Annabelle Brown Picture Story

Annabelle Brown has had a passion for fashion—specifically sustainable, secondhand, and handmade items—for many years. She uses clothing and makeup as a means to express not only her overall personality and interests, but also how she feels on a day-to-day basis. She started as a first-year at UNC Chapel Hill during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the fall of 2020, so she didn’t get to come to campus or interact with other students until her sophomore year. As a means to find others who shared her interests in fashion, self-expression, sustainability, and creativity, she created an Instagram account called TarHeelThreads in September 2021. It started as a fun pastime to highlight and encourage unique and stylish outfits on campus, but due to her friendly disposition, unique idea, aesthetic posts, and positive interaction with other students, in only a year, the account has amassed over 3200 followers, the project has been the subject of a multitude of J-school students’ class articles, and Annabelle has become known as the “Tar Heel Threads girl.” Annabelle playfully pokes her head through a rack of jackets at CommunityWorx, a thrift store in Carrboro, Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 22, 2022. Getting over a sickness she had all weekend, Annabelle skipped her Tuesday classes for a much needed pick-me-up by shopping. “I’ve always been very expressive in terms of what I wear,” she said in an interview with me when asked when and why she became interested in fashion. “I’ve always been interested in how other people dressed and what they choose to put on their body because I think it’s a way of showing other people what you’re like, like your personality and that aspect of yourself that you can’t really get otherwise. If no one’s met you, no one’s been able to talk to you, that’s your first impression of us. Once my father passed away, I felt like it just got really hard to have people to see something other than grief in my life and it was really hard to feel like I could get out of bed. It [fashion] became the only thing that I felt like I could control in my life and the only thing that I could absolutely secure that was going to be good about my day. Even if my day sucked, something terrible happened, I liked my outfit, I liked what I had on, it was like a security blanket almost. It made people stop looking at me as a grieving little girl, it was like, you know, there’s something else fun to look at.”

Annabelle quickly applies makeup—here she’s filling in her eyebrows—after getting back to her dorm from spending Thanksgiving break out of town on Sunday evening, Nov. 27, 2022. She said of her own style: “In college, I have gone for more of the promiscuous pixie look. It just makes me feel fun and lively. I’m putting lots of colors together, and lots of ribbons and lace and textures and patterns and whatever. I want to feel like my younger self dressed me, but I also want to feel mature and older and like I’m only going to have my 20-year-old body once, you know, so I kind of want to emulate the aspects of being 20 and feeling like not necessarily a grown-up and not necessarily a kid. That’s what my style is, it’s an elevated mini me. If I as a child could pick what I wore as an adult, this would be it.”

Annabelle leans against a tree while scouting for students with unique and stylish outfits around campus to feature on the TarHeelThreads account Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 16, 2022. She only posts students that she sees on campus—usually in the Pit, outside Davis Library, or on the quad. Sometimes she sits or stands in one place, such as here, while other times she walks around campus in hopes of finding a student with a fun outfit. She normally scouts when she has free time in between classes. “I hide by the trees a lot so I can be incognito; so no one sees me but I can see everyone on campus. I can stand here and everyone just thinks that I’m chilling, but I’m people watching,” she said.

Annabelle gushes about the leather UNC jacket that Zuha Animashaun, a fellow UNC student, wears in the Pit on Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 16, 2022. Annabelle knows Zuha from previous times she’s been featured on TarHeelThreads. In an interview with me, Annabelle explained why she created the account: “I was told when I went to college, I would cut the shenanigans, like I would start dressing like everybody else, I would start wearing t-shirts and shorts to class because ‘people didn’t care about that shit in college, and people were more focused on class and no one’s gonna care what you wear.’ It kind of pissed me off. At the end of the day, who cares about what I wear, it’s for me. So, when I got to college, I continued to do it, and it was almost more fun; I didn’t have any dress code, I didn’t have any boundaries, I could literally be who I wanted to be and dress how I wanted to portray myself in a new atmosphere. I wanted to kind of show other people that people around campus were doing that and that they didn’t have to hide under what other people think of them if they dressed up to class. It was also just because I was really into it and I felt lonely post-COVID, and I thought I could kind of create a community of people who were interested in the same things as me without any judgment or anything. It could just be a good outlet that didn’t have to do with school, it didn’t have to be school-affiliated, it was just a nice community thing where I could get to know people.”

Annabelle stands still outside the Undergraduate Library, looking for unique outfits to post on TarHeelThreads, while students walk past her going to and from class Monday afternoon, Nov. 28, 2022. The past few months, overwhelmed with schoolwork, extracurriculars, and the popularity of the account, Annabelle hasn’t posted as frequently. While students in the past have reached out to her to help and/or expand TarHeelThreads, Annabelle has never been interested. That is, until a first-year named Stella reached out to her and Annabelle was immediately taken with her passion for what the account stands for. Although it may seem straightforward and easy, there’s more that goes into the account than some may think, so Annabelle has been giving Stella advice before she officially starts helping with posts. “I told her [Stella] she has to start mentally scouting. ‘For the next week, think of people who you would want to ask [to be on the page]. Look at how many people are wearing headphones, look at how many people are walking with other people, look at how many people are walking really fast and going to class. Think about that. If you want to go up to that person right now, a) would you be able to, b) would you have the courage to go up to talk to them and shoot them? Is the lighting good outside, where would you take their picture if they said yes, just start mentally considering all these things.’ Because it’s all fun and games until you actually want to start scouting and then it’s like, there’s no one out here. Or I want to walk up to that person, but they’re walking 10 miles an hour and have their headphones on, I’m not gonna run after them.”

