The first time someone called my outfit “very weird girl aesthetic,” I nearly choked on my coffee. It was last spring, and I was wearing a floral prairie dress with a men’s vintage bowling shirt over it, layered under a chunky cardigan with ceramic fruit buttons, topped off with a beaded bag shaped like a strawberry and chunky loafers. In my head, I was just wearing… clothes? Clothes I liked? But apparently, I’d inadvertently stumbled into a whole aesthetic movement without even trying.
“Oh my god, thank you!” I responded, pretending I totally knew what they were talking about while making a mental note to Google it immediately.
Turns out, I’d been dressing “Weird Girl” for years without having a name for it. The layered, mismatched, “did she get dressed in the dark?” vibe I’d cultivated since college was now a bonafide TikTok trend. Suddenly, the outfits that once made my mother sigh deeply and ask if I was “sure about those patterns together” were being documented by street style photographers outside fashion shows.
For the record, the Weird Girl aesthetic isn’t actually about being weird (though it doesn’t hurt). It’s an intentionally chaotic approach to getting dressed that thumbs its nose at conventional styling rules. Mix patterns that shouldn’t work together? Check. Layer pieces in unexpected ways? Absolutely. Accessorize with items that look like they were stolen from a very stylish kindergartner? Essential. It’s the fashion equivalent of a perfectly curated mess—making “wrong” choices so deliberately that they circle back around to being right.
The look has spiritual ancestors in Harajuku fashion, the original Fruits magazine street style, and early Comme des Garçons. But today’s version has evolved through TikTok and Instagram, championed by it-girls like Bella Hadid (in her off-duty moments) and indie style icons like stylist Pippi Yujin and model Devon Lee Carlson. It’s anti-algorithm dressing in an era when most trends feel like they were created by an AI scraping Instagram data.
I stumbled into my own version of Weird Girl style during my broke college years when thrift stores were my only fashion option. When you’re limited to whatever randomness you find on the racks, you learn to make unlikely combinations work. I couldn’t afford a cohesive wardrobe, so I built an incohesive one on purpose. That vintage nightgown? Wear it as a dress. Those massive ’80s suit jackets with shoulder pads? Layer them over literally anything. My roommate Tyler (who exclusively wore vintage workwear and judged my rainbow approach to dressing) once described my style as “what if a Salvation Army exploded, but fashionably.” I took it as the highest compliment.
Years later, my salary might allow for more cohesive shopping, but that magpie approach to getting dressed is permanently wired into my brain. There’s something deeply liberating about putting together an outfit that makes no logical sense but somehow works anyway. It’s playing fashion jazz—you have to know the rules well enough to break them with intention.
If you’re intrigued by the Weird Girl aesthetic but aren’t sure where to start (or are afraid of looking like you actually got dressed in the dark), I’ve developed some ground rules for successful chaos:
The foundation of any good Weird Girl outfit is unexpected layering. Forget the conventional wisdom about proportions—put that oversized sweater over that already voluminous dress. Wear that tiny baby tee over a massive button-down. Layer two dresses of different lengths. The “wrong” proportion is almost always the right choice for this look.
Just last week I wore a slip dress over jeans with a cardigan worn backwards so the buttons ran down my spine. A woman stopped me on the street to ask if I was “someone important” at Fashion Week (I wasn’t, but I let her believe I might be because honestly who doesn’t need that ego boost on a random Tuesday?).
The true secret to pulling this off is mixing high and low with abandon. Pair those designer shoes you splurged on with socks you bought at a tourist gift shop. That vintage Prada bag? It looks even better next to the beaded bracelet you made at summer camp when you were twelve. My favorite outfit last month combined a Cecilie Bahnsen dress (that I saved for months to buy) with my brother’s old baseball cap and jellies—yes, those plastic sandals we all wore in the ’90s that give you weird tan lines and sweaty feet. The combination felt both precious and completely unselfconscious.
Color is non-negotiable. And not just any color—the weirder, the better. Those muddy, slightly off shades that shouldn’t be flattering but somehow are? Perfect. I have a particular mustard yellow cardigan that’s the exact color of French’s mustard—not a traditionally “beautiful” shade, but paired with lavender pants and a mint green top, it becomes something magical. The trick is to choose colors that share the same saturation level or temperature, even if they seem to clash at first glance.
