From edgy one day to preppy the next, senior Maddie Sizemore loves to experiment with her clothes.
For Maddie, choosing her own fashion is a way of self-expression and helps her find what she likes and what she doesn’t. She enjoys going out of her comfort zone and experimenting with an abundance of makeup looks, and fashion choices.
“It’s how I express myself,” Maddie said. “I don’t like following the grain a lot. So if I can dress differently than everybody else, it makes me feel like myself.”
Maddie loves to go thrifting, specifically at Plato’s Closet, where she can find an abundance of interesting pieces. Thrifting is how she finds a more sustainable way of fashion and clothing that she wouldn’t see at the mall.
Besides thrifting, Maddie also enjoys creating her own clothes from scratch. She taught herself how to sew and has experimented with painting and sewing, she found what she loves to do to make the clothes her own.
“I had a lot of fabric scraps and old pieces of clothing that I didn’t wear,” Maddie said. “I thought [that] I [shouldn’t] be wasting all this fabric, so I started taking plain shirts and painting on them or sewing different fabrics on them.”
Maddie loves doing patchwork on jeans, adding new pieces of fabric to enhance the pair. Maddie’s mother has had a huge impact on her fashion, she has admired her mother’s sense of fashion and credits her for being an inspiration for what type of clothes and styles she wears today.
I don’t like following the grain a lot. So if I can dress differently than everybody else, it makes me feel like myself. — Maddie Sizemore
“She’s a fashionista, especially for her age,” Maddie said. “She was always with the trends and I feel like I get a lot of my style from her; she has a very eclectic, hippie style.”
Along with fashion, Maddie is also an avid makeup artist. She has done many of her friends’ make-up for school dances in the past. While she is furthering her nursing education at GRCC, one day, she hopes that she can also do makeup for weddings in the future. She isn’t pursuing a career involving fashion or makeup because she doesn’t want it to be something she dislikes later on.
“I didn’t go to any school dances,” Maddie said. “I was the person who had my friends pay me to do their prom makeup. I like making people feel pretty. [In the future,] I don’t want to love something as a hobby, then make it my career path and end up hating it.”
As Maddie has gone through high school, she has found her passions and what she loves. She encourages many people to get out of their comfort zone. High school is a period of experimentation to find new things about oneself. Maddie has found herself through the clothes she wears and her cosmetic endeavors. 
“[My advice would be to] experiment and never put yourself in a box,” Maddie said. “We’re always growing up, so it’s important to try different things and decide what suits you even if it’s not exactly what the trend is or what everybody at school is wearing. It’s good to have individuality.”
Maddie has found that once she expressed her true style and broke out of being like everyone else, she found her true friends. She will continue doing makeup on herself, and others, along with experimenting with new fashion statements. With the influence of her mom and the shelves of Plato’s Closet, Maddie Sizemore has found her sense of style and her form of self-expression.
“People gravitate towards others when they are able to really express themselves,” Maddie said.