Annabelle kneels to get a close-up of Cameron Carroll’s outfit for the TarHeelThreads page outside of Lenoir Dining Hall Thursday afternoon, Nov. 17, 2022. Before she saw Cameron, while scouting for someone to post outside of the Undergraduate Library, she explained that she doesn’t feature game day or party outfits and decides what constitutes as a TarHeelThreads’ worthy post as something that is both unique and well thought-out. “For example, what I’m wearing right now is cute but it doesn’t feel personal to me, it doesn’t feel individualistic or unique. I ask myself, ‘do I feel like it took an extra step out of you to put together?’”

While standing outside the Undergraduate Library on Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 16, 2022, Annabelle finishes editing a post of a student she saw earlier in the day for the Instagram account. Her posts always have a full-body, frontal shot as the main background photo, with 4 close-ups of textures, colors, jewelry, makeup, and/or shoes in small rectangles along the edges. “This is my favorite part of posting,” she said, “doing the fun boxes and editing. I’ve always wanted to draw lines on them with my iPad, but people didn’t like that.”

After scouting for outfits to feature on the account, Annabelle stumbles across a group of student artists selling handmade products in the Pit Thursday afternoon, Nov. 17, 2022. While Annabelle strictly buys secondhand clothing (excluding undergarments, bathing suits, and sometimes shoes), she said, “I have made exceptions [to her vow to buy only secondhand] for small businesses and local artists. Etsy has been a close friend of mine if I wanted some small business like bags or sweaters. Things like @StudentMade, which is technically firsthand but people make these things and it goes to a local cause, I think that’s really valuable as well.”

Annabelle briefly walks around the quad on Monday afternoon, Nov. 28, 2022, in search of someone to post on TarHeelThreads before returning to her studies and heading home. Rather than use a backpack, she always carries around a tote bag. “I’m a big reusable bag gal when I’m going grocery shopping or taking things home when I travel,” she said in an interview with me when asked if she’s conscious about sustainability in ways outside of clothing. “I like to stay away from plastics or synthetics. When it comes to packaging for food and stuff, I often try to minimize that waste by bringing my own containers or having things that are washable. I’m a big ‘use it until it’s done’ girl, so like my tote bags, hair products, things of that nature.”

Annabelle gleefully sifts through t-shirts in a bin at CommunityWorx thrift store in Carrboro on Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 22, 2022. She wasn’t taken with any of the items in the bin, but she did end up buying the embroidered jean jacket and green knit sweater (underneath the pink coat) she’s holding. I asked her in an interview when she started buying clothing secondhand: “I became conscious about sustainable fashion probably—oh, this is so funny, and I kid you not, this is pretty much exactly when it started—when Macklemore released the song Thrift Shop. I would do clothing swaps with my friends, so not necessarily go shop, but ‘I have this in my closet, and you have that in your closet, do you want to do a little swap?’ … In the past few years, since we’ve been in high school, I think fast fashion has really taken off. I remember reading about brands like Shein and Romway and stuff that were becoming really popular at the time and I was like, ‘how does this business model work? It doesn’t make sense, how are they able to sell things so cheap?’ I looked into it more, and I think that was the biggest burst of my bubble. ‘Oh wait, these people aren’t paying their employees and these are being mass-produced.’ And I saw people ordering them and they’d come in a bunch of plastic and I think as I got older, it was something I started to care about more. About one and a half years ago is when I went fully secondhand with my purchases and I have not purchased anything firsthand [regarding clothing, and excluding undergarments, bathing suits, and sometimes shoes] since then.”

Annabelle goes through the favorite items in her closet—all thrifted or handmade, whether from secondhand stores or online applications like DePop, eBay, or Etsy—Wednesday evening, Nov. 9, 2022. This particular sweater was customized by Annabelle and handmade by an artist on Etsy, and although it’s no longer Annabelle’s style, she loves it—and all of her other clothing so much—that she will always keep it. She doesn’t get rid of clothing like this even if she doesn’t wear it anymore because she has a personal attachment to it, she doesn’t want it to be sent to a landfill or improperly cared for by a secondhand buyer, and if she has children one day, she hopes to pass her clothing down to them. In our interview, she explained how her style is not only a representation of her personality, but her gender identity, and sexuality as well: “Sometimes it [her style] feels like an extension of my expression of my gender identity and sexuality because I’m a queer woman and I feel like my femininity was repressed a lot when I was younger because it was seen as negative. Like if you’re girly or anything like that, it’s seen as weak. So I definitely embrace a lot of femininity in my outfits now. It’s not even me trying to express my sexuality, it’s just because that’s a part of me and that’s become a part of the people I’m surrounded with and the culture. I feel like I dress more eclectically, maybe, because of my sexuality, but I don’t necessarily do it for anybody.”

While sitting in the couch of her dorm’s living room on Sunday evening, Nov. 27, 2022, Annabelle takes time to unwind at the end of a long weekend by working on crocheting a top for herself. She’s fairly new at crocheting, but it’s become one of her hobbies because it’s a de-stressor and means to make her own clothing. Like fashion, she uses crocheting to express herself and be creative. “I think personal style, more so than fashion, is important just because it’s a way of self-expression. But even more than that, it’s a way of self-care. It’s a way to take care of yourself, it’s a way to make yourself feel beautiful or seen, or just spend time with yourself as you’re getting ready and as you’re picking out outfits or curating a style that matches best with how you view yourself and what makes you feel comfortable. I think it’s a really important gauge on how you want be perceived and how you care for yourself in that sense.”