One night after too many glasses of wine, my friend Emma and I developed a highly unscientific color theory we called “The Weird Girl Color Wheel.”
The basic premise: the colors that make you slightly uncomfortable together are the ones you should be wearing together. That kelly green and burgundy combo that reminds you of Christmas but slightly off? Weirdly perfect with a dash of orange thrown in.
Accessories are where the real magic happens. This is not the time for minimalism. I’m talking sculptural earrings that graze your shoulders, rings on multiple fingers, at least two necklaces (bonus points if one of them has something unexpected dangling from it—I have a tiny plastic dinosaur on a gold chain that gets compliments every time I wear it), and the weirder the bag, the better.
My collection includes a beaded bag shaped like a bunch of grapes, a purse that looks like a vintage camera, and a tote with an oil painting of someone else’s grandmother on it (found at a flea market—I’ve named her Ethel and decided she’s my style spirit guide). The key is to wear these statement pieces not as a cautious accent, but with the confidence of someone who thinks a grape bag is a completely normal thing to bring to a business lunch.
The most essential element is the inclusion of at least one “ugly-cute” item per outfit. You know the type—those pieces that make people tilt their head and say “huh” before deciding if they love or hate it. This category includes chunky orthopedic-looking sandals, sweater vests that could have belonged to a middle-school math teacher, prairie collars, anything with a questionable appliqué, and most things knitted by someone’s actual grandmother.
I have a cardigan with embroidered poodles wearing beaded collars that I found at an estate sale in Queens. The first time I wore it to the office, our minimalist-dressing fashion director Simone stared at it for a full thirty seconds before declaring, “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m obsessed with it.” Mission accomplished.
The beauty of the Weird Girl aesthetic is that it’s genuinely democratic. You don’t need a fashion budget or model proportions to pull it off. Some of the best Weird Girl dressers I know are broke art students who’ve never owned a designer item in their lives but can put together a mind-blowing outfit from thrift finds and their grandmother’s castoffs.
That said, there’s a fine line between intentional chaos and looking like you got dressed during a power outage. The secret ingredient is confidence. You have to wear even the strangest combinations with the absolute conviction that of course these pieces go together—why wouldn’t they? Hesitation is the enemy. I’ve abandoned many a promising weird outfit in my bathroom because I couldn’t commit fully to the bit.
This happened just last month when I tried pairing a Japanese souvenir jacket (you know, the silky embroidered ones) with a prairie skirt and combat boots. Standing in front of my mirror, I could feel myself wavering. “This might be too much,” I thought, reaching for my trusty jeans instead. And then I remembered the cardinal rule of Weird Girl dressing: if you’re wondering if it’s too much, it’s probably not enough. I added a beret and barely made my train, but the woman who asked where I bought my “amazing outfit” made it worth it.
The Weird Girl aesthetic is about more than just clothes—it’s a mindset. It’s the fashion equivalent of the person at the party who talks to everyone, mixes unexpected friend groups, and isn’t afraid to dance first. It rejects the algorithm-driven sameness that’s taken over our Instagram feeds and celebrates the joy of genuine personal style in all its weird glory.
And honestly? It’s fun. Getting dressed becomes less “do these items conventionally match?” and more “what story am I telling with this outfit today?” Sometimes my clothes are telling the story of a librarian who moonlights as a disco queen. Other days it’s more “art teacher who inherited her glamorous aunt’s designer collection.” The combinations are endless.
My favorite comment came from a teenager who stopped me on the street when I was wearing a vintage Laura Ashley dress with a men’s fishing vest over it (yes, really), platform sandals, and a headscarf. She looked me up and down and said, “I can’t tell if you’re really cool or if you just don’t care what anyone thinks.” I thanked her and said I hoped it was both. Because that’s the ultimate Weird Girl energy—the sweet spot between meticulous intention and complete abandon.
So if you spot me on the subway wearing three conflicting patterns, socks with sandals, and a bag shaped like food, just know it’s not a cry for help or a fashion emergency. It’s just another day of dressing weird on purpose, finding joy in the chaos, and silently challenging the algorithm to try and categorize that.
