this strange phase where I’m changing careers and trying to break into a new field. Studying design has made me even more appreciative of the city’s varied architecture and people’s clothing choices.

I’ve been dressing more creatively this summer, which has helped a ton in giving me confidence to actually pursue art. It maybe seems silly, but dressing like what I think creative/artistic women dress like has helped me write more, and it has given me more confidence to continue pursuing a career change into an inherently creative field. Sometimes you really do have to dress for the job you want.

I fill my time by being home a lot to write and study, going to coffee shops when working at home gets boring, eating out at restaurants quite a bit (for the aforementioned freelance writing gig!), getting mud on my clothes while making ceramics at a local pottery studio, being as active as possible in good weather (biking, roller skating with a local femme group), and, in the summer, napping and reading in the grass at various parks.

That is so beautiful! Bring us along to some of your favorite spots in Boston to close us out:

Shop: Glass Ripples for all things vintage and modern glassware. Ouimillie for clothes that are usually out of budget but fun for inspo.

Cafe: Sofra for pastries, Faro coffee for the vibey community feel. Ula Cafe in Jamaica Plain is great for getting work done in a community setting.

Bar: Sillouhette Lounge in Allston for a dive, Lolita for a goth experience in the city, and Trina’s Starlite Lounge in Cambridge for a rowdy time.

Restaurant: Krasi for the best Greek food and wine! Tony & Elaine’s for Italian in the North End (Little Italy)! La Royale for the best dang Peruvian ceviche and pisco sours you’ve ever had.

Venue: our Museum of Fine Arts hosts a late night rager every now and then, tickets always sell out in an instant, and the attendees are impeccably dressed. 10/10, but avoid drinking or eating there since options are atrocious.

Park: Fresh Pond in Cambridge, the Mt. Auburn Cemetery in the fall and spring, Walden Pond for those who drive (I cried the first time I saw it last year), the Arboretum in Jamaica Plain for a long walk, and The Public Garden for visitors who don’t have time to get out of the city.

Creators: Beautiful Genius (not a shop, but a local fashion designer with an online store)