The guy: Lauren, a photographer who gave me his number in the hat department at Henri Bendel. He wore red jazz shoes, and he dumped me within weeks on the phone by telling me he was busy when I suggested a date. Busy with a friend. A friend who was a girl. A girl who was his girlfriend. I cried on the floor after I hung up. It turned out his name wasn’t even really Lauren, but he did give me my first kiss and a nice picture he took of me, which my mom still displays in her living room.
The look: As a college sophomore/virgin I did my best to look pretty for whichever “Prince Charming” might choose me, at whatever cost to my podiatric comfort and while making full use of my enormous multilevel makeup case.
The guy: Chad, the soft-spoken menswear designer who I chose to deflower me. He was always up for this amazing new thing called sex that I'd just discovered, so I was willing to wear whatever he wanted. But as the relationship went on I started having a literal gut reaction to our incompatibility, and I broke up with him just to stop the farting.
The look: Menswear on top of womenswear. Among other unlikely items, Chad convinced me to buy this camel-colored cashmere raglan sleeve trench coat in the men’s department of a place called Dollar Bill’s.
The guy: I rebounded with George, a sweet, very domestic Japanese-American. My childhood best friend was Japanese, and being with George felt like going back to my roots. But all his little tics (which definitely did not include his home-cooked “katsu curry” dinners I’d become addicted to) eventually drove me crazy. So, a year later (his cooking was so good!), I reneged on my implied promise of growing old with him. Actually, it was a pretty explicit promise spoken in our own made up language. Too young for commitment, I left him behind for Europe.
The look: Japanese deconstructivism and cartoon details that made me feel powerful. My mother hated it, and my fellow Long Island Rail Road commuters often burst into laughter when I boarded, so I knew I was doing something right.
The guy: François, the 38-year old French photographer who became emotionally abusive after a romantic car trip that I paid for. I was thrilled to be driving through the Pyrenees with an experienced French lover, but as often happens with your first passionate affair, I imprinted on him like a duckling, and our breakup left me a train wreck.
The look: Depressed fashion model chic evolving into “random free clothes from designers who pitied me” chic. I adopted a grieving geek look, "like someone who spent her life in a library," (L) as one of the employees at Jean-Paul Gaultier told me. I had to give up Doc Martens while in Paris, too, because cleaning Parisian dog poop off their soles was Hell on Earth.
When the PR guy at Gaultier started giving me clothing as payment for small gigs, this is what I looked like: library girl from outer space (R)! At the time I felt I should be grateful for whatever I could get, including men. But choosing outfits from Jean-Paul Gaultier’s designs was not quite as awful as having to choose dates. Jean-Paul never let me down.
The guy: Larva-Guy, the American poet who called me "an angel" after hearing about my ordeal with François, wrote a poem about me that contained the word “larva.” I felt a little uneasy (if not a little queasy) about it, but anyone who’d treat my broken heart with kid gloves had poetic license.
The look: Thinking I needed to look less fragile and exotic post-breakup, I had my hair cut off by the guy who did Linda Evangelista’s famous haircut, hoping that within a few weeks of being dumped by the photographer I’d be smirking at François from the cover of Vogue. This, surprisingly, did not happen. The even sillier part of my attempted makeover, though, was this snazzy yellow leather coat I picked up at the flea market, which lasted until the day I took out my metro ticket and realized I looked just like it.
The Guy: While trying to grow my hair out as attractively as possible, I met an up and coming British photographer who also thought I was "an angel," thus devaluing the whole concept of my angelhood. He also suffered from premature ejaculation and rewarded me for my angelic patience with chlamydia.
The look: This is what I looked like while on antibiotics. My modeling career was fading, and in my spare time I started dragging large pieces of wood home to carve while singing along to “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” and slowly going crazy in my abundant free time. Now, instead of heartache, I had a desperate desire to reinvent myself.
The guy: “Dr. Love,” as I like to call him, the psychoanalyst and mathematician, represented the academic world I wanted to be a member of now that I’d decided to go back to university to salvage my brain from my modeling years. There, I hid the fact that I’d been a model, and oddly, nobody suspected a thing.
The look: I’d been “finding my natural self” by letting all my face and body hair grow in. (This is how an ex-model tries to find herself: in her eyebrows.) In love again, I was convinced these soft, fuzzy lambswool and mohair sweaters — that made me itch and sneeze — made me irresistible. I also used self-tanner to cover up my adult acne caused by years of eating only bread, chocolate, cereal, and French fries, not to mention the stress of trying to find myself without success. Luckily I had my dog to keep me “real.”
The guy(s): After breaking up with Dr. Love, I met the Italian Lover & the German E-Lover who had seemingly perfect, upper-class lives in their respective countries. Sad fact: I kind of hoped one of them would save me from my over-thirty, undetermined self.
The look: “Country Mouse” (L). The Italian guy had a house in Tuscany that I dreamed he’d bring me to even though he clearly told me, “Don’t imagine yourself in Tuscany with me.” I started dressing in a kind of Ralph Lauren/Tuscany style: romantic linen blouse, no makeup, overplucked Mona Lisa eyebrows, smooth hair, leather lace-up Oxfords, lined wool pants. Maybe if he saw how perfectly I went with his house… To no avail.
I got over that fantasy in my pre-doc year by reverting back to my all-black look and cutting my own bangs (R), a nostalgic nod to my happy childhood. After a fax relationship (possibly one of the last in civilization ever) with one guy, I started an email relationship (possibly one of the first ever!) with a guy in Cologne, Germany. I’d daydream about him asking me to live with him in Germany until his best friend informed me that his bed was already occupied by his fiancée. (Sigh!)
The guy: Having failed at so many relationships, I wondered if I'd been too hard on Dr. Love. Where was he now? I Googled him, and we decided to meet. I resolved not to be the insufferable harpie I’d been when we broke up. No more pointing out errors in his literary references, or judging him for being kind of shady, and possibly an alcoholic. He was a genius: the rules did not apply.
The look: I went to H&M and bought myself some soft, pastel tops, and what I shall now call the “Mauve Slacks of Self-Oppression.” I bought them a size up, so they wouldn’t look intimidatingly sexy — didn’t want to scare the poor man off! I waxed my armpits and my pubes. Myself. I was determined to be sweet, and gentle, and feminine, and submissive, and make him pasta and give perfect blow-jobs. (I’d read about how men love pasta in Cosmo). It did not work out.
The guy: The cartoonist (my present boyfriend) actually seemed to like me without me trying to please him at all! The only wardrobe concession I made was to purchase a pair of sturdy cowboy boots to wear when I rode on the back of his Vespa, because ballet flats felt too flimsy. I kept imagining my feet being “erased” like in a cartoon if I ever put them down onto the road while we sped along.
The look: When we met, I was enjoying free clothing by my friend Alpana Bawa (above). When I grew out of those, I adopted my favorite uniform of sailor stripe tops (à la Jean-Paul Gaultier), skinny jeans or a dark skirt, and any shoe with a heel of one and a half inches — nice and sturdy so I can run around with the dog. My man likes the way I dress, which is good, because (except for a little adaptation when dressing for work) now I only dress for myself.
Carolita Johnson is a cartoonist for The New Yorker, a freelance illustrator, and a writer.
Follow Carolita on Twitter.
Illustrations by Carolita Johnson
Photo credit: Michael Crawford
